Get used to Superlative rhetoric from confident Jets
Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers throws grass in the air at the NFL football team's training facility in Florham Park, N.J., Tuesday, June 6, 2023. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — A month and a half after Aaron Rodgers arrived in Florham Park, there are still some things the Jets are getting used to.
There is the “different vibe” that linebacker C.J. Mosley mentioned after Tuesday’s OTA practice (in which Rodgers was still limited by the calf injury he sustained two weeks ago and held out of full team reps). The attention to detail that he brings which helps both sides of the ball.
There are the throws he makes when he is participating in drills. He provides a palpable rise in crispness on the field and it results in better football, like the pass he zipped into the end zone to Garrett Wilson on a red zone snap Tuesday or the two deep passes he chucked in Monday’s workout.
“Dirty throw,” Robert Saleh said with as much appreciation as a former defensive coordinator can muster. “There have been some ‘wow’ moments.”
And there are still those in the building, even hardened NFL veterans, who find themselves gaping with awe at his mere presence.
“It’s just really cool,” offensive lineman Laken Tomlinson said, stumbling over his words like an awkward teenager with a crush. “Golly, what else can you say?”
In Rodgers’ case, a lot.
And that is the biggest change to which the Jets — and their fan base — have had to acclimate.
Never since Joe Namath lounged poolside in Miami has a Jets player, never mind its star quarterback, been so comfortable talking so casually about winning a Super Bowl. Whether it’s in news conferences, on podcasts, or swirling amid confetti at a Taylor Swift concert at MetLife Stadium (“The Jets won the Super Bowl!” he shouted into a video camera during her performance last weekend), Rodgers overtly and purposely mentions the ultimate goal as if he is trying to speak it into existence.
He hasn’t yet guaranteed anything, but that just be out of respect to the player whose number he elected to not wear when he arrived in New York.
There is typically a code in which players speak about such ambitions, especially at this time of the year. They say their season can be “special” or their team can be “scary.” All euphemisms for elite play. Rodgers doesn’t subscribe to such ciphers.
He knows why he’s here and he knows everyone else knows why he’s here. Why not just spit it out?
Well, for the Jets, there is more than a half century of mostly miserable history to contend with.
Rodgers comes from a market that is called “Titletown,” a place that basically invented the Super Bowl championship. In Green Bay, he was just the latest in a long line of winners whose names grace not a Ring of Honor around the stadium but the roads that run through the city. Prophesizing Super Bowls for the Packers is about as daring as predicting sunshine in the Sahara.
Here, though, there is so much scar tissue from disappointment that we tend to flinch at the very mention of a Lombardi Trophy in regard to the Jets. It sounds preposterous even to think about it. It comes off as an overreach. Or worse: A jinx. Too much can go wrong, as Jets fans well know, between now and February, to derail this season. Better to not get excited than be dragged down by reality once again. Rex Ryan’s bravado turned belly flops still sting.
That’s the tidal mentality Rodgers is fighting against. He’ll do it with his actions come September onward. He’s doing it with his words now.
He is attempting to manifest the Jets into believing they are just as (or more) capable of winning it all as any other team in the league, and if chatting about trophies any chance he gets and pretending confetti at a concert is actually meant for him and his new team is a way to do that, so be it.
Saleh said he doesn’t mind Rodgers’ fearless preoccupation with the end result.
“I think he’s the type that has the discipline to bring it back to the moment,” Saleh said. “If you keep that in perspective, I think you are fine being able to drift off every once in a while.”
The rest of the Jets are following Rodgers’ lead in that regard, too.
“When I signed here that was my goal and expectation, so I’m happy to hear him saying it, I’m happy to have more people talking about it, because that’s why we’re here,” Mosley said.
The Jets aren’t the only ones listening to Rodgers. The other 31 teams in the NFL hear it, too, and they are undoubtedly just as gung-ho to prevent Rodgers’ plans from coming together as the Jets are to complete them.
“If anything it’s going to put more targets on our back,” said Mosley, who has bristled in the past at the way the Jets have been perceived by opponents. “Whether the disrespect came from people chalking up the 'W' when they saw the Jets on the schedule or the history, whatever it was, now it’ll be ‘we can go sack Number 8 and embarrass them there.’ This is really just a bigger target on our back. That’s exactly what we want. We want people to give us everything they have. We want to go to other peoples’ stadiums and hear every single thing they have to say so we can shut them up after the game is over. That’s what it’s going to take to win the Super Bowl and what it will take to grow as a team, be competitive, and be able to win these tough games that we have coming in the future.”
“The building is buzzing right now and it’s buzzing for a reason,” defensive lineman Solomon Thomas said. “You bring in a solidified Hall of Famer in Aaron Rodgers, it’s going to change some things.”
Expectations? Sure. The way of going about mundane things such as sleepy OTA practices in early June? Absolutely.
No change is bigger, though, than refining the diction of this Eliza Doolittle franchise, allowing the Jets to speak directly to what they want with the knowledge that they now have the quarterback who can back up the audacious vocabulary he and others now spew with freedom.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
