We need to slow down Super Bowl talk if desperate Jets land desperate Aaron Rodgers – The Denver Post

Now we know all the reasons the Jets need to take that big swing with Aaron Rodgers. They hope he can do for them what Tom Brady did for the Bucs. And what Matthew Stafford did for the Rams. They know he’s got a lot more left than Peyton Manning when the Broncos won their first Super Bowl since John Elway, even though Peyton didn’t have much to do with it in the end.

At this point, even the folks in outer space know why the Jets are doing this, why they have to, as they try to become something more than football irrelevance, not just in the league, but right here.

But the teenage idea that it’s suddenly the Super Bowl or the bust for this particular Jets team happens to be bananas whether Rodgers is here for a year or two or even longer than that.

Start here, because it’s as good a starting point as any:

Since Rodgers played in his one and only Super Bowl 12 years ago, he’s gone 0 for 4 in NFC Championship games, against Seattle and Atlanta and San Francisco and Tampa Bay. And the Jets? Since winning their one and only Super Bowl 1,200 years ago, they’ve gone 0-4 in AFC Championship games, against the Dolphins in the mud, against John Elway once in Denver , against the Colts and Steelers when Rex Ryan was the coach. In the case of Rodgers and the Jets, it could end up being that of the irresistible force and the immovable object. Unless they are both the stationary object. And this object is history. His and theirs.

Don’t get me wrong: I want this to happen, and not just for Jets fans, just for the entertainment it’s going to provide and the must-have of it all. I want this to happen even though it may not yet. There’s always a big qualifier here: it’s the Jets. Things don’t just go sideways for them, they often go straight into a ditch. If you don’t believe it, look at the last two quarterbacks they saw as wishful thinking to build a dream:

Sam Darnold.

Zack Wilson.

But let’s say the deal is done and Rodgers becomes the No. 12 they’ve been looking for since Joe Namath was No. 12. We can already see how big that’s going to be, in addition to being one of the great sports dramas we’ve ever had in New York sports. Do you know why it’s going to be this kind of drama? Because the desperate often create great drama, and we have four desperate involved in this one:

Woody Johnson.

Joe Douglas.

Robert Saleh.

Aaron Rodgers himself.

Call them the Green Gang of Four.

The first three are the producers. Rodgers will be the star, as long as he’s here and depending on what he has left. But make no mistake: in their own way, they are all the desperate characters.

Johnson is desperate to put points on the board for the first time since Rex was his coach and Mark Sanchez was quarterback enough to play in an AFC championship game as a rookie and then do the same. next year. Douglas and Saleh are easy. They’re just looking to keep the best jobs either of them will ever have in the NFL.

Then there’s Rodgers, who wants to be the coolest guy in the room (sometimes a real dark room), but is absolutely desperate to win another Lombardi trophy; show he can go to the Jets and do what Brady did when he went to the Bucs, and Stafford did it with the Rams, and even Peyton, even throwing like he was left-handed at the end, has helped do for the Broncos.

Besides? The Jets don’t just need a quarterback again. They need a star. Rodgers has been a star since replacing Brett Favre, back when the Jets made the same play for Favre that they are now trying to make with Rodgers. At his best, while winning all those MVP awards and that Lombardi Trophy, he played the position as creatively and magically as he has ever played in professional football.

But on December 2, he will be 40 years old. There’s only one quarterback this old (or older) who’s ever made a difference on a Super Bowl-winning team, and that’s Brady. He was 41 when he won his last Super Bowl with the Patriots. Then he went to Tampa and won another one at age 44.

This is another area where Rodgers, great as he was, and at his best he was legendaryly great, faces history. But if he ends up at Florham Park and ends up playing his home games at MetLife Stadium, he will face something else: the fact that the team he joins, despite all the promising talent it has on both sides of the ball, is greatly overvalued. Because here is another notion that is also bananas, even for the most giddy Jets fans:

That these Jets are up to one player – him – to win it all.

Spoiler alert: they are not.

Of course I want to (and although you can defend them much better after Lamar Jackson, even with his injury problems lately). Everyone wants to see Rodgers come here and try to change the dreary, losing narrative around the Jets. It won’t just be fun to watch him try. It will be a lot of fun to watch him try to save Douglas, who thought Zach Wilson was the answer. And give Saleh the chance to prove he’s a great head coach on both sides of the ball. And, if it all works out, Rodgers will finally make Johnson something other than the other owner of the other team in New York and New Jersey.

Get this: Rodgers will sign for a lot. But the realistic Jets fans I know — there are some, don’t worry — realize that what they’re aiming for here is a return to the playoffs; the chance to play meaningful games again in January. I’m not saying the Jets can’t win a Super Bowl with Rodgers. The comparable here is Matthew Stafford, and Stafford, the best day of his life, was never the quarterback that Rodgers was.

There’s a lot to like about it, more to like than dislike if you’re a Jets fan. But there are a lot of things that could go wrong here too. The Jets have to buy what Rodgers sells.

Buyer beware. Expectations, above all.

LOTS OF BAD BETS ON QB’S IN NFL, MET SEASON NEEDS A NEW SCRIPT WITHOUT DIAZ & GO KNIGHTS…

Incidentally?

There is no more powerful – and more lucrative – mystique in all sports, and perhaps in sports history, than that of the NFL quarterback being the most important position in all Sport.

That’s why teams make big, and sometimes monumentally bad bets, on quarterbacks all the time.

The Jets did it with Darnold and Wilson.

The Giants are doing it with Daniel Jones, right now, giving him a contract that could be worth $160 million, much of it on a playoff win, however impressive, over the Minnesota Vikings defense. .

But the Cardinals did the same with Kyler Murray, who will never win a championship.

The Browns just did it with Deshaun Watson, who won the only title he will win at Clemson.

Everyone is looking for the next Brady.

Or the next Mahomes.

The problem is that there are maybe only two like that in the modern world of professional football.

How could you not be happy for Princeton the other day?

How not to be happy for Furman?

And how could your heart not break a little for Virginia’s Kihei Clark, who threw the ball to Furman at the end and cost his team their season?

Four years ago, it was Clark who knocked down a ball at the end of an Elite Eight game against Purdue, and threw it at Mamadi Diakite, who made the shot that forced overtime in a game that the Cavaliers ultimately won, en route to victory. the national championship.

They don’t win the title without Clark making a play and a pass like that.

Virginia fans, including those in the media, who jumped on Clark after the Furman loss should remember that this weekend.

Or maybe forever.

This was one of Buck Showalter’s first reactions late Wednesday night after Edwin Diaz tore his knee while celebrating Puerto Rico’s victory over the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic:

“The teleprompter just broke.”

He meant that the script the Mets thought they had for this season, the one that included Diaz, just went out the window.

But:

Mets fans should remember that Mariano Rivera tore the fly balls in his knee in the outfield and was lost for the season in May.

Rafael Soriano became the closest Yankee that year.

He saved 42 games.

The Yankees have won 95.

And won the AL East without Mo.

Are we absolutely certain that The Masters is a tradition like no other?

In keeping with today’s main topic, aren’t the Jets a tradition like no other?

You’ll love a mystery novel called “Fixit”, by my friend Joe Ide.

What happened to Kyrie?

“Ted Lasso” is back, and better than ever.

Carlos Alcaraz runs around a tennis court like Francisco Lindor runs around bases.

My friend Stanton is warning Aaron Rodgers not to use that “RELAX” thing if it happens to the Jets.

We don’t do that here.

We are all Fairleigh Dickinson on Sunday.

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