The New York Jets brought in Aaron Rodgers to prevent games like this one. The fact that it didn’t help is quite alarming.
The question is how much of it is on Rodgers’ shoulders.
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A top-tier quarterback will usually shoulder the blame when his offense fails to put up points. Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, and Joe Burrow have encountered that at times in this young season. That is Rodgers’ fate after a dreadful teamwide offensive performance.
How did Rodgers himself perform, though? Can he bring the Jets’ offense back to respectability next week?
By the numbers
Pro Football Focus likely got this one right when they gave Rodgers a passing grade of 68.2. That ranked 14th out of 28 quarterbacks (pending Monday Night Football).
They charted Rodgers with three big-time throws and zero turnover-worthy plays (although he clearly had a fumble that slipped through the cracks of NFL officiating rules). Still, his 5.4 yards per attempt and 67.5% adjusted completion percentage were quite putrid.
Surprisingly, despite Rodgers’ five sacks, his pressure rate was not outrageously high. At 33.3%, he tied for the 12th-lowest in Week 4. His 17 pressured dropbacks were the fifth-most, but that’s largely because his 51 dropbacks tied for the second-most. PFF also blamed Rodgers rather than the blocking for three of his pressures and one sack.
When Rodgers got the ball off under pressure, he was reasonably solid. He went 4-for-9 for 61 yards and four first downs. Obviously, getting the ball out was an issue with those five sacks, four of which were charged to the blocking.
The bigger issue in the game was what happened when Rodgers wasn’t under pressure. He went 20-for-33 for 164 yards. His 5.0 yards per attempt when kept clean ranked 26th of 28 quarterbacks in Week 4. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Rodgers’ -9.6% completion percentage over expected when kept clean was the third-worst of the week, and his -0.22 EPA per dropback was second-worst. (Bo Nix was worse than Rodgers in all these categories, which kept the game close.)
Not being able to complete passes and move the ball with a clean pocket is Zach Wilson-level stuff. It’s what got Bryce Young benched. This ineptitude would seem to fall on Rodgers, then.
However, Rodgers’ average time to throw when kept clean was 2.25 seconds, the eighth-quickest among passers. Perhaps his timing sped up because of the poor job the Jets’ pass-blocking did all game, which could explain his decent pressure rate and poor statistics when kept clean.
The film will tell the true story.
Rodgers’ film vs. Broncos
Because the crux of the issue was what happened when Rodgers wasn’t under pressure, we’ll start with that film. Some plays didn’t work for all sorts of reasons, from Rodgers to the receivers to the play-calling.
On the second play of the game, Rodgers flat-out missed Tyler Conklin. If he put it anywhere near Conklin over the linebacker, there would have been an excellent chance for a catch. Conklin is 21-for-34 (61.8%) on contested catches since joining the Jets in 2022. Rodgers put too much air under it for a tight end with 4.8 speed. He just needed to get it a step beyond the linebacker.
It was 2nd-and-18, so this play could have been huge. It would have at worst set up the Jets with 3rd-and-manageable. Instead, it set up 3rd-and-18, and Garrett Wilson fumbled on the give-up screen.
Hall looked terribly slow on this wheel route. He also looked back for the ball too early, slowing him down further. Still, Rodgers made a bad throw that did not give Hall a chance to run under it. Had he thrown the ball deeper toward the end zone, perhaps Hall could have made a contested catch. Still, this ball had a 29.8% completion probability, so it’s hard to fault Rodgers too much. Not a bad idea to take a shot at Hall one-on-one with a linebacker.
This one is purely a coaching issue. Why on earth is Xavier Gipson running this route instead of Mike Williams?! Yes, it may have been an alert opposite the main concept, but Rodgers throws to his alert more often than any other quarterback.
Perhaps Rodgers should have avoided it because it was Gipson, but the matchup was theoretically favorable with one-on-one coverage. Gipson simply cannot stack defenders, and his 30⅛-inch arms and minuscule catch radius basically give him no shot on these plays. Meanwhile, Williams is the king of contested catches.
Even if the Jets want to give Williams a break or continue to ease him in, he should be in the game whenever an outside vertical route is called for someone other than Garrett Wilson. Gipson should be a slot receiver, and most slot receivers do not run too many vertical routes. There is no need to worry about predictability on that account. Even though Williams ran 34 routes to Gipson’s 10, having Gipson on the field over Williams is inexcusable at this point.
