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Inside Aaron Rodgers' complicated relationship with the Jets

With New York's star QB showing his age, the Jets' road to 3-7 has been marked by struggle and silence.
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Inside Aaron Rodgers' complicated relationship with the Jets​

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    Tim Keown, ESPN Senior WriterNov 13, 2024, 07:40 AM ET
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AS SUNDAY NIGHT became Monday morning in Pittsburgh on Oct. 20, the only sounds emanating from the New York Jets' locker room were whispered conversations and tossed equipment. Aaron Rodgers, his face wrinkled and his beard a nearly even mix of gray and brown, sat in front of his locker and stared into the distance. His hand bleeding, his hamstring barking, his knee aching, his team losing, his body nearing its 41st birthday, he seemed to be contemplating the wisdom of this last roll of the dice.

This -- the postgame locker room -- is the real NFL. It smells like blood and sweat and soil and bears no resemblance to the glitzy pregame introductions. Here, large men sit at their lockers, their backs to the room, shoes off, helmets tossed to the side, clenching and unclenching their fists to make sure they still work. There are yards and yards of athletic tape on the floor, stained red from blood and green from grass and brown from dirt. The same guys who ran through the tunnel in clean jerseys a few hours ago now stare into their lockers wondering how long it's going to take to stand up. Winning and losing look the same and smell the same and hurt the same. They just sound different.

Amid the booming silence of this Jets locker room, it's easy to explain the presence of every man other than Rodgers. They need to start something or maybe complete it. They're chasing the money and fame he has had for nearly two decades, or maybe they've already caught it and now they're trying to figure out what to do with it. They all live for the rush.

But in here, Rodgers looks out of place. He wears a big square bandage on the back of his left hand, and his eyes lack their usual self-satisfied knowingness. The pain in his knee has been there for a few weeks and the one in his hamstring for a few hours. He is among the most accomplished players the sport has ever seen, and among the most powerful. Since trading for him before last season, the Jets have attempted to create a team in his image. They had already brought in his best friend Nathaniel Hackett to coordinate the same offense Rodgers ran in Green Bay. They have presented him with a bouquet of former Packers receivers, starting last year with Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb (now an analyst on the SEC Network), and culminating this season with the mid-October trade with the Raiders for Davante Adams, Rodgers' friend and most prolific coconspirator.

At 40, Rodgers' mobility has been hampered in part by knee, hamstring and Achilles injuries. Rob Tringali for ESPN

In a way, the Jets took their franchise -- which last made the playoffs in 2010, the longest streak of any team in any of the four major sports leagues -- and handed it to Rodgers with a broad mandate. Here you go. See what you can do with this. Last year was a wash, ending before it started with Rodgers' torn Achilles, the most referenced and scrutinized four-snap season in NFL history. But through 10 games this season, through the firing of head coach Robert Saleh and the elevation of Jeff Ulbrich, through the demotion of Hackett and the promotion of Todd Downing, through the trade for Adams and the appearance of holdout Haason Reddick, the Jets have proven themselves adept only at discovering innovative and increasingly depressing forms of losing. They began the season with designs on a championship, the team's first in 55 years, and are left with an odd identity: bad but fascinating, a near-impossible feat.

Rodgers is having one of his worst seasons as judged by a variety of statistical metrics. His QBR of 52.0 is 24th in the NFL and his yards per attempt (6.4) are the lowest of any season since he became a starter in 2008. He has thrown double-digit interceptions in just three of his 16 seasons as a starter, and never more than 13, but this season he has thrown seven in the first 10 games. When so much of a team's fate -- the offense, the personnel, the game plan -- is contingent upon the quarterback, it is only natural that he becomes the sun around which everything else orbits.

It has long been a cliché that the NFL is a quarterback's league, and the Jets are the league's most extreme practitioner. You can almost feel the focus bearing down on him from the moment he jogs through the tunnel for pregame warmups. Every game, fairly or not, is a referendum on the Rodgers era, and the Jets' season will determine whether the decision to create a ride-or-die world in Rodgers' likeness, a world of comfort and familiarity, was a wise one -- or one that will set the moribund franchise back years.

