At best, Aaron Rodgers has failed to transform the New York Jets into anything other than the New York Jets. At worst, he has been an impediment to the Jets' efforts to outrun their own destiny as the most consistent losing franchise in the NFL. This past Sunday brought what may or may not prove to be a nadir: a 25–22 loss to the New England Patriots, leaving the Jets 2–6 and behind the Patriots for last place in the AFC East. On Thursday, they play the Houston Texans, a near-certain playoff team. Things aren't likely to get any better tonight, but whether the Jets emerge with a record of 2–7 or 3–6, their trajectory is the same.
Rodgers' tenure with the Jets, since a trade in April 2023, has resembled a circus. He tore his Achilles on his first drive as a Jet and could not bear a season in which he wasn't his team's main character. The quarterback spent the year claiming that he was working toward a return before season's end, an outrageous and maybe impossible interpretation of the recovery timeline for his injury but one that credulous NFL insiders helped him promote all year. The story only blessedly died when the Jets eliminated themselves from playoff contention and allowed Rodgers to save face, staying out only because returning would not be worthwhile.
The Jets' entire last season became about a quarterback who would not be playing for them, and who frequently created negative news cycles for the team with his weekly appearances on ESPN's Pat McAfee Show. (A highlight was Rodgers' on-air inference that Jimmy Kimmel, arguably the biggest star at NFL broadcast partner Disney, had flown on Jeffrey Epstein's plane. Rodgers meekly denied he had made it.)
It was all farcical, but one could understand the Jets bringing Rodgers back this season as a bit of football realpolitik. The NFL is a quarterback-drunk league. Rodgers is Rodgers. Maybe the old man had something left in the tank at 40. It was worth the Jets putting up with his bullshit so that they might get a renaissance and some high-level production in 2024. But it is now clear that Rodgers does not have it in him to save this iteration of the Jets and may be a detriment to the team. He is having comfortably the worst season of his career and ranked 25th in the league in QBR entering last weekend. Rodgers was fine—233 yards on 17-of-28 passing including two touchdowns—against the Pats, and his performance was not a game-changer for New York. One problem was that he used valuable timeouts as he struggled to get his offense situated to his liking before the play clock expired. He is probably better than the 25th-best quarterback in the league. A ranking of about 11th seems fair—but he's also a shell of what he used to be.
The Rodgers saga could soon head toward a massive societal relief. The QB has been an inescapable cultural figure since a few months into the pandemic, when he became one of the nation's most prominent vaccine skeptics. Rodgers had been a celebrity for well over a decade by then, but he was suddenly much more famous. Google searches for him spiked to unseen levels, and countless media outlets obliged that demand by aggregating his frequent broadsides on McAfee's show. Long before he implied that Kimmel was a pedophile, he was on McAfee using a Martin Luther King quote to defend his v accine views. We've all learned a lot about Rodgers, more than even those who agree with him on politics or vaccines have bargained for. We know, for instance, that he uses ghee to cleanse his bowels. Why do we know that? These are things that we do not know about most NFL players and certainly do not attempt to learn about former NFL players. Rodgers is no longer a world-altering player and that will sooner or later present an opportunity for so many people to turn the page. The Jets will get a new QB. We will all get to think less about their last one.
Let us be careful not to overstate our coming freedom from hearing about Rodgers. He will always have fans and a platform. Such is life for one of the great signal-callers of all time. But most of Rodgers' beliefs and bombastic public statements wouldn't be newsmaking events if he weren't an NFL quarterback, and an elite one at that. Many athletes play footsie with the political views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Only one comes up as a vice presidential possibility for him. Lots of athletes have unconventional body care techniques, and most of them remain unknown to the public. Even tremendous former QBs get to make high-profile political endorsements and rally appearances. But you would only know that Brett Favre was a ppearing at a Trump rally in Wisconsin this week if you followed political news closely. It would be easy to not know that! Rodgers' every utterance becomes national news because he is still trying to recapture his quarterbacking magic, and because his attempt to do so affects an NFL team in the New York area.
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It's hard to overstate how much less reach Rodgers' words would have if he were no longer playing, or even if he continued playing another year after being this ordinary. He is still capable of elite throws, and he has the same elite football mind he always did. But his mediocrity this season for a horrible team threatens his potency as a libertarian-ish influencer, because it threatens his longevity on the field.
Typically, a player like Rodgers having a year like this for an organization like the Jets would be cause to blame the team and assume the QB is being left out to dry. That does not play in this case though, because the Jets have so transparently reoriented themselves to Rodgers' liking over the past two years. They hired Rodgers' old Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator, Nathaniel Hackett, to run their offense, even though Hackett was coming off a disastrous year as the Denver Broncos' head coach and his primary qualification was that Rodgers liked him. They've brought in a handful of Rodgers' buddies to play wide receiver, and only one of them, the great Davante Adams, is anything special. Even the Adams trade, unquestionably made because Rodgers thought it would be a great idea, was unwise. The Jets, who suck, are o ut a third-round draft pick next year so that Adams' talents can go toward a nonplayoff team. The Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh on Oct. 8, a move Rodgers denies he influenced but that happened to come right before Saleh was reportedly going to fire Rodgers' favored offensive coordinator. It is fair to criticize Rodgers as both a QB and quasi-executive.
Many NFL teams are desperate for any sliver of hope that they might find a good quarterback. Next year's draft class at the position is not enticing. Rodgers could still have options around the league for a few years yet, including with these very same Jets. But at some point, enough general managers and owners will settle on a consensus that Rodgers is cooked. That day comes for everyone, and Rodgers' recent play and injury history suggest it approaches quickly for him. There is not an infinite supply of teams that will allow Rodgers to continue holding such a huge place in the national consciousness.
The NFL's Most Annoying Celebrity Is About to Make Himself Irrelevant The Sky Is Falling on College Football's Juggernaut The World Series Star Who's an Axe Hanging Over Both Teams The Scariest Thing About Tua Tagovailoa's Press Conference After all, it is hard to argue that the Jets are in a better place now than when they traded for Rodgers. The 2022 team lost its final six games to miss the playoffs and finish 7–10, so things weren't good. They're never good for a team on a league-worst playoff drought of an astonishing 13 seasons. Zach Wilson, the bust No. 2 draft pick who came before Rodgers, was not going to be the man either. The bar for Rodgers to make that situation better was not high, but he has not met it. At best the Jets have treaded water. They own a regular slate of draft picks next year, not the expansive menu of them that would come from a more classic rebuild. They have the 21st-most salary-cap space at hand for 2025, though NFL teams can always do lots of fidget ing on that front as long as they accept that a bill will one day come due. The franchise has no clear path to a touted rookie QB. Would the team jettison Rodgers to try for one anyway?
Rodgers has always been worth whatever pains in the ass he might cause. In his latter Packers years, it was a no-brainer for Green Bay to tolerate frequent retirement speculation (which Rodgers readily invited), Rodgers' input on the roster, and even his own trade demand, which the team at one point rebuffed and then smoothed over in order to keep him around. The list of superstar quarterbacks who do not bring drama is short, and coping with whatever Rodgers brought was worthwhile. A great quarterback is worth a sideshow, just as a great quarterback is worth reporters and bloggers breathlessly covering even when the story at hand isn't about football. When the quarterback is no longer great, he is less worthy of those things. And when he isn't a quarterback at all, everyone else can eventually stop hearing about him.
