EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Aaron Rodgers approached his head coach with a message and a hypothesis.
“Two points ahead,” he told Robert Saleh as the New York Jets led the New England Patriots 14-0.
Then he pushed his coach.
Consider this a misunderstanding.
Rodgers and Saleh agreed on their message — on the importance of a two-point lead to the team’s game plan, and the significance of this dominant moment on their path to what would become a Victory 24-3 Thursday night at Football.
But their celebratory gestures were contradictory. So when Rodgers went for the chest thrust and Saleh went for the hug, gravity pulled them apart instead of uniting them. They downplayed a moment that netizens watched with concern.
“It wasn’t awkward at all,” Rodgers said. “He’s not usually a big hugger, so I didn’t know he was going to hug. He also likes to do the two-handed chest thrust. But he talks a lot about two points ahead.”
“So I gave him a thumbs up and said, ‘Two points ahead.'”
The explanation fit the early lip-reading attempts, but somehow there was room for confusion: Two-point leads have been rare for the Jets in recent years. Reasons for celebration, quite frankly, have been, too.
The Jets will need time to learn how to celebrate, just as they needed time to get back into shape with the four-time MVP at the helm.
But as the Jets snapped a 15-year winning streak against the Patriots, a raucous prime-time crowd saw more than just division records change.
For the first time since joining the Jets, Rodgers looked dominant. The Jets looked good. And a complementary style of football returned to the Jets after a long vacation away from home.
The game spoke volumes about what the Jets could become this season and how. And it was also a warning to the Patriots beyond just the loss on their record.
Rodgers turns back time to lead rejuvenated Jets
Allen Lazard was marveling long before the visits to the end zone.
The veteran receiver who spent all seven seasons of his career on the same roster as Rodgers had seen this magic before.
But did Rodgers really escape the pocket, faking a pass and rushing for a 5-yard first down on the second play of the game?
Was the 40-year-old quarterback, who had torn his Achilles tendon 374 days earlier, really going to throw off-platform with that much power and that early?
“I mean, this herbal remedy must really work,” Lazard told Yahoo Sports after catching three passes for 48 yards and the game’s first touchdown. “I might have to try it here soon, so hopefully I’ll be playing when I’m 40.”
The Jets’ first touchdown against the Patriots reflected Rodgers’ intellectual mastery of the game more than his physical mastery. The quarterback calculated his chances of success if he could isolate Lazard on the left, with Rodgers releasing the ball almost instantly after the snap as Lazard baited his defender with an extra-flat route.
Lazard then stopped abruptly and restarted en route to a 10-yard touchdown. It was the Jets’ first touchdown of the night, but certainly not their last.
“Our biggest priority was to take them out in the second half and everything else,” Lazard said. “That’s what good teams do. We want to be a great team.”
The Jets’ backfield was responsible for the second score, Breece Hall’s touchdown run so close it was contested, giving the Jets a much-anticipated two-score lead.
The Jets’ defense could now further frustrate Patriots quarterback Jacoby Brissett, with obvious passes activating the passer rush up front while an opportunistic secondary salivates down the back.
But Rodgers wasn’t done. He knew that for three weeks, opposing defenses had struggled to stop receiver Garrett Wilson, protecting themselves with two safeties, often even when Wilson was facing top corners in the 49ers’ Charvarius Ward, the Tennessee Titans’ L’Jarius Sneed and now New England’s Christian Gonzalez.
But with 6:24 left in the third quarter, the Jets were 2 yards from home after Rodgers found Wilson for 8. Wilson told his quarterback in the huddle to hit him again and Rodgers was happy to oblige via a run-pass option.
Rodgers threw the ball in the air and Wilson caught it. “For a mere mortal, it was really hard to catch,” Rodgers said, “but (Wilson) made it look easy.”
That’s how most Jets viewed Rodgers’ first full home game, as he completed 27 of 35 passes for 281 yards, two touchdowns and a passer rating of 118.8.
Lazard thought back to a moment they shared in the weight room before the season opener, when he walked in and saw Rodgers squatting. He thinks he saw four plates and a 25-pound weight, but maybe it was three plates and a 25-pound weight, he thinks. Whether it was 325 pounds or 425 pounds, Lazard knew it wasn’t the norm for Rodgers’ age and health.
“It’s way more than any 40-year-old should be able to do,” Lazard said. “And the fact that he got rid of his Achilles tendon … it’s incredible.”
Will Patriots Heed Hard Lessons From Jets QB?
The magic of Rodgers’ night stood in stark contrast to the Patriots’ quarterback situation.
After beating the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 1 and pushing the Seattle Seahawks to overtime before losing in Week 2, New England never really managed to put up a fight through four quarters.
Brissett completed 12 of 18 passes for 98 yards and an 80.3 passer rating after throwing for 149 yards and a touchdown in Week 1 and 121 yards in Week 2. But Brissett’s limited production wasn’t New England’s biggest problem. The inability of the quarterback and offensive line to handle the Jets’ passing pressure was.
After conceding three sacks against the Bengals and just one against the Seahawks, the Jets sacked the Patriots seven times and hit their quarterbacks 15 times. Brissett lasted the first 50 minutes of the battle before the Patriots gave the final series to Drake Maye, the third overall pick in the 2024 draft.
Brissett faced 13 pressures, a 56.5 percent pressure rate, the highest he’s faced in a game with at least 10 attempts, according to Next Gen Stats.
Maye completed 4 of 8 passes for 22 yards and a passer rating of 56.2, and also ran twice for 12 yards. His play in the game indicated what should have been obvious to the Patriots by now: The quarterback may not be the only problem in their offense, but he’s certainly not their solution yet.
Maye’s eight pass attempts put him halfway to the total the four-time MVP on the other side of the court received in his rookie year.
Rodgers didn’t start a game in his first three years after the Packers drafted him in the first round in 2005, attempting no more than 28 passes in those campaigns.
The 10 Pro Bowls, regular playoff appearances and resulting Super Bowl championships are far from a guaranteed outcome simply because teams rest their quarterbacks. But on Thursday, a long-suffering Jets team showed the Patriots what can be possible when a team assembles talent to surround a quarterback before asking him to help the team grow. The Jets showed New England what quarterback play can look like when a gunslinger is given time to develop physically and mentally.
Rodgers’ ability to control the offense, avoiding a three-and-out on the night and avoiding turnovers as he moved the Jets down the field repeatedly, represented the opposite end of the quarterback play spectrum from what led the Carolina Panthers to bench 2023 first overall pick Bryce Young after just two games this season.
The Patriots got examples just this week of the risks and rewards they face in developing Maye.
They should listen to them.
Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo declined to confirm whether he would replace Maye with Brissett as the starter, saying “I don’t know” about a quarterback change, but the coaching staff would “see where it goes” as the players compete each week.
The Jets, across the stadium, breathed a sigh of relief because for the first time in a while, the quarterback question was not their problem — and as they continue to learn not only how to get on the same page on the field, but also in their celebrations.
“If you expect to win, then you’re going to celebrate, but you have to expect to win,” Rodgers said. “The next step is to expect to dominate.”
