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I am not an Aaron Rodgers apologist, and there is no hidden agenda here. Don’t really know the guy. Attending a player’s press conferences doesn’t mean you know somebody.
But I really don’t get the echo chamber calling for him to be replaced as Jets QB down the stretch.
Going over the game again, there is a lot of bad football going on around him.
Of course there are things he can do better, but just look at the Jets’ last two plays of the game – on third-and-10, John Simpson got beat by Leonard Williams for a sack up the middle. It was a quick win and Rodgers had no time. On the Jets’ last play of the game, on fourth-and-15, Rodgers was about to get hit by a blitzing cornerback Coby Bryant, so he chucked it downfield in the direction of Garrett Wilson, hoping for a miracle, and the pass fell incomplete. Why did he need to rush the throw? Because rookie running back Isaiah Davis did a poor job of picking up Bryant coming off the corner.
How is this stuff his fault?
The Jets “pass pro” for Rodgers has been wildly inconsistent all year. In this game, aside from the aforementioned plays, fill-in right tackle Carter Warren struggled in pass protection. And this begs the question, why was Warren active and Max Mitchell in active? Not putting Mitchell in Canton, but he has a lot more NFL game experience than Warren. Strange game-day personnel decision.
Here is the deal.
Rodgers is still a good QB, but he can’t put a team on his back and carry them like he did in his heyday. He needs more from his supporting cast.
Like in two recent losses, to New England and Indianapolis, where he gave his team fourth-quarter leads, and the defense allowed pedestrian QBs to drive down the field for game-winning drives at the end.
The Jets’ last drive of that Seattle game is a perfect example of the supporting cast letting him down.
On that same drive, with the Jet down 26-21, on a third-and-26, Rodgers under pressure scrambled around and found Davis for a gain of 23, and then hit Davante Adams for a gain of five on fourth-and-two. Two huge plays late, but then at the end of that drive the bottom dropped out due to protection issues.
Look, Rodgers is far from perfect, and he’s probably forcing too many passes to Davante Adams.
But the people that blame him for the Jets’ 3-9 record must not be watching the same games as I am.
I see Rodgers as low-down on the Jets’ list of problems this year.
And like we got into yesterday, the demoting of Nathaniel Hackett seemed like a move to appease the masses, and has led to a lot of offensive functionality issues, like issues lining up properly before the play clock runs out.
You have Todd Downing, who was replaced twice as an OC with the Raiders and Tennessee Titans, now running Hackett’s playbook. Makes no sense. I have never seen three timeouts in the first quarter in my life.
“This team is in disarray. 1:37 left in the first quarter and you are out of timeouts,” said Pats radio analyst Scott Zolak after the third timeout was called in the first quarter by the Jets in the recent Jets-Pats game
Where does all this Rodgers hate come from where people can’t see the forest for the trees when talking about him?
It could be some people just blinded by hate because they don’t like the guy and his worldview.
Rodgers has 19 touchdowns to 8 interceptions on the season. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a stat line like that from a Jets QB after 12 games.
Once again, he’s been far from perfect, but the people trashing him really need to look at the film of these games in their totality and stop just taking a myopic QB-centric view of the Jets’ problems.
December 2, 2024
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