There is no shortage of ways we could approach what has happened to Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets.
We could take the micro viewpoint, and tell you the litany of failures that led to Sunday’s 31-6 loss to the Arizona Cardinals, arguably the ugliest defeat of Rodgers’ era with the Jets. Or we could go the macro route, and recite the bleak and still-bottoming playoff percentages of this 3-7 team. We could even pull further back and go to the history books, and note how much this all feels a little like Brett Favre’s underwhelming single-season foray as the Jets’ starting quarterback in 2008 … except this season is exponentially worse and going off a cliff far more quickly.
This is a failed season, with an objectively bad team that was all leveraged against a soon-to-be 41-year-old quarterback who has sunken into the mediocre middle at his position. Once we recognize that, it opens the door to the legacy question that will hang over Rodgers for the remainder of this lost season.
What’s left?
It’s an important question, given that this failure is threatening to form an impression that will be lasting. Maybe not in the disturbing neighborhood of Joe Namath fizzling out with the Los Angeles Rams or Johnny Unitas dropping the curtain with the San Diego Chargers. But also not anywhere near the respectably remembered 29 games (including four playoff games) that Joe Montana spent closing his career in a Kansas City Chiefs uniform. If anything, Rodgers’ end is shaping up like Donovan McNabb going out with a wheeze with Washington and Minnesota.
It’s stunning to grapple with that kind of framing for Rodgers. But that’s where we are. You could see it during his postgame news conference Sunday, another one of the editions where he came off as a quiet and defeated passenger, trapped on a journey that no longer has a map. Reaching for nebulous explanations like “energy” rather than talent or tactics in describing what has gone wrong.
“It’s been a lot of emotions this year, for sure,” Rodgers said Sunday. “I thought after a big win [against the Houston Texans on] Thursday night, nice long week, we were gonna come out with a lot of energy and fun in the game. We didn’t come out with great energy on either side of the ball. And offensively, you’re not going to beat anybody scoring six points.”
It’s the second time this season that Rodgers has pointed to energy in the face of a throttling. The last time, he described the Jets as “flat” after absorbing a 37-15 beating at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers nearly three weeks ago. The week after that one, the talent-barren New England Patriots were supposed to present a “get right” game for the Jets. The Jets lost that one 25-22, in what was, at the time, the most embarrassing loss of Rodgers’ starts. Until this week, when a Cardinals team that is very much in the midst of finding its own footing held the Jets to a pair of field goals and rolled up 406 yards of total offense against a defense that we once thought could be a top-five unit in the league.
Fired head coach Robert Saleh had no part in that. Nor did demoted offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. Wideout Mike Williams? He’s in Pittsburgh, catching his first touchdown of the season from Russell Wilson on Sunday for the winning score. Meanwhile, recently acquired receiver Davante Adams caught six balls for 31 yards and Rodgers completed only one pass that traveled more than 10 air yards. He also continued his string of games without a 300-yard passing performance, which is now at 33 and counting. All concerning numbers, but none more troubling than the $49 million in dead salary-cap space for Rodgers in 2025.
All of this brings us back to the original question of what is left for him. Well, there are two avenues that appear to be in play right now.
The first is that Rodgers will play out the 2024 season, salvaging whatever he can down the stretch, then returning in 2025 for one last attempt at putting a respectable bookend on his career. One league source familiar with the Adams trade told Yahoo Sports last week that the wideout agreed to be traded to the Jets with the condition that Rodgers would stick around through 2025. Of course, that was before the last few weeks of futility, which raise a question of whether the Jets want either player on the roster next season, particularly with a new head coach in play and general manager Joe Douglas having his contract run out at the end of the season. For Rodgers and Adams to be back, there would need to be some serious clarification of who is at the controls in 2025. And that might have been muddied by the presidential election, with multiple sources inside the Jets expecting that team owner Woody Johnson will again be taking some kind of post in Donald Trump’s future plans. That’s a lot of unknowns hanging in the balance.
The second avenue: This is it. That we’re in the midst of Rodgers’ last year with the Jets — either by virtue of him choosing retirement, or by ownership riding out mediocrity the rest of the season and then deciding to make sweeping changes at head coach, general manager, quarterback and beyond. In that scenario, multiple veterans would be expected to go out the door, including Rodgers, Adams, Allen Lazard and others. It’s an overhaul that would deem the Rodgers experiment a tremendous failure with a years-long autopsy to really understand what exactly went wrong.
For now, neither avenue is absolutely certain. After all, there’s another one of those “get right” games next week, against an Indianapolis Colts team that is reeling with its own problems across the roster.
“We just gotta focus on what’s in front of us and beat the Colts, then get to the bye and sort some things out,” Rodgers said Sunday. “We’ve got a couple West Coast opponents coming out for one-o’clock games. And we’ve got one, two, three division games. A lot still in front of us.”
A lot still in front, and so much left behind. And nothing but question and disappointment in between.