The New York Jets find themselves in NFL purgatory with seven games left in the 2024 regular season. They are seven spots back of the No. 1 overall pick, yet they only have a 10% chance of making the playoffs (implied odds via DraftKings Sportsbook).
Therefore, the Jets are stuck between a rock and a hard place at the quarterback position. They are likely too good to land in the obvious position of selecting a blue-chip quarterback prospect near the top of the draft, but they are too poor for Rodgers to be considered a surefire bet to return.
There is also a middle-ground scenario that involves Rodgers returning without the Jets fully committing to “running it back.” The Jets could draft a quarterback in the first round and utilize Rodgers as their bridge quarterback in 2025, having him hold the fort down until the youngster is ready. In the meantime, he would give the Jets a somewhat reasonable chance to compete again.
In my opinion, as things stand on November 16, I think the Jets’ best bet is to cut ties with Rodgers no matter what (barring a fantastic final seven games). Here are the main reasons why.
He has already declined immensely; how is he possibly going to get better?
My main gripe with the pro-RIB (Run It Back) crowd is this: What are you clinging onto that suggests there is a chance Rodgers could be better in 2025 than he has been in 2024?
In most metrics that evaluate overall QB production, Rodgers has been a below-average starter this year:
- 86.8 passer rating (23rd of 34 qualifiers)
- 51.9 QBR (25th)
- 78.6 PFF grade (12th)
- 0.077 adjusted EPA/play (18th)
- -2.4 Completion Percentage Over Expected (31st)
His average ranking across those six metrics is 22nd. Outside of PFF’s strange love affair with his play this season, his raw production metrics are generally poor.
Rodgers is 40 years old. If he has already taken a significant step back to playing at a sub-top-20 level, what reason is there to believe he will perform better when he is one year older?
Rodgers’ physical tools are obviously declining rapidly. It is apparent through the eye test and there are numerous metrics backing it up. For one, as revealed in a chart from Scott Barrett, Rodgers’s accuracy and sack evasion have dwindled to the point where he can easily be confused with the 2023 version of Zach Wilson or the 2022 version of Marcus Mariota.
Look where Rodgers stands on this chart of 2021-24 QB seasons. The X-axis displays pressure-to-sack rate (ability to avoid getting sacked when pressured), while the Y-axis displays catchable throw rate (an indicator of accuracy independent of outside factors such as drops and throwaways).
Compare this to his placements in 2021 and 2022. Rodgers is trending toward the bottom left corner, gradually becoming less accurate and easier to sack.
The 40-year-old version of Rodgers is easy to bring down when the pressure gets home. According to Pro Football Focus, he has been sacked on 22.8% of his pressured dropbacks in 2024 (PFF tracks it differently than the outlets cited on the chart shown above, which is why he is shown closer to 25% in that chart). That ranks 26th out of 34 qualified quarterbacks in 2024 and is Rodgers’s worst mark since 2013.
Although Rodgers’s 2024 mark is not the worst of his career, it is still alarming because it pales in comparison to his numbers in recent seasons after his play style changed. Rodgers was sacked more often earlier in his career because he still had his athleticism and extended plays far more frequently, thus creating more sack opportunities, but as he became more of a pocket passer later in his career, Rodgers started to do a great job of using subtle movement in the pocket to minimize sacks. From 2019-22, his pressure-to-sack rate was 17.9%, which, for perspective, would rank 11th-best in 2024 between Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes.
We knew Rodgers was likely to decline in areas that concerned his movement skills, but his arm was expected to remain elite regardless of his age. That is not the case.
No matter what metric you look at, Rodgers has been one of the NFL’s least accurate quarterbacks:
- 23rd in adjusted completion percentage, via PFF (73.9%) – counts drops as completions and removes throwaways, batted passes, etc.
- 31st in Completion Percentage Over Expected, via RBSDM (-2.4%) – uses tracking data to estimate the expected completion rate of each attempt
- 20th in on-target throw rate, via Pro Football Reference (75.6%) – defined as “throws that would have hit the intended receiving target”
Rodgers’s decline in accuracy is especially alarming because he is throwing the ball as short as ever. His 7.4 ADOT (average depth of target) is the second-lowest of his career, and yet, his 73.9% adjusted completion percentage is the third-worst of his career. In the only season where he had a lower ADOT, his adjusted completion percentage was 76.3%, and in the two seasons where he had a lower adjusted completion percentage, his ADOTs were 8.2 and 9.2. Basically, we’ve never seen Rodgers have this poor a combination of inaccuracy and checkdown-ism.
