The Jets Made Aaron Rodgers Fly All the Way to New Jersey to Tell Him He's Out of a Job

Elsa. Getty Images.

Not to be lost in the excitement, the pageantry, and the wretched excess of Super Bowl Sunday was this Glazer Bomb:

You know that cliche of the work meeting that "should've been an email"? With this, the Jets pulled the ultimate "should've been a Zoom" on Aaron Rodgers. I mean, Glazer was non-specific about where Rodgers flew in from. But with that turn of a phrase and the fact it's February, it's a safe assumption that he came from his house in Malibu and not his place in Montclair. Meaning he traveled 3,000 miles just to be told he's now the world's oldest free agent. In a job market that doesn't sound terribly promising:

And then, probably to cover their tracks, the Jets let the news leak out in the middle of Super Bowl Sunday. I guess hoping to minimize the damage by breaking the story while America is half drunk and busy filling out their squares.

So it is when you're the latest in a long line of figures this franchise has turned to to be their savior. From quarterbacks to coaches, high draft picks to free agents. Every couple of years the Jets make someone be the vessel into which it pour all their hopes and dreams. Only to see that poor, tragic figure get destroyed by the same indescribable terribleness that defines the Jets whole existence. It's a force so powerful that not even a first ballot Hall of Famer is immune from it. 

In 2021 with Green Bay, Rodgers was the NFL MVP. He led the league in passer rating and QBR, while pulling off the tricky daily double of having the highest TD% and the lowest INT%. It took one aborted season and one full season in New York to reduce him to this:

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And in all sincerity, without a trace of irony or sarcasm, I feel bad for the man. After all the success he'd enjoyed, he thought he could go to Jersey and fix the Jets. Like a woman who believes that deep down inside a man is some good qualities that others have missed, and she'll be able to bring the best out in him. Only to have her heart broken just like all the others. 

He might have been naive in his thinking, but Rodgers deserved better than this. For sure, he deserved better than to cross a continent only to get the "It's not you, it's me" treatment. But he's not the first. And by no means will he be the last. The Jets are going to do Jets things, whether you're a Top 5 draft pick, or a man whose jacket size is already on file with the tailor in Canton, Ohio. 

With that, I take no pleasure in reminding everybody about this. But the minute Rodgers went to the Jets I told you it wasn't going to work out:

[T]his was a bad trade by any objective measure. As good as Jets fans feel today, it's just a sugar and caffeine rush, like chugging a quart of Mountain Dew. And when they come down off that high, they'll realize this was an absurd price to pay. : 

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The kind of trade that poorly run organizations make when they're desperate. Which invariably is what causes their desperation in the first place. Which leads to more bad decisions. And it makes the whole franchise a perpetual Ouroboros of suckiness, eating its own tail.

I am saddened, not gladdened, to be saying this once more, but "Right again, Old Balls." Just keep betting on this team to screw up even the best of players, and you'll never, ever be wrong. It's just a shame Aaron Rodgers had to find out the hard way. Good luck in free agency.