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This guy is going to raise the bar for everybody
at 1 Jets Drive.
And I mean everybody.
Players, coaches, trainers, the business side.
Talking about Aaron Rodgers.
It’s almost like bringing a top industry consultant to evaluate your business, and they provide you with a blunt, informed analysis of what you need to do to take your business to the next level.
Rex Ryan used to call this “blunt force trauma.”
There was that great line from the old song by Nick Lowe – “You’ve got to be cruel to be kind.”
The Jets have many talented people at their respective jobs, but as Bill Parcells like to say, “You are what your record says it is.”
They have missed the playoffs 12 years in a row.
So not only can Rodgers help them with elite QB play, but he can also help them with other things to help them establish a winning program.
His record as an NFL starting QB is 147-75-1. While he has just one Super Bowl ring, he would probably have more if not for some mismanagement around him, like the Green Bay Packers special teams two years ago, which were awful and cost them a playoff game.
Rodgers knows what a winning formula looks like, and that fact that he doesn’t give a rat’s behind who he offends with his words, he’s going to provide the kind of “blunt force trauma” the Jets needs in meetings and the practice field. He’s not going to blow smoke up anybody’s butt.
Like this quote from the spring, which didn’t get a lot of attention, but is an example of what I’m talking about:
“I want to see just more communication between the whole team,” Rodgers said. “I think that’s how we take the next step, is to talk about the things that give us the most issues.”
So he is challenging his teammates and coaches to improve communication.
An example is, he wants to see Jets wide receivers and cornerbacks talk more to help them hones their respective crafts. While they all want to win their battles in practice against each other, Rodgers feels it’s important for players, on opposite sides of the ball, on the same team, to have more skull sessions giving insight, like, “Sauce telling Garrett what’s hard on him,” Rodgers said.
One thing that is needed is Jets tight ends huddling with the team’s linebackers more, and giving them myriad pointers about the tricks they use to beat linebackers in pass routes.
Don’t want to belabor the point because I’ve written about it many times, but the Jets linebacker coverage needs to get a lot better. Perhaps a guy like Quincy Williams needs to be huddling with guys like Tyler Conklin and C.J. Uzomah on a regular basis to help him take his tight-end coverage to the next level.
Here is another Rodgers’ blunt comment about something going on that perhaps needs to change.
He was asked about that eclectic drill he was asked to do in an early OTA practice with some kind of workout ball, that led to a calf injury. He was asked if he ever did conditioning like that during his long career.
“I haven’t done it before. I haven’t done it in 18 years, but obviously there’s some science behind it,” Rodgers said.
If we didn’t know he was from Chico, CA, with that level of sarcasm, you would have thought he was from Brooklyn.
In his own way, he was basically telling the Jets staff, don’t have a 39-year-old QB doing that stuff anymore.
So the point here is, not only is Rodgers going to help the Jets with his top-shelf QB skills, but by telling some people some things that might ruffle some feathers, but in the long run, helps turn around the culture.
People can say the culture has turned around, but they haven’t had a winning season since 2015, so some would argue that.
July 10, 2023
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