With The Jets Season Toast, An Imminent Rodgers Question Looms
Folks in the media who are looking to stir up a story line for the final five games of this miserable Jets season are begging for a quarterback controversy.
Make no mistake, Aaron Rodgers has played like he’s washed for the vast majority of the games, including Sunday’s 26-21 defeat to visiting Seattle. I referenced a tweet in a prior post that noted if his name was “Joe Smith”, backup Tyrod Taylor would have been calling signals by now.
The headlines that will be generated from the latest debacle, where Rodgers completed just 54% of his passes for a mere 4.7 yards per attempt despite plenty of clean pockets (19 of 21 dropbacks in the first half that saw him net a paltry 90 passing yards, per Jets X Factor), will be about whether Head Coach Jeff Ulbrich pulls the plug on the aging QB. Ulbrich could have put the story line to bed for another week, but his cryptic “not as of today” response to whether he’ll be making a change for next Sunday’s contest in Miami stoked the media’s appetite.
From my perspective, what’s the point? Ulbrich could give the standard “gives us the best opportunity to win” and it would still be meaningless, because the Jets (3-9) are out of it for a 14th consecutive year. So… win what, exactly? A game that would do nothing but drop New York in the 2025 Draft order?
All a QB change would accomplish now is keep the Jets on the back pages for all the wrong reasons. They’d be embarrassing a legendary future Hall of Famer. The franchise is already the laughingstock of pro sports; benching Rodgers, who turns 41 on Monday, would only add fuel to the fire.
It’s not like Taylor is a young QB the team could look to develop. He’s 35, with an unfortunate recent injury history. Jordan Travis, New York’s 2024 fifth round pick, was put on the PUP list before training camp and has been unable to practice all season due to the terrible ankle injury he suffered in his last year at Florida State. There’s really no one else worth looking at while the Jets play out the string.
Rodgers had an opportunity to step aside on his own several times this season when lower body injuries piled up and limited his mobility. Instead, he pushed through, probably because he enjoys playing the game and knows his time is running out.
Of course, he claimed he felt as strong as ever on Sunday and was still lousy. Rbsdm.com had him with the lowest expected points per play/completion percentage above expected metric among the 28 QBs through this week’s 4pm games. The two-play sequence where he missed a wide open Garrett Wilson in the end zone and then threw an interception that Seattle’s Leonard Williams, a former Jet, ran back for a 92-yard touchdown return, the longest by an NFL defensive lineman ever, was the game’s turning point. Instead of going up 28-7 midway through the second quarter, the Jets were suddenly in a ballgame.
And then they didn’t score the rest of the way. On their next five possessions before they fell behind on a penalty-assisted Seattle touchdown drive with 5:31 remaining, they gained 88 yards, punting three times and turning over the ball on a Breece Hall fumble and a failed fourth down conversion attempt.
Like the other four times this season where Rodgers had the ball in the end with the Jets needing a score to avoid defeat, Sunday’s last gasp drive stalled well short of paydirt, with a 4th-and-15 prayer well out of Wilson’s reach.
I think Rodgers knows in his head that this season’s end will close the book on his Jets tenure. It would be stupid (and therefore, considering the ownership’s incompetence, not certain) for New York to bring him back with another $35 million option payment due next season when they can split the dead money salary cap allocation between 2025 ($14 million) and 2026 ($35 million) since there are no more guaranteed commitments.
Because it only helps the Jets in the long run should they run the table with losses, just let Rodgers go out on his own terms.
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I know that it’s too late to matter, but could the Jets coaching staff schedule a tutorial on the line of scrimmage sometime this week? The sheer volume of pre-snap penalties, on both sides of the ball, is beyond disturbing. It’s been a year-long problem, including during the five-game Robert Saleh run before he was canned.
In Sunday’s second half alone, the Jets were flagged twice for lining up offside on defense and once for an illegal formation (tackle Carter Warren was too far off the line) and an illegal shift. Oh, and for comic relief, the Jets sent out a punt returner while Seattle went for a 4th-and-6 from their own 33, resulting in a 12-men on the field foul. The Seahawks converted the ensuing 4th-and-1 when Jets reserve cornerback Qwan’tez Stiggers got too handsy with wide receiver DK Metcalf and was hit with a defensive pass interference.
On Seattle’s game-winning drive, the Jets committed a total of five defensive penalties (one was offsetting). The most hurtful was a Solomon Thomas horse tackle that negated a 4th-down stuffing. Per ESPN, it was New York’s fifth first down allowed by penalty on fourth downs this season, which is tied for the most in any season by an NFL team this century.
We keep hearing that the Jets “need to clean it up” when it comes to their second-most penalty yards assessed this season. I think the fans are owed a response as to how.