On 3rd-and-6, Rodgers threw the ball short of Hall, who had to turn and make a nice fingertip catch before running forward. This may have (or even likely) prevented him from getting the first down.
Rodgers hit a hole shot to Williams perfectly between the sinking flat defender and the over-the-top safety. PFF likely classified this one as a big-time throw. It’s strange to see so many throws like this in a game riddled with misses.
This is the downside to predetermining a read. Allen Lazard’s initial motion confirmed likely man coverage, and his jet motion at the snap was designed to clear out the left side for Garrett Wilson. What Rodgers didn’t count on was Patrick Surtain doing an excellent job getting around the traffic in the middle and closing space extremely quickly (or he assumed Wilson could break a tackle).
However, because he decided immediately to go to Wilson, he failed to read the field first. If he had, he would have seen Tyler Conklin coming wide open downfield on a busted coverage. A flick of his wrist and that could have been a 40-yard play.
Another big-time throw from Rodgers. Wilson barely had half a step on Surtain, and the coverage was tight to the sideline. Rodgers’ throw was just better. Wilson appeared not to have gotten his knee in bounds, but the challenge apparently did not produce enough evidence to overturn the completed pass call.
This was a classic Rodgers back-shoulder throw. He tends to place the ball a little further inside than is wise, going directly at the defender’s turned back. It’s unclear why he doesn’t attack the space to the sideline. Nevertheless, Allen Lazard turned back for it, unlike Wilson and Gipson in recent weeks. (Then Lazard did one of the dumbest things you’ll ever see from a player, actually setting the Jets back three yards from where the previous spot had been.)
Conklin had at least one step on the safety, but Rodgers placed the ball nowhere near him. Perhaps Rodgers was trying to make sure P.J. Locke didn’t undercut the route, but he was so far short that there was no chance to hit Conklin, either. It looks like simply an awful throw.
This was clearly miscommunication between Rodgers and Wilson, but it’s difficult to figure out what there was to miscommunicate about. Rodgers apparently thought Wilson would sit it down in front of the safety, but there doesn’t appear to have been such an option on the play. Some routes depend on the read of man or zone coverage or middle of the field open vs. middle of the field closed, but this doesn’t look like either. This seems to be an issue on Rodgers’ end.
The question here once more is why is this Gipson and not Williams?! How do the Jets have Gipson lined up out wide against press coverage without Williams on the field in a have-to-have-it situation? It was 3rd-and-10 with 1:50 remaining and the Jets trailing 10-9. The miscommunication between Rodgers and Gipson (Rodgers saw the cornerback even with Gipson and threw it back shoulder while Gipson didn’t look for it) is secondary. Total coaching gaffe.
Rodgers made a couple of nice plays against pressure throughout the game. These should certainly be noted in the overall picture of his performance.
Rodgers saw the Cover 3 and knew regardless of who blitzed, Williams’ seam route would be open.
When you reveal Cover 0 to Rodgers pre-snap, you usually pay.
Rodgers kept the play alive with his legs and kept his eyes downfield to find Lazard.
Overall picture
Rodgers’ play in this game certainly left a lot to be desired. He missed several throws badly, which, given the final score, could have given the Jets the victory. While he was not the only reason or even the primary reason the Jets lost, he did not do enough to help the Jets grit out a win. Even if this Broncos defense turns out to be as good as the ’85 Bears, Rodgers should have been able to muster more than nine points against them, and he had opportunities to do so.
Rodgers certainly was not helped by play-calling, personnel decisions, and his receivers, which goes back to a mistake the Jets have made since they acquired him: they rely on him to cure all ills. Perhaps that is what many teams with elite quarterbacks do (especially with those who are paid that way), but again, Rodgers is 40 years old. Even Patrick Mahomes has not looked the same since the beginning of last season (despite a Super Bowl victory) due to a meager supporting cast. Mahomes also has an elite play-caller to compensate, while Rodgers has Nathaniel Hackett (which is, admittedly, his own fault).
The best way to describe Rodgers’ game is that he played down to his offense’s level rather than elevating them. Yes, the blocking was bad, the coaching was bad, the run game was nonexistent, yada, yada, yada. But ultimately, great quarterbacks are expected to find a way, and Rodgers didn’t.