"He's achieved a lot, obviously," Adams says, "but I think he's driven by not being able to win multiple Super Bowls. He's won one, but he's been in situations where he's had the opportunity to almost taste it, almost touch it. Not being able to secure a championship at a higher rate is something that has, I won't say bothers him, but it has motivated him to continue on at this old age."

Once criticized for taking sacks to avoid the risk of interceptions, he now risks interceptions to avoid sacks. His lack of mobility, caused in part by the knee and the hamstring and whatever lingers from the Achilles, occasionally manifests itself as skittishness in the pocket. Game after game, he takes the snap and taps his feet, looking to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible. (He succeeds, too: his 2.57 release time is third in the NFL.) Areas that once promised escape are now foreclosed. There is rarely time to go through a progression, and it's equally rare that he can employ his advanced spatial awareness to extend a play with his legs, once a Rodgers' superpower. At times he looks small, somewhat diminished, either by the erosion of his own skills or the deficiencies of those around him. And then there are times when he makes throws that only he can make, his eyes trained one direction, the ball suddenly heading another with a hummingbird-wing flick that makes the ball appear to materialize out of his right shoulder. Those are the moments that give the Jets hope.

After the Week 7 loss to Pittsburgh, Rodgers decried the waning energy and intermittent focus displayed by his then-2-5 team -- and by him -- and said he couldn't understand it because it was the type of moment -- "Sunday Night Football," the stage all theirs -- that he lives for. He was asked the logical follow-up: What can be done to sustain the energy and play through adversity? "Stop listening to you guys, number one," he said. The remark was delivered without threat, and seemingly without precursor; the Jets, a team that owner Woody Johnson proclaimed to possess its best roster in 25 years, were bad and getting worse. There was nothing unfair about the line of questioning that night, or the way the team had been covered this season. Rodgers' words felt both perfunctory and desperate, something to fling at the wall to create an imaginary enemy to manufacture umbrage. When he was asked what, exactly, the media had said or reported that needed to be ignored, he dodged with one throwaway phrase: "All of it."

That exchange, as much as championships or wins or the camaraderie of the locker room, exemplifies what drives Rodgers. He defines himself by those who either question him or dislike him or dismiss him, and he is driven by the need to prove himself right, as well as wiser and more astute than those who challenge him. That's why he's still playing, and why he's a Jet.

Over the course of three practice weeks and four games spent observing Rodgers and the Jets, that's the biggest takeaway. He is doing this because he can, and because there are people who believe he can't.

That, and this: Greatness leaves the body in barely detectable amounts until it suddenly becomes obvious, but it never, ever leaves the mind.

"He's trying to bring everyone up to his speed," left tackle Tyron Smith says of teammate Rodgers, "because he sees things faster than anybody I've ever been around." Rob Tringali for ESPN

ON OCT. 17, the first day Davante Adams suited up in Jets gear, a helicopter appeared over the team's headquarters in Florham Park, New Jersey, and floated like the first leaf of autumn onto the pad across from the team's practice field. The thump of the rotors sounded vaguely menacing, like a warning, and within seconds of landing, the copter's two main passengers, Woody and Christopher Johnson -- brothers and owners of the Jets -- were standing in the middle of the field. Their presence, while not uncommon, added an element of urgency to the proceedings. The team they expected to compete for a Super Bowl had lost three in a row, on its way to five. The bosses were watching.

So much had happened. Saleh was fired after a Week 5 loss to the Vikings in London, a move that was widely seen as rash and out of character for an ownership group that was, pre-Rodgers, known for caution. Expectations were dictating decisions, and the reality of the situation -- that Rodgers and the offense were not close to Super Bowl-worthy -- appeared to be an afterthought.

Over the course of three weeks, I watched as Hackett had his playcalling duties ripped from him and handed to passing-game coordinator Downing, who responded to a question about the potentially awkward situation by praising Hackett's "true heart of a servant." Rodgers said it would be a difficult spot for Downing. "He's replacing my best friend," he said. And, on the first practice in Hackett's diminished role, it was impossible not to notice Downing work with the quarterbacks and a few offensive linemen while Hackett stood back, about 10 yards away, his hands in the muffler of his hoodie, a pen behind his ear, shifting from one foot to the other, his servant's heart tucked deep inside.

