Aaron Rodgers is headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
That’s true even if the New York Jets can’t find a way out of their early-season spiral that saw their record drop to 2-3 and their coach, Robert Saleh, fired Tuesday. Heck, that’s true if he never completes another pass for the New York Jets or even if he never had become a New York Jet in the first place.
His 18 seasons in Green Bay, highlighted by four MVP trophies, a Super Bowl championship and 475 regular-season touchdowns, secured that long ago. It’s a legend.
And yet, legends are compared to legends. Degrees of greatness matter, and Rodgers’ late-career franchise change is also open to judgment, especially compared to peers Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.
In 2023, Rodgers, at 39 years old, left Green Bay for New York in search of a Super Bowl. He followed the path of Manning, who moved from Indianapolis to Denver in 2012 at around age 36, and Brady, who moved from New England to Tampa Bay in 2020 at age 42.
Both Manning and Brady won Super Bowls, made the playoffs in other seasons, and generally changed the direction, if not the hard-to-define “culture,” of their new franchises.
They finished strong. They proved to be more than their original franchises.
Rodgers, well, the jury is still out.
A season-ending opening night injury last year slowed things down. Now, five weeks into the season, the Jets look like the old Jets. Their two wins are against bad teams in New England and Tennessee. They seemed listless in a loss to Minnesota (and old QB St. Darnold) in London.
That left Saleh without a job.
“This is one of the most talented teams the New York Jets have ever put together,” said team owner Woody Johnson. “I wanted to give the team the best chance to win this season.”
How much does this cost for Rodgers? How much not? How much could it reasonably be expected to change? After all, these are the Jets. Dysfunction, especially during the Johnson era, has been common.
Well, the offense has been bad: only two touchdowns against four turnovers in the last two weeks. The offensive line has had trouble dealing with Rodgers’ tough counting, a weapon known to him, and had false starts too often. And Rodgers has been… just fine by his standards. His completion rate this season (61.0 percent) and interception rate (2.2 percent) would be near the worst of his career.
Much was made of Rodgers’ decision to skip a mandatory minicamp in June to travel to Egypt because he considered it a “bucket list” trip. The Jets fined him $50,000, which Rodgers ignored. Perhaps some of the criticism directed at Rodger was unwarranted. How much does it really matter?
Well, Manning and Brady wouldn’t have done that. When Manning arrived for his first season in Denver, the NFL was in a lockout. He borrowed the Colorado Rockies’ facilities to work out and then organized player practice sessions on his own. Meanwhile, Brady arrived in Tampa at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He gathered players on a local high school field for reps.
That’s not the only way to make your mark on a new team, but whatever system Rodgers is employing hasn’t worked yet. He spent Wednesday defending himself on The Pat McAfee Show and declaring that he had nothing to do with Saleh’s firing.
“Any of those accusations bother me because they are patently false,” Rodgers said. “It’s interesting how much power people think I have.”
It’s worth taking Rodgers’ word for it here. There is no indication that it led to the head coach’s firing. However, the power he has is the reason the Jets hired him. It wasn’t just to throw passes or run the offense, but to lead a young team and teach an organization that hasn’t been winning how to do just that.
Much of the narrative about Rodgers’ final years in Green Bay is that the organization was letting him down by not providing him with the final pieces needed to win another Super Bowl. That may be true. But here we are in New York and the grass may be a different green color, but it sure isn’t greener.
New York is headed for a reboot. New coach. New approach.
There is still a lot of season ahead of us and Aaron Rodgers is still Aaron Rodgers, an extremely talented player and proven champion.
However, if he wants to prove that his second act can be seen in the same class as Manning or Brady, then now is the time to start delivering.
His entire legacy is not at stake here, but part of it is.