SANTA CLARA, Calif. — When it was over, Aaron Rodgers stood in the locker room and told his Jets: “We’ll be better. I’ll be better.”
Out of the darkness at last, under a sun-splashed blue sky, Aaron Rodgers, his heartache and heartbreak in the rearview mirror, began his long-anticipated, much-ballyhooed Flight 24 designed to lift the Jets to a long-forgotten destination familiar only to Broadway Joe Namath: Football heaven.
Heaven can wait.
“I can play better,” Rodgers had said a few moments later in the interview room. “I missed a couple of throws. I felt overall I was getting the ball out pretty good.”
So much tugged at Aaron Rodgers’ heartstrings as the national anthem played inside Levi’s Stadium, home of his hometown 49ers, before his moment of truth arrived for what one day will be remembered either as a Comeback For The Ages or as The Impossible Dream that was the fan base’s latest nightmare and the end of the Robert Saleh-Joe Douglas regime. And quite possibly the end of him.
The Jets and Jets fans have waited an eternity for a Savior and they will wait another eternity for Aaron Rodgers to try to be one this season because the future is in his hands, and the future is now.
Would he, could he, be anything close to the Same Old Aaron Rodgers?
The four-time MVP Aaron Rodgers and one-time Super Bowl champion.
Or would he be the Same Older Rodgers?
The 26 TD-12 INT 2022 Aaron Rodgers who could not reach 4,000 passing yards for the first time in five seasons or get the 2022 Packers into the playoffs.
Rodgers (13-21, 167 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT) showed flashes of his fabled arm talent, just not enough of them to beat the big boys on a night with fewer passing-game options and a feeble running attack.
There are no Super Bowl Jets headlines today, nor should there be.
Some won’t be able to resist the Same Old Jets knee-jerk reaction and have at it if you like.
He was not the Same Old Aaron who won four league MVPs.
He was more the Same Older Aaron from his 2022 season in Green Bay … which if you like your glass half full, still means he would be better quarterbacking with his eyes closed than Zach Wilson was for the past three seasons.
You have to figure the more rust he chips off, the more he will remember how to be the best 40-year-old version of Aaron Rodgers.
There were two obvious occasions when Rodgers reminded you of the possibilities for him and for the Jets.
He shredded the proud 49ers defense on his 12-play, 70-yard, 7:07 drive in the first quarter on which he found Garrett Wilson four times for 45 yards to position Breece Hall (16-54-1 TD, 1 fumble) for a 3-yard TD run.
He was in complete command, barking orders to position teammates before the snap. He completed seven of his first eight passes with a drop on the opening series by Allen Lazard.
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And then, his first TD pass as a Jet — a picture-perfect 36-yard dime to Lazard to cut the Jets’ deficit to 26-13. Was it extra special that his first Jets TD pass was to his former Packers receiver?
“He was open,” Rodgers said.
In between? Too many three-and-outs to sustain anything.
“We couldn’t get Breece going,” Rodgers said. “But a lot to build on.”
Whenever he took a licking, he kept on ticking. Rodgers got belted to the ground by Jordan Elliott and sacked by old nemesis Leonard Floyd, who knocked him out of the 2023 season, early in the second quarter and survived this time. He spun out of pressure on a third-down incompletion with no ill effects. He expressed gratitude to all who helped him to this night.
“I wanted to take a shot and feel the physicality of it,” Rodgers said.
But he had little chance to get into a rhythm standing on the sidelines watching Brock Purdy and play-caller Kyle Shanahan control the clock and surgically dissect the flummoxed Jets defense.
It was 23-7 midway through the third quarter when Deommodore Lenoir tipped Rodgers’ pass for Wilson to Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles for the interception.
After all he had endured, confronting his football mortality and rehabbing that torn left Achilles, Rodgers didn’t need to remind his worshipping, mesmerized teammates that he could still be great as much as he needed to remind himself while confronting bad-intentioned predators eager to remind him that 40-year-old quarterbacks are a dying breed.
This much his teammates knew all along: he had changed the complexion and the culture of the organization in a way that few other than Tom Brady’s former teammates would understand.
“He’s a great leader of men,” Hall said. “As a quarterback he’s always gonna take the blame and put everything on himself.”
If nothing else, Aaron Rodgers gives the Jets hope.
No four-and-out this time. Aaron Rodgers lost the battle. With more help, maybe he can still win the war.