In 2024, Rodgers’s 73.9% adjusted completion percentage is 23rd, and his 7.4 ADOT is 26th. Only three other qualified quarterbacks have marks of sub-75% and sub-8.0, respectively: Drake Maye, Bryce Young, and Jacoby Brissett.
You want to run it back with a 41-year-old quarterback in that company?
To top it all off, Rodgers’s rushing impact has become almost completely non-existent. He is averaging 4.3 rushing yards per game. While nobody expected Rodgers’s legs to be a part of his game in 2024, this is still worth noting because it serves as another metric that highlights his physical trajectory. This is the seventh consecutive season in which Rodgers’s rushing YPG declined:
- 2016: 23.1
- 2017: 18.0
- 2018: 16.8
- 2019: 11.4
- 2020: 9.3
- 2021: 6.3
- 2022: 5.5
- 2024: 4.3
It doesn’t really matter that Rodgers’s rushing production is low, but this is an obvious sign that Rodgers has long been deteriorating physically and is extremely likely to continue doing so in 2025.
He can’t dodge sacks. He can’t complete passes at a high rate despite throwing the ball as short as he ever has. And he can’t run. More importantly than anything, he has been getting worse in all of these categories year-over-year for a while now.
May I ask once again why we should expect Rodgers to be better when he is another year older in 2025?
Shooting down reasons Rodgers might improve
A few reasons are commonly cited as possible routes for Rodgers to improve. Some say he’ll be healthier. He will be another year removed from the Achilles injury, and it also seems as if he has battled through some injuries this year.
To that argument, I say… huh?
Rodgers will turn 42 at the end of the 2025 season. He is not in a position to gradually improve after a serious injury at this stage of his career. If he was some superhuman who is capable of that, he would have already shown gradual improvement by this stage of the 2024 season. That has not happened; he looked as old as ever in Arizona last week (69.7% adjusted completion percentage, 27.3% pressure-to-sack rate). Any benefits of being another year removed from the Achilles injury in 2025 would be balanced out by the severe physical declines that occur each year when you are in your forties.
As for the argument that Rodgers has been banged up this year… why should we expect him to be any less banged up in 2025?
The Jets have done a decent job of minimizing hits on Rodgers by operating a quick-passing scheme, and their pass protection has been fine (not great, not awful). Ultimately, they have yielded a sack or knockdown on 16.2% of their passing plays, which ranks 16th. It’s not as if the guy is being beaten to a pulp each week. If Rodgers is banged up now, he will be banged up next year with another year of mileage on his tires. It is unrealistic to expect that he will suddenly play 17 scot-free games next year. No player does that. He’s been healthy enough to suit up every week and has not played well. Period.
Another argument is that the Jets’ coaching might be better, resulting in a more well-oiled offensive machine.
Rodgers essentially hand-constructed the Jets’ entire offense. The scheme could not be more comfortable for him, and he’s still struggling. This has persisted even since Todd Downing took Nathaniel Hackett’s Rodgers-ready base scheme and optimized it by using more motion, more 3-receiver sets, and fewer 2-tight-end sets. Why isn’t he playing well? Because he is 40 years old and not nearly as good at football as he used to be. Most likely, it is that simple.
I have a hard time seeing a scheme change helping Rodgers re-invent himself at 41. Can a new scheme make him better at avoiding sacks or more accurate? The Jets can hardly get the ball out any faster or throw it any shorter than they already are, yet Rodgers is still getting sacked in key moments and unable to complete a high percentage of his passes. Maybe he just doesn’t have it anymore, people.
The Jets have all of the pieces they need on offense for Rodgers to be successful. No, the supporting cast around the quarterback has not been nearly as sublime as many hoped, but it’s been just fine. While it can be improved greatly in the offseason, it’s not as if it has been so bad to the point where Rodgers could not be evaluated this season. Rodgers has straight-up struggled, independent of his surroundings. And if he does need a pristine supporting cast to be an above-average quarterback, then he is not a difference-maker at the position. Just about any quarterback can succeed if his surroundings are incredible.
Perhaps above anything else, I ask this: Where are the flashes of hope to buy into? Have we gotten any glimpses of promise that suggest Rodgers is capable of being a good starting quarterback at this stage of his career?
One game against an awful Patriots team? One half against the Texans? A few big-time throws here and there? This is not enough. We are 10 games into the season and the Jets have yet to eclipse 24 points. It is the first time in franchise history New York has started a season with 10 consecutive games of 24 points or less. The first time!
