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Aaron Rodgers is headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
That is true even if the New York Jets can’t find a way out of their early season spiral that saw their record fall to 2-3 and their coach, Robert Saleh, get fired on Tuesday. Heck, that is true if he never completes another pass for the New York Jets or even if he had never 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, assured that long ago. He’s a legend.
And yet, legends get compared to legends. The degrees of greatness matter, and Rodgers’ late-career franchise switch is open to judgment as well, especially when compared to peers Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.
In 2023, Rodgers, at age 39, left Green Bay for New York in search of a Super Bowl. He followed the path of Manning, who went from Indianapolis to Denver in 2012 nearing 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 playoff runs 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 just their original franchises.
Rodgers, well, the jury remains out.
An opening night, season-ending injury last year delayed things. Now five weeks into the season, the Jets look like the old Jets. Their two victories are against bad New England and Tennessee teams. They looked listless in a loss to Minnesota — and old QB San Darnold — in London.
That left Saleh without a job.
“This is one of the most talented teams that has ever been assembled by the New York Jets,” team owner Woody Johnson said. “I wanted to give the team the best opportunity to win this season.”
How much is this on Rodgers? How much isn’t? How much could he reasonably be expected to change? These are the Jets after all. Dysfunction, especially during the Johnson Era, has been common.
Well, the offense has been bad — just two touchdowns against four turnovers the last two weeks. The offensive line has had issues dealing with Rodgers’ hard count — a known weapon of his — and jumped into false starts too often. And Rodgers has been … just OK by his standards. His completion rate this season (61.0 percent) and interception rate (2.2 percent) would be near career worsts.
There was much made of Rodgers’ decision to skip a mandatory June minicamp to travel to Egypt because he considered it a “bucket list” trip. The Jets fined him $50,000, which Rodgers shrugged off. Maybe 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 labor lockout. He borrowed the Colorado Rockies’ facility to work out and then organized player practice sessions on his own. Brady, meanwhile, came to Tampa at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He gathered players at a local high school field to get reps in.
That isn’t the only way to bring your imprint on a new team, but whatever system Rodgers is employing hasn’t delivered yet. He spent Wednesday defending himself on The Pat McAfee Show and declaring he had nothing to do with Saleh’s firing.
“I resent any of those accusations because they are patently false,” Rodgers said. “It’s interesting the amount of power people think I have.”
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Rodgers is worth taking at his word here. There is no indication he caused the head coach to be fired. Yet the power he has is why the Jets brought him in. It wasn’t just to throw passes or run the offense, it was 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 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 color of green, but it sure isn’t greener.
New York is headed for a reboot. New coach. New approach.
There is plenty of season still to go and Aaron Rodgers remains Aaron Rodgers, a supremely gifted player and proven champion.
Yet if he wants to prove his second act can be seen in the same class as Manning or Brady, then the time is now to start delivering.
His full legacy isn’t on the line here, but part of it sure is.