When the Jets brought in Aaron Rodgers before the 2023-24 season, it came with an assumption that the future Hall of Famer would elevate the team from perennial loser to Super Bowl contender.
Things didn’t quite work out that way in his first season in New York after a torn Achilles kept Rodgers off the field for all but four plays on the season.
However, fully healthy for the 2024-25 season (albeit another year older at 40 years old) with a star-studded roster on both sides of the ball gave the Jets and the veteran quarterback reason to believe that this was the year to contend for a championship and that last season was simply bad luck.
Yet, seven weeks into the season and New York is 2-5 and riding a four-game losing streak while firing its head coach in the process. For some perspective, at this point last year the Jets were 4-3, in the middle of a three-game winning streak, with impressive wins over the Buffalo Bills and Philadelphia Eagles.
New York’s most recent loss came at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday Night Football – after the team had traded for wide receiver Davante Adams who suited up and played for the first time in three weeks.
Adams, of course, was also Rodgers’ longtime teammate with the Green Bay Packers and remains a good friend with the quarterback making it a perfect match for a team looking to get off the schneid and flip its season around.
When that didn’t happen, interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich told the media that after the game Adams (who had been with the team for six days) decided to speak up in the locker room.
“It’s not really my personality to see something that’s not right and to just let it go on,” Adams said. “Obviously it was a lack of energy and urgency out there and it was apparent, especially [because] I’ve played on teams that have that winning culture. Basically, I just took a moment to let them know [that] I had reservations about speaking up too early and being too vocal too early, but I felt like in my mind I said F that because we don’t have time and I gotta do whatever I gotta do to help this team move forward and a lack of energy that’s a prerequisite to be able to go out there and have a good year or have a good play or whatever it is.
“In my mind, it was something that I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I didn’t speak up on it… It wasn’t a big rah rah thing, it was more to bring awareness to it because a lot of the guys in here haven’t been anywhere else where they’ve won and had that urgency that it takes in order to be a good team. So this team being so talented roster-wise, it’s just a waste to have everybody out there and to have a dead sideline like that.”
The veteran wide receiver told reporters that he took issue with the lack of “juice” coming from the team and pointed to a Breece Hall 57-yard gain on a catch and run in the second quarter and how “those types of plays are supposed to be contagious for the rest of the team.”
The Jets ended up scoring on that drive after Rodgers threw a one-yard touchdown pass to tight end Tyler Conklin, but after converting on the two-point attempt to make it 15-6, New York was outscored 31-0.
“It’s a little bit of everything. It’s on everybody,” Adams said. “Any time an organization is in a losing streak or [is] a losing organization – and I’m not gonna call any organization that I’m a part of a losing organization – but obviously there’s been some of that in the past and recent years around here and it’s a little bit of everything.
“Obviously with this team, it’s more just learning how to win and what it takes, the small things, that don’t necessarily have to come from the owner or the general manager. This is something that you can solve within the team if you’ve got the right people in here – guys that know how to win. And it’s not just about having good players because we have that. Like I said you gotta have guys that understand and have been on teams that have won sometimes and that’s a big reason why I’m here.”
Adams finished his first game as a Jet with three catches (nine targets) for 30 yards, but his biggest contribution may have come after the game.
Rodgers told reporters that he thought it was “the realest speech [he] had ever heard in a locker room in 20 years.” The quarterback also added some thoughts of his own on how the team can turn the season around.
“We all have to play more loose, for sure,” he said. “…When you’re out there we need to get rid of any anger or frustration and be able to move on and remember how much we love the game and play with excitement and joy.
“I got to lead with that type of joy and energy each week so that it gives permission for everybody to enjoy themselves a little bit more. I’m very critical and hard on myself and want to play as well as possible, but we need to play looser. We’re still figuring things out in a lot of ways, but energetically we need to find that balance of accountability with the forgiveness to be able to make mistakes and guys not playing out of fear, but playing for the love of the game.”
Rodgers also mentioned that there’s still time left in the season to figure it out and that “sometimes it just takes that one thing to happen. It could be a speech before a game or after a game, something during the week that just clicks. The energy of that click can be contagious.”
“Every year presents its own challenges and thankfully we’re not at the denouement of this season,” he said. “There’s still a lot of time left and I think it’s important that we all just stay as sanguine as possible. It’s a long season, there’s a lot of ups and downs. We’ve had a lot of adversity already this season, we just gotta stick together and get one and then start to build off of that.”
Only time will tell if Adams’ postgame speech can galvanize the team enough to avoid their eighth straight losing season. Their first test comes on Sunday against the New England Patriots who are in last place in the division and whom the Jets have already dismantled earlier this year.
After that, New York will have a quick turnaround before playing a home game against the Houston Texans on Thursday night before traveling to Arizona to face the Cardinals and finally returning back to MetLife Stadium to take on the Indianapolis Colts before the team’s Week 12 bye.
“I’m not here to be the savior, I’m here to help shift this culture more than anything,” Adams said. “I can go out there and make the plays that I can make and try to influence guys as much as I can, but I’m trying to enforce a winning mindset on these guys.
“…We got a few opportunities to come out here, show what we work on, all the crazy blood, sweat and tears we put into this and to have only 17 opportunities and to come out flat like that and essentially give away a game, that’s unacceptable. So just trying to bring a different type of swag and culture in here.”