It’s not as if Rodgers and the Jets have shown occasional glimpses of greatness. If they were a wildly inconsistent group that displayed high highs and low lows, it would feel like there is something there to be salvaged. That is not the case, though. They have not been inconsistent; they have been consistently mediocre. It’s November 16 and the Jets have the NFL’s lowest season-high for points (24) and fourth-lowest season-high for passing yards (272). We have not seen a ceiling to be excited about.
Clean out the stench and let the new regime establish their vision without being overshadowed
The Jets are likely going to hire a new head coach in the offseason, and probably a new general manager as well. They have an opportunity to clean house and start fresh with their first simultaneous hiring of a head coach and general manager since Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan in 2015.
It is obvious that the Jets need a makeover in the culture department. If they go as far as to revamp both the coaching staff and the front office, they must go all-in and send Rodgers packing, too. Rodgers has as much influence on the Jets’ current culture as Robert Saleh or Joe Douglas. If the Jets hire a new coach and GM but keep Rodgers, they are not fully committed to shifting the culture.
I think Rodgers gets a bad rap at times. He seems like a much better teammate and person than engagement-baiters in the national media tend to give him credit for. However, there is no doubt that his presence in New York has changed the team’s culture for the worse.
Rodgers brought an unnecessary spotlight to a young roster that had yet to prove it deserved or was ready for that level of attention, and the team has crumbled under that scrutiny. His star power creates underlying pressure within the organization, which has influenced ownership into rash decisions and caused unrest in the locker room. He also has an unusual amount of power for a player, whether it’s his weekly national segment on ESPN or his influence on the roster and coaching staff. This creates a strange power structure within the organization that hamstrings both the coaching staff and the front office from doing their jobs.
Not all of this is Rodgers’s fault. Some of it certainly is, as Rodgers has not exactly done a perfect job of squashing the megalomaniac allegations; taking accountability and minimizing distractions have been areas of inconsistency for him. Regardless of how much of it is on him, the dark cloud of scrutiny he brings to your organization is the unavoidable price that comes with his larger-than-life presence.
And if you are the Jets, you cannot let that get in the way of a new regime that is trying to shift the culture.
If Rodgers was the Aaron Rodgers of old, the Jets could put up with all of the extracurricular shenanigans to enjoy the benefits of elite on-field play. But he’s not. At this point, he is just another guy – not as grotesquely awful as his Jets predecessors, but nowhere close to as effective as most of the quarterbacks who will be playing on Divisional weekend in January.
The Jets are not going to win a Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers. Their focus must be entirely on setting the stage for their next era. And to do that to the best of their ability, they must say goodbye to Rodgers and let the new regime establish their culture and vision without being overshadowed by a below-average quarterback.
Even if Rodgers fully buys into a new regime next year – let’s say he cuts ties with McAfee, he agrees to run an entirely new scheme, and he radically overhauls his approach to press conferences and interviews – he is still Aaron Rodgers. No matter what, he will be the most powerful and influential man in the organization for as long as he plays football. The Jets’ new coach needs to be somebody who can step in, put his foot down, and build the organization in his vision the same way that Dan Campbell did in Detroit. That becomes much harder with Rodgers in the building.
Not only that, but what coach wants to sign up for that job? Any coach worth his salt isn’t going to be chomping at the bit to coach a team where the quarterback has more pull in the owner’s ear than the coach does. Keeping Rodgers could prohibit the Jets from hiring the enforcer they desperately need at the head coach position, instead forcing them to settle for the last coach standing in the game of musical chairs. That will probably be a guy who’s just happy to take whatever he can get, another pawn to be controlled by Rodgers – not a man on a mission who wants to be with the team and make it his own.
This is why I believe it would be the wrong move to bring Rodgers back even as a bridge quarterback alongside a first-round quarterback selection. In a vacuum, he seems like the ideal bridge quarterback – an experienced veteran who is decent enough to win games the short term – but you can find somebody else to provide the same on-field value without bringing the off-field implications.
Heck, the Jets already have a guy in their building who can do it. On the surface, Rodgers’s 2024 stats (86.8 passer rating, 2.16 TD/INT ratio, 5.6 net Y/A) are incredibly similar to Tyrod Taylor’s career stats (88.5, 2.28, 5.8). If you want to go the bridge route, you can easily find somebody who is just as good as the 2024 version of Rodgers but does not get in the way of a much-needed cultural shift.
Run it back? Nah. Run him out of town.
In regards to winning a Super Bowl, the Jets’ Aaron Rodgers era is effectively over. If they want to maximize their chances of winning a Super Bowl with his eventual predecessor, they will clear him and his stench out of the building as soon as possible, allowing the new regime to immediately begin the franchise’s next chapter with no distractions.
