The search for Bigfoot has been less frustrating than the Jets’ search for a championship quarterback. And now that Nathaniel Hackett has been hired as the team’s offensive coordinator, there is a natural inclination to believe that manhunt is finally, mercifully over.
Aaron Rodgers will surely follow his former Packers offensive coordinator to the big city, and he will surely lead the Jets to their first Super Bowl appearance since (all together now) man stepped on the moon.
Only there are a couple of conspicuous facts messing with those assumptions:
1) Rodgers didn’t follow Hackett to Denver.
2) Rodgers hasn’t advanced to the Super Bowl in a dozen years.
And that’s OK. If Rodgers is truly interested in retiring as a New Yorker, or at least in replicating Brett Favre’s one-and-done season with the Jets before finishing his career elsewhere, general manager Joe Douglas absolutely has to consider making the costly deal with Green Bay. Why?
He’s Aaron Rodgers and they’re the Jets, that’s why. The NFL’s most prolific winner, Tom Brady, joined the losingest franchise in North American sports, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and they made beautiful music together before the band broke down.
The Jets would sign up for that right now. The people who deliver this franchise a ticker-tape parade will be lionized forever, and Rodgers has to know that. He has one ring to Brady’s seven, and a Jets title would be a creative way of closing the legacy gap.
But Rodgers will turn 40 before the end of next season, and he has lost some mobility and athleticism over time, not to mention 30 points off his quarterback rating from the 2020 season — the first of his back-to-back MVP years with Hackett. Though he’d likely be reinvigorated by the scenery change and play closer to elite form in 2023 than he did in 2022, Rodgers’ window of opportunity would be tighter than the windows he’s successfully thrown into over the past 15 years.
Figure Rodgers and the Jets would have a solid two-year crack at it, assuming that No. 12 avoids the kind of injury that derailed Old Man Favre in 2008, silencing the growing talk about an apocalyptic Jets-Giants meeting in the Super Bowl.
That sounds like an appealing option. But even if Rodgers gets serious about trading Packers tradition for Jets tradition, and Lambeau Field for MetLife Stadium, he’s not the best option on the board.
Jimmy Garoppolo, age 31, still makes more sense in an AFC that includes the following quarterbacks who are no older than 27:
Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, Deshaun Watson, likely Lamar Jackson and the college studs to be drafted by the Texans and Colts.
Instead of shipping multiple high draft picks to Green Bay for the right to pay Rodgers obscene money to fight that heavyweight conference lineup in the short term, they should keep their picks and sign Garoppolo for a much lower wage after the 49ers dive headfirst into the Brock Purdy/Trey Lance era.
Like Jimmy G, the durable Derek Carr would be strictly a money play. But Carr has one winning record over his last six seasons, one career postseason appearance, and no playoff victories.
Meanwhile, Garoppolo has won four postseason games and played in two NFC Championship games and one Super Bowl; he came within one overthrow of Emmanuel Sanders of perhaps beating Mahomes in that Super Bowl. Having learned the trade under Brady and Bill Belichick in New England, Jimmy G has won 70 percent of his career starts.
He knows coach Robert Saleh (former co-worker) and the system (West Coast), and oozes competence at the game’s most critical position. Jimmy G is an injury risk (the Jets will need a quality backup), but with a little luck offers a six- or seven-year run of good football on a team that’s already advertising greatness around him.
Asked Thursday if it’s important that the Jets sign a veteran quarterback with a winning postseason resume, Saleh said, “Obviously that’s something for sure. But you’ve got to look at the whole thing.”
Saleh then went on about his great defense and running game and flowering skill-position players. “So it’s more finding the right guy that we feel can lead us in the direction that we need to go and play complementary football with us.”
Jimmy G is a high-level complementary ballplayer still in his prime. Aaron Rodgers? He’s a diminished all-time great who might have a few fastballs left to throw.
After his vacation, Saleh will join Hackett next week to study the quarterbacks. Rodgers is, by far, the most fascinating candidate. He’s just not the best one.