Nearing the climax of the movie Rounders — as Matt Damon’s poker-hustling character Mike McDermott is heading into the pit of Teddy KGB’s dank, dimly lit, iron-doored gambling den — he takes a moment to monologue about the depths he’s finally reached.
He’s in the wrong kind of trouble, with the worst kind of people, grasping for one last chance to save himself.
“I’ve often seen these people,” McDermott narrates, “these squares at the table, short-stacked and long odds against them, all their outs gone, one last card in the deck that can help them. I used to wonder how they could let themselves get into such bad shape … and how the hell they thought they could turn it around.”
That’s the sentiment that comes to mind right now when I think about these New York Jets. I see a franchise that is already in some real trouble this season — having expended everything it has at its disposal with a finally-healthy Aaron Rodgers — but once again experiencing withering returns on investment. The quarterback got his chosen destination, chosen offensive coordinator and ample talent slotted around him. The offensive line was tuned up. The scheme was curved to his preferences.
Yet coming off a putrid loss to the Denver Broncos in Week 3, the Jets responded by looking completely off-kilter offensively for much of the day against the Minnesota Vikings in a 23-17 loss in London. Granted, it was against one of the most vastly disguised and confusing schemes in the league, orchestrated by Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores. But these Jets, led by a brainy and wise 40-year-old Rodgers, were supposed to be built to overcome that kind of hurdle.
Now it’s getting hard to ignore a wider picture that is looking worse by the week, with the Jets’ lone pair of wins coming against the struggling Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots — two of the AFC’s bottom-dwelling franchises that are a combined 2-7 this season and faltering badly at quarterback.
When you look at the Jets from that wider angle, you have to wonder — in the words Mike McDermott — how the Jets got into such bad shape and how the hell they think they can get out. The answer they will pursue next week is that proverbial last card in the deck: Las Vegas Raiders wideout Davante Adams. A player who is being studied on the trade block by a handful of franchises, none seemingly as desperate as this Jets franchise.
All of which frames a new challenge for the Jets. Sure, they should and do want Adams … but should Adams want them back?
There’s no guarantee that the narrative of the Jets being Adams’ hammerlock top choice is definitively true. Remember, there was a period of time in 2022 that the overwhelming presumption was that the Green Bay Packers were going to sign Adams to a long-term extension, shortly after the team had completed a new deal for Rodgers. But it was Adams who took a hard left turn — stunning even Rodgers — by pressing a trade to the Las Vegas Raiders, so he could max out his salary and play alongside his college quarterback, Derek Carr.
At the very least, that proves Adams isn’t exactly a guaranteed trade fit for New York. And frankly, it’s a much stronger piece of his history that should be weighed — more so than the cryptic Instagram post featuring a portrait of Edgar Allen Poe, which threw all of Baltimore into a tizzy. His last big decision had an element of familiarity in Carr, but also a much bigger element in how much money he was going to be paid. He had waited in line for a long time in Green Bay for a monster extension. And eventually, he got tired of waiting behind Rodgers and made a decision for himself.
With Adams now on the doorstep of 32 years old, I suspect money will continue to be a factor in his thought process. Not only how much of his salary the Raiders are willing to pay to get him dealt for a decent draft pick, but how viable it will be for a trade partner to pay him in 2025. Perhaps even whether that trade partner is willing to work some kind of contract adjustment immediately upon the his arrival, giving him some guaranteed money in 2025.
As it stands, he doesn’t have that. Instead, he has an extremely cumbersome two years of non-guaranteed money left on his deal, to the tune of $72.5 million in base salary, roster and game bonuses. As it stands, it’s a virtual certainty that no team is going to pay that.
Indeed, almost none of the teams interested in trading for him can even afford it, which renders him little more than a rental for them, unless he agrees to rework his deal. And if Adams reworks his deal, he’s going to want a serious chunk of guaranteed money in 2025. That’s what you do when you’re going to head into the offseason at 32 years old and only one more short-term bite at the salary apple. See how much of this conversation doesn’t center around Adams simply clanning up with a former quarterback buddy?
