It's not time for I told you so. Not yet, even as we confirm the worst possible scenario: Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles on Monday night and will miss the entire 2023 season after just four plays as a Jet. Not now, while anyone connected to the Jets universe wonders what they did to perpetually upset the cosmos, mulling over every broken mirror, sidewalk crack and overturned salt shaker. Not today, with a long season ahead and a solid roster still intact, still capable of clawing through this division and into the playoffs.
The Jets knew this was always a possibility; such is life when you hinge your dreams on an aging human body. Such is life when you channel all your frantic hopes through one person. Such is the risk when you set this stage, when you embrace this hope, when you manifest a season that ends with yours as the last team standing. Such is life in a league where you can have most but not all. You can have the quarterback, you can have the cornerback, you can have the wide receivers, the pass rushers, the linebackers and the running backs, but like some kind of Alanis Morissette song, most of the offensive linemen able to protect the blind side and play side are all gone.
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It is time for sympathy. Remember 1999 when Vinny Testaverde ruptured his Achilles, beating the turf in disbelief, curled in the fetal position? Remember Chad Pennington, first with the wrist, then with the shoulder, then with the bone spurs in 2003 and beyond? Remember Brett Favre in ’08 with the torn biceps? Each time, the news came like a crack of lightning through clear skies; a disruption to the moment where the most tortured fan base in the NFL allowed itself a moment of real and sober hope.
It is time to hope for the best with Zach Wilson because none of us would want the Jets’ season to vanish into the ether like some kind of old campaign sign, a memory of hype and hubris and energy that ultimately amounted to and changed nothing. Say what you will about Rodgers but you want him to come back and play for the Jets, be it as a villain, a heel or a savior. You need him to revive this franchise because life is more interesting when the Jets are barreling toward the Super Bowl. Ask anyone who was along for the ride with Rex Ryan. Ask anyone who was there poolside with Joe Namath.
It is time for giving Robert Saleh a chance. Through every kick to the ribs he hasn’t flinched. Not when Wilson wilted. Not when Hard Knocks came calling. Not when the towering wave of Jets-ian nonsense tried to bury him just like it did Adam Gase, and Todd Bowles, and Ryan, and Eric Mangini, and Herm Edwards, and Al Groh and Rich Kotite.
Forgive the tone, but there is no other way to approach what happened on Monday night than with some sort of anxious reverence to forces beyond our control. There are occurrences on a football field that we can readily dismiss as happenstance, and there are occurrences on a football field that have a sort of spectral weight. It didn’t just feel unfair, to come from a pregame feeling of pure joy and energy, of pomp and circumstance, of a new identity, to simply wondering how it could get any worse.
Still, it’s time to consider this: If you are a Jets fan, would you sign up for this over and over again? The idea of trading for Rodgers was always a complicated one. No matter how talented, he is still a 39-year-old who missed half a season in 2013, when he was 30, and half a season in ’17, when he was 34. He was still a shell of himself in ’22 with a ruptured thumb, mixing in his automatic brilliance with moments of scattered erraticism. Only Tom Brady ages like Tom Brady.
It’s time to realize that trading for Rodgers was better than what this franchise would have done if it hadn’t gone for it all. This feeling of dread and doubt only comes when the chances taken are astronomical; when the goals are bigger. There is a privilege in that kind of pressure, and maybe it’s time Saleh passes that message along again.
