After Loss To Colts, Jets’ Bye Has Multiple Meanings
Running It Back With Rodgers Would Be Compounding A Mistake
The Jets walked off the MetLife Stadium field on Sunday towards their bye.
In more ways than one.
The Jets are off next week, thankfully, and their 28-27 loss to the visiting Colts meant that they could wave sayonara to their 2024 season. At 3-8, Gang Green is virtually finished, playoff-less for a 14th consecutive year.
And there are more goodbyes pending: The owner Woody Johnson is likely headed off to work in some capacity in the Donald Trump Administration while his General Manager Joe Douglas and interim Head Coach Jeff Ulbrich are deserving of pink slips on Black Monday.
Oh, and let’s not forget the termination of the epically failed Aaron Rodgers experiment. The Jets future Hall-of-Fame quarterback has looked more like Joe Namath on the Rams than Peyton Manning on the Broncos this season, unable to provide consistency to this franchise’s perennially problematic position.
Rodgers’ numbers (22-for-29 for 184 yards and two touchdowns while turnover free) against the Colts don’t look so terrible, but it was a mirage. The Jets didn’t register a first down until after the two-minute warning to the first half. Per ESPN, he completed one pass thrown over 10 yards downfield, a 17-yard out to Xavier Gipson, matching his “success” rate from last week’s debacle in Arizona.
And when the Jets got the ball back after their vaunted defense coughed up a lead to an opposing quarterback who entered the game with a sub-50% completion percentage, Rodgers only got three plays off in the final 46 seconds—a backwards pass that lost 13 yards, a checkdown to running back Breece Hall for 11 yards in the middle of the field, and a game-ending sack. Maybe if Ulbrich hadn’t wasted a timeout on the previous possession by trying to draw the Colts offside before having Anders Carlson kick a 35-yard field goal on fourth-and-two with 2:41 remaining, Rodgers might have had a little more time. (Note: The Jets also had to burn one earlier on that drive because Rodgers, for the umpteenth time this season, couldn’t get the snap off before the play clock ran out.)
But when you’re not pushing the ball downfield, would more time have mattered? The Colts weren’t exactly in a prevent defense. They were getting after Rodgers and had their coverages sneak up to ensure their tackles would be made in bounds knowing that he would check down under pressure.
Rodgers’ legendary late-game magic has faded. Other than a mid-fourth quarter drive that broke a tie in Week 2 in Tennessee, he has pulled an 0-fer as a Jet on his attempted come-from-behind victories that were a given during his glory days in Green Bay.
Worse than his loss of mobility that used to make him so dangerous when the original plays broke down, Rodgers hasn’t been consistently processing where to go with the ball. One Jets possession ended with wide open receiver Davante Adams jumping up in disgust after his long-time buddy went to the other side to Garrett Wilson on a third down that would have been short anyway had it been completed. Has Rodgers’ recovery from last season’s Achilles rupture affected his mind?
Adams, a three-time All-Pro, was brought over in a trade with Oakland prior to Week 7’s contest in Pittsburgh. With him, Wilson and Hall all healthy since the deal, Rodgers can’t complain he lacks playmakers. Yet Rodgers’ passing yardage decreased every week until Sunday, though another sub-200-yard day would have caused him embarrassment in any other year.
Simply put, Rodgers has not gotten the job done here. He’ll be 41 in a couple of weeks and, even if he says now that he intends to play for this team in 2025, you have to believe there’s a good chance he will change his mind after an offseason overhaul at One Jets Drive.
The best path for all parties going forward would be if New York cuts Rodgers next year with a post June designation so the dead money salary cap hits can be split between 2025 ($14 million) and 2026 ($35 million). Who knows, maybe he might then be able to follow the Brett Favre path, where a former Green Bay icon suffered through one Jets season before leading his next team (Minnesota) to the playoffs a year later.
Running it back with Rodgers next season would be compounding the stupidity. He has no guaranteed money remaining on his deal, but rostering him would trigger another $35 million option bonus (it’s the Jets’ option) that would have to be accounted for under the cap.
From all appearances, Rodgers doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would take a benching well, even if it really would be for his own well-being. The Jets wouldn’t do that to his pride anyway, though I saw a tweet before New York’s first score in Sunday’s game that read something to the effect that if his name was “Joe Smith”, backup Tyrod Taylor would have been called upon after halftime.
The rest of the season doesn’t matter anyway. To paraphrase what old-time Pirates GM Branch Rickey once told his Hall-of-Fame outfielder Ralph Kiner in the 1950s, the Jets are losing with Rodgers; they can lose without him.