But since that will at least be a part of the conversation, let’s look back at the Jets and ask again if Adams should even be interested in them at this stage. First and foremost, the offense has looked disjointed at best. The Jets aren’t consistently running the football and creating some balance in the scheme. The offensive line has had an extremely tough time since losing right tackle Morgan Moses. And at one juncture against the Vikings, I couldn’t help but notice Rodgers looking at the sideline and doing the familiar “hurry the hell up” finger-spin, which is typically employed when annoyed quarterbacks want their play-caller to get the play radioed in more quickly. It resonated on Sunday because Jets offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett was dragged mercilessly during his brief stint as the Broncos’ head coach for failing to get plays into the game fast enough to allow Russell Wilson to get to the line of scrimmage and sort out the protection calls and defensive alignments.
So there’s all that. And then there are some of the moments that raise how well-oiled the machine is, even when the play-calling is functioning efficiently. Late in the first quarter against the Vikings, Rodgers put a perfect ball into the face of Allen Lazard and the wideout dropped it. The next play, Rodgers threw the pick-6 interception to Vikings linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel.
That lit a fire under Minnesota that would see them build a 17-0 lead — which forced the Jets to shift away from their running game to try and engineer a comeback. That tilt toward the passing game let the Vikings get far more aggressive up front, which led to Rodgers getting hammered repeatedly if he wasn’t getting the ball out of his hands as quickly as possible.
When it was all over, Rodgers revealed he had sprained his ankle and declaring, “I’m definitely banged up.”
If you’re Adams, you have to stop for a moment and absorb that. If Adams can’t get a hunk of guaranteed money in 2025 as part of the trade parameters, then he needs to either put up some strong numbers down the stretch of this season, or be the recipient of a Super Bowl glow-up with his new team. If he gets neither of those things, then he’s going to get cut by his new team (to avoid paying his huge contract number in 2025) and then face a free agency reception next offseason that could be much more frosty than he expects. You can already fell it when you talk to other NFL executives. He’s not viewed as the same top-three or four wideout like he was when he was traded to the Raiders in 2022. So the next few months really matter when it comes to the sunsetting of his career.
Now consider that Rodgers is already 40 years old, playing beat up and now with a sprained ankle, behind an offensive line that is having trouble protecting him, and with a young wideout in Garrett Wilson who clearly fashions himself as the No. 1 option on the team and has already made some critical remarks about the scheme. Against the Vikings, Rodgers force-fed Wilson 22 targets and still missed him at times on throws where either Wilson didn’t understand what Rodgers wanted or Rodgers simply misfired. All while Wilson has morphed into a small-ball wideout who gets the majority of his targets 10 yards and in. And now the Jets want to add another presumed No. 1 receiver whose best assets have traditionally been unlocking the intermediate-to-deep parts of the field? The kinds of routes that typically necessitate a quarterback holding onto the ball a little longer and needing better protection?
All of that should give Adams pause. As should the Jets’ next two games — at home against the Buffalo Bills and then on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers team that also would like to be a player in the Adams sweepstakes. Should the Jets lose those two games and fall to 2-5, a situation that already feels wobbly could get ugly quickly. In some respects, you can already see it in the Jets’ fan base after Sunday, where it’s quickly turning apoplectic on social media.
Sure, Adams can reunite with Rodgers. After Sunday, the Jets are likely desperate enough to make it happen, letting the Raiders shop Adams around and then coughing up the best basket of draft picks for his services. But the other side of that deal will still be Adams walking into a franchise that feels like it’s inviting chaos and on the very edge of implosion.
Go watch that final climactic chapter from Rounders. See Mike McDermott mortgage the last of his friendships. Watch him get into that prison-inspired elevator and descend into a brick-encased bunker that looked like it had one way in and one way out. It was a daunting moment, and everything had to break absolutely right to survive and turn it all around. That feels pretty much like the definition of the Jets right now. And everyone knows there’s only one last card in the deck that can help them.
But will he?