The New York Jets beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 32-25 in Week 15.
On one hand, it was a stirring comeback that painted a beautiful picture of what could have been. Aaron Rodgers led the comeback he didn’t get a chance to finish in last week’s overtime loss to the Miami Dolphins. Davante Adams proved he’s still a nightmare matchup, exploiting the league’s worst passing defense for 198 yards, all of which came after halftime.
On the other, it was a nightmare. With the win, the Jets postseason chances remained stuck at zero. The moral boost came at the expense of at least three slots of draft position. And it didn’t even feel that good because this was a once vaunted defense that allowed Mac Jones — Mac Jones! — to do stuff like this.
Mac Jones spin move gets first down pic.twitter.com/Rj8Ud9hD14
— Fitz (@LaurieFitzptrck) December 15, 2024
If you allow Mac Jones to put your defense on skates, you deserve nothing good from the football gods. Fortunately, the Jets are used to this. Selling out for a 40-year-old quarterback coming off his worst season in more than a decade failed to work out. Pinning their 2024 hopes on Rodgers after a torn Achilles has led to a worse record than the one Zach Wilson produced a season earlier.
The Jets need to win out just to match 2023’s 7-10 finish. This would be the worst possible outcome. And because he is Aaron Rodgers and he can only be a force for chaos, this may be exactly what Rodgers does.
Rodgers has come alive in recent weeks. Between Week 13’s loss to the Dolphins and Sunday’s win, he’s thrown for 628 yards and four touchdowns. The last time he had as many yards and scoring plays in a two-week span was back in 2021. That’s the quarterback the Jets thought they were getting — particularly when paired with the All-Pro wideout who’d left Green Bay a year before he did.
RODGERS AND ADAMS MAGIC.
: #NYJvsJAX on FOX
: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/ZIY9UDPVwt— NFL (@NFL) December 15, 2024
Davante Adams had 344 receiving yards his first six games in New York. He has 307 the last two combined. He had nearly 200 yards in just 30 minutes of game play, a span in which Rodgers erased two different Jaguars leads and led a game-winning drive where Adams provided 92 percent of the yards needed for a go-ahead touchdown.
Even when he wasn’t the target he remained the main character. New York’s first touchdown of the day was made possible because the Jags zeroed in on Adams, leaving Garrett Wilson all by himself for an easy six points.
RODGERS TO WILSON TOUCHDOWN#NYJvsJAX on FOX pic.twitter.com/rEBpChpHl0
— New York Jets (@nyjets) December 15, 2024
This was all great for Sunday and terrible for 2025. Week 15’s win pushed the Jets out of a potential top five draft pick. Home games against the Los Angeles Rams and Miami Dolphins linger on the schedule. There’s a chance New York suffers through a hopeless 2024 and doesn’t even get a top 10 draft selection for its troubles.
If that happens, the Jets will have one hell of a decision to make. New York can get out from Rodgers’s contract with a minimal $14 million dead salary cap space penalty in 2025. But would they have a better option than the inconsistent 41-year-old who is in the midst of his best football in years? Each Rodgers touchdown pass pulls the Jets further away from a top pick in a draft that seems to have two top tier quarterback prospects — Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders.
Would they bring the four-time MVP back, knowing he’ll bring a media circus with him and knowing, at some point, he’ll blame said media circus for his own shortcomings? The Jets have a below-average amount of salary cap space to spend next offseason, which suggests they may not be able to sign veteran stopgap solutions like Sam Darnold or Russell Wilson (neither of whom would be a slam dunk upgrade) while fixing other issues. Like, say, a defense that nearly gave up 300 passing yards to Mac