There were times it was hard to keep up. Pro Bowl defensive end Reddick went from never-Jet to ending his holdout the morning of the Steelers game. He then refused to address the media until after a brutal, dispiriting loss to the Patriots in Week 8, after which he refused to address the holdout. There were countless examples of Ulbrich, the ultimate purveyor of optimism, the guy who points out the rainbow in the middle of a hurricane, remaining steadfast in his ability to describe just about everything as either "amazing" or "incredible." He repeatedly said, "That's not who we are," in the face of so much contrary evidence that someone finally asked him, after the loss to the Steelers, how he knows, in fact, that this isn't exactly who they are. Ulbrich answered immediately and candidly. "If we accept that," he said, "then the season's lost."

I thought back to what receiver Garrett Wilson said about the team's championship aspirations after the opening night loss to the 49ers. "You realize all of a sudden you're not there," he said. And then what Rodgers said after the Jets beat the Patriots on a Thursday night to move to 2-1 on the season. Referencing his former coach Mike McCarthy, Rodgers said, "Our biggest struggle is going to be handling success."

When the Jets lost their opening game to the 49ers after much preseason hype, Garrett Wilson said, "You realize all of a sudden you're not there." Rob Tringali for ESPN

Each subsequent loss seemed to raise the panic level even as Rodgers, in his usual laconic way, urged calm and extolled the virtues of incremental change. Hackett's tenure as a playcaller ended after a Week 5 loss to the Vikings in London. The Week 6 loss to the Bills on "Monday Night Football" ended shortly before Adams boarded a plane for New York after learning about his trade from the Raiders. Adams was the ultimate gift to Rodgers, a final what-the-hell spin of the wheel to salvage the Rodgers era, the absolute pinnacle of what it means to say it's a quarterback's league. "He wants guys who know him, where there's a comfort level," says an NFL general manager who requested anonymity. "He wants guys who know what he's doing: fake signals, how he scrambles, and what he wants them to do. He only has it with Davante."

As soon as Adams arrived, the questions posed to Ulbrich, Downing and Rodgers took an unexpected turn. A team that averaged fewer than 20 points per game and had lost three straight was apparently faced with a whole new series of issues: Are there too many good offensive players? How will the ball be distributed? Will Breece Hall get enough touches? "It is a good problem to have," Ulbrich said, "that we have all of these really cool ingredients."

Adams' talent is undeniable; he is arguably one of the top three receivers of the past decade, but it was still an abrupt shift in tone. Three days earlier, the Jets had lost on "Monday Night Football" to the Bills 23-20, and Rodgers threw an interception on the Jets' final offensive play, a long pass toward the right sideline intended for Mike Williams but picked off by a diving Taron Johnson.

The play became a symbol of what it means to enter the Rodgers universe. Afterward, Rodgers went into detail on what transpired, saying the play called for two vertical routes, one by Lazard and the other by Williams. Lazard was triple-covered on his seam route, causing Rodgers to look toward Williams, who was supposed to be running down the red line, a reference point that exists on every NFL practice field, 5 yards off the sideline. As Rodgers turned to make a no-look throw toward the red line, he had to alter his pass when he saw -- at the last possible instant -- that Williams was running an "in-breaker."

Rodgers' description of the play, on its surface, was extremely compelling. Here was a superstar quarterback making his world less opaque, speaking not quite like a player and not quite like a coach; more open and honest than a coach, far less cautious than a player.

He was opening a window so many fight to keep closed. But it was also a serious breach of etiquette: football etiquette, quarterback etiquette, locker room etiquette. The impact of Rodgers saying, bluntly, "He's got to be down the red line," were close to shocking. Nobody does this -- any of it -- and the mind immediately traveled from the words Rodgers was saying to how Williams would digest them.​

The first practice after the incident began with Downing standing next to Williams during stretching, his arm around the waist of the 6-foot-3 receiver. From there Williams went to the farthest end of the farthest field, away from where his teammates were practicing, and tossed a ball to himself. He didn't practice the next day, either. Personal reasons, the Jets said, refusing to elaborate.

It underscored the friction between the artist and those around him. Rodgers' ongoing torment of "bringing guys along" and "being a better leader" and "setting the tone" always carries an undercurrent of superiority, a verbal pat on the head. Even his default sideline look after a failed drive is almost always that of a disappointed dad.

"The driving force in me wanting to play my best is not wanting to disappoint him," says the youngest player in the NFL, rookie running back Braelon Allen, who grew up in Wisconsin watching Rodgers and the Packers. "There are challenges, especially with how particular and detailed he is within the scheme. He expects everyone to be where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there. It's a lot, you know?"

There's a distinction at work here that can be difficult to perceive: It's not always someone other than Rodgers' fault -- although there is sometimes that -- but it's his fault that it's their fault. He didn't teach or lead or role-model well enough to impart the wisdom needed to meet the moment, as if the language he speaks is not always their native tongue. "That falls on me," he says, as if by getting the perfunctory words of personal accountability out of the way first, he can proceed to tell you the play failed because someone lined up incorrectly, or the protection broke down, or Williams should have been on the red line.

"You have to be on top of your game," receiver Xavier Gipson says, "because he's going to be on top of his."

Nine days after the public humiliation, I asked Williams how it felt to be stripped bare in front of the world. Standing at his locker, speaking softly, he said, "How can I explain it? Aaron wants to win. He sees the game from a different perspective. He's been in the league a long time, seen everything, knows what he wants. He's been in the same offense his whole career, so if he wants it this certain way, you gotta do it that certain way."

His tone betrayed no animosity. His words amounted to an extended shrug. He didn't particularly like being called out the way he was -- "No, no, no," he says, "but it is what it is" -- and it seemed like the conversation would end there until he leaned against the side of his locker and fixed his gaze toward the far wall. "I've been in this league for a while now, you know?" he said. "You live, you learn. You see so many things happen, and you just have to go into next-play mentality, new-day mentality.

"People were sending [the video] to me. They're asking me if I saw it. I'm like, 'What do you want me to do?' I see it, but what am I supposed to do, though? I'm grown. It doesn't affect me any kind of way. Not like I'm going to go home and cry, you know? Beat myself up about it? Nah. Nah."

He sat down and tugged on the laces of his shoes.

"Make the next play, right? Isn't that what they tell us?"

Less than two weeks later, on the day of the NFL trade deadline, Williams was sent to Pittsburgh. His next play would be made as a Steeler.

The red line became a signifier for every bizarre turn in what has become, to this point, a failed season that is rapidly taking the shape of a failed experiment. Reporters walking across the indoor practice field from the locker room would invariably look down and nod at the red line. "There it is," someone would say, as if pointing to a chalk outline.

Here lies Mike Williams' Jets career.

The arrival of Davante Adams, who caught 615 of Rodgers' passes for 7,517 yards and 68 touchdowns in Green Bay, gave new hope to the Jets. Rob Tringali for ESPN


AT THE BEGINNING of every practice, Rodgers and his teammates finish stretching and stand on the goal line to commence a series of warmups that don't appear to have been changed, at any level, since the game's invention. High knees, side shuffles, butt kicks -- people are living on space stations and cars are driving themselves, and yet football players are still kicking their knees to their chests to get ready to prop up a $20 billion business. How many times has Rodgers gone through this exact routine? And how does it never get old?

He does all of it, except maybe the high knees, with severe purpose. Each movement is definitive and sharp, without even the slightest hint of indecision. This is the image he hopes to convey: extreme confidence in everything he does, from calling a play in the huddle to signaling his receivers to using his cadence as a weapon to draw opponents offside.

Rodgers has always given off the air of celebrity nonchalance that is at least partly a lie. But this season -- his 20th in the NFL, at age 40 heading for 41 -- has collapsed the façade. It's one thing to say it's a long journey, or don't rush it, or that not every mistake is a crisis, but right now time is running out. The look on his face as he sits on the bench after a failed series, his head in a tablet, another game on its way out the door, could be accompanied by the ticking of a clock.

"I think he feels the same urgency we all feel," says left tackle Tyron Smith, an eight-time Pro Bowler in Dallas. "He's trying to bring everyone up to his speed, because he sees things faster than anybody I've ever been around. You've got to pick up on it, try to see the keys he sees and try to ear-hustle the way he envisions things. It helps us to move faster."

It's a quarterback league, sure, but there have been times this season when Rodgers could rightfully feel vexed. Kicker Greg Zuerlein missed two relatively short field goals in the three-point loss to the Bills and a 50-yarder that would have won the game against the Broncos. Zuerlein was placed on injured reserve on October 30, in a move that felt at least two weeks overdue. In the disastrous loss to the Patriots in Week 8, the Jets pulled off a reverse miracle: They scored more than 20 points, didn't commit a turnover and held the opponent to fewer than 250 yards. Even allowing for the fact that statistics can be molded to fit any narrative, Football Perspective noted that teams that had accomplished those three things from 1940 through Oct. 27, 2024 were 756-0.

After the game, Patriots defensive tackle Davon Godchaux said of Rodgers, "I think he's struggling right now. A Hall of Fame quarterback like that, hate to see him to go out that way. ... He definitely don't look the same. He can't move back there. S---, I can run him down and catch him. He don't look mobile at all."

It was the loss to New England that broke Ulbrich. There was nothing amazing or incredible involved in that performance, all clouds and no rainbow. The Jets used all three of their timeouts on offense in the first quarter, one after just two plays. They took a delay-of-game penalty rather than calling timeout on a two-point conversion with less than three minutes left in the game. Afterward, Ulbrich dropped all pretense. "We say that's not who we are," Ulbrich said. "But that's who we are until we demonstrate otherwise. I'm pissed; they're pissed. I'm hurt; they're hurt." In his postgame assessment, he said everyone -- coaches, players, the whole deal -- needed to be better, but he mentioned only one by name: Aaron Rodgers.

"Sometimes it just takes one thing to happen," Rodgers told reporters about the direction of a team. "It could be a speech before a game, after a game, something during the week that just clicks, and the energy of that click can be contagious." Rob Tringali for ESPN

ONE THING IS certain: After his name was floated as a possible running mate for Robert Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign and he chose a trip to Egypt over the Jets' mandatory minicamp this summer, Rodgers has been more football-centric. He no longer makes national headlines every Tuesday afternoon. He's still capable of taking an occasional journey outside the margins (claiming that FEMA was confiscating food and water bottles in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene was one such journey) but there have been fewer instances of the blatant attention-seeking that marked the time he spent rehabilitating his torn Achilles. He spent the first several minutes of a recent Tuesday afternoon appearance on "The Pat McAfee Show" playfully explaining that, despite all available evidence, he did not pick his nose and eat it on national television while sitting on the bench during the loss to the Steelers. The clip played repeatedly and Rodgers, who admitted the footage looked "incriminating," broke it down like it was the all-22.

With the ID card on the screen describing him as a four-time NFL MVP and "ayahuasca enthusiast," he also told McAfee it won't necessarily take massive change for the Jets to bring their true identities to the fore. He said, "We're playing with too much anger and not enough enjoyment," and, "The power of belief is a snowball that can start an avalanche," and, "The basis of manifestation is intention and attention." Think of him what you will -- and that field is wide open -- he's the only guy who says stuff like this.

For the Jets to make the playoffs, let alone compete for a championship, though, the snowball that portends the avalanche needs to arrive soon. Rodgers has an ally in Adams, who caught 615 of Rodgers' passes for 7,517 yards and 68 touchdowns in Green Bay. It took just three days of practice and the one game in Pittsburgh for Adams to assess the state of his new team and sound the alarm. Amid the quiet and dank air of the visitors locker room in Acrisure Stadium, he stood up and told everybody what he saw. He saw a lack of urgency, a lack of camaraderie, a lack of cohesion. He told them they needed to finish plays. He couldn't understand how, for instance, Hall could break a swing pass for a 57-yard gain and not be celebrated by every player on the sideline.

"I could see it in everybody's eyes," Adams told me later. "It was something they had never heard or been exposed to."

Is it possible that these players had never heard that message? They'd never been told to get excited after a good play or forget a bad one? They'd never been called out for not finishing a play? It was a scathing critique of the entire operation: the culture, the coaching, the on-field leadership.

Adams shrugs. "We'll see what it turns into," he says. "Otherwise, it was just me blabbering my mouth."

That same day, Rodgers stood in the Jets' indoor practice facility, talking about cutting down a tree. "It's the final blow that actually fells the tree," he says, "but you might not see the first thousand hacks at it. Sometimes it just takes one thing to happen. It could be a speech before a game, after a game, something during the week that just clicks, and the energy of that click can be contagious."

Until then, Rodgers continued, "You're fighting against some of the ghosts of years past." As he referenced the ghosts, he sent a quick glance toward the wall on his right, at the massive photo banners of every member of the team's ring of honor. He gave them a slight nod and a sly grin, the glint back in his eyes, as if to imply they're all in on the same joke.

"A lot of emotions this year, for sure," Rodgers said in the aftermath of the Jets' recent loss to Arizona. Rob Tringali for ESPN

AS SUNDAY AFTERNOON became Sunday night outside Phoenix, Rodgers stood at the podium in a small interview room that shares a wall with the visiting locker room. Despondent, his head down, his voice soft, at least momentarily sapped of his resolve, he talked about disappointment. His words were occasionally accompanied by the sounds of something -- shoulder pads? a helmet? a fist? -- hitting the other side of the wall. "A lot of emotions this year, for sure," he said. He was asked to elaborate and declined. "I'm not going to," he said, his voice barely audible. "A lot of different emotions. That's a loaded answer, but it's not the time and place to get into that."

The Cardinals beat the Jets 31-6, and it was bad from start to finish. Whatever dying-fuse hopes the now 3-7 Jets brought into the game would not be boarding the flight home. Rodgers threw for 40 yards in the first half and finished the game completing just one pass that traveled more than 10 yards in the air. Nearly all of his 111 second-half passing yards came long after the outcome had been decided. It was another display of passivity -- checkdowns and screens, quick releases in the face of pressure. Adams caught six passes for 31 yards, all in the second half, the synergy with Rodgers discarded somewhere along Lombardi Avenue. The lasting vision of the game -- and maybe the season -- was Rodgers standing with his hands on his hips, staring out at the detritus of another failed play.

At the lectern, about three hours after Mike Williams' "next play" turned out to be a game-winning touchdown catch for the Steelers, Rodgers concluded by running down the upcoming Jets' schedule. "A lot still ahead of us," he said. It was hard to hear the conviction, but the immediacy made perfect sense: If not now, when? There's no quarterback-in-waiting, as Rodgers was in Green Bay under Brett Favre and Jordan Love was in Green Bay under Rodgers. Rodgers spoke at the same lectern as Ulbrich, who had stood there 10 minutes earlier, broken, taking every ounce of the blame -- even the ounces he didn't deserve. This felt like the final shove of a barely open door: three wins in the first 10 games, a lost season. To this point, Ulbrich instead of Saleh hasn't worked. Downing instead of Hackett hasn't worked. Adams instead of Williams hasn't worked. Hovering above everything, like those ghosts hanging on the wall, is Rodgers and all those private emotions.

His teammates defend him, like good teammates. They see the good: the Hail Mary touchdown pass to Lazard to end the first half against Buffalo; a throw in the same game that can only be described as a "back-knee pass," which seemed to go through a defender's legs before magically appearing in Lazard's hands; the pass to Wilson that created the instantly famous one-handed touchdown catch in the Week 9 win over the Texans.

They talk about the nagging injuries and the shaky offensive line and the inability to sustain a running game. They're all lighting candles at the same altar. They say it's a team game. They're all in it together. One man can't change a culture overnight. Mostly, though, they speak of him like he's a famous piece of art. In the hollow quiet of the Jets' locker room, Breece Hall said, "We just gotta do a better job of servicing him and making the game as easy for him as possible."

There are fleeting moments of magic, for sure, and they're the only ones anybody in the Jets' locker room wants to discuss. In here, the legend lives on. In here, they have no choice but to believe.
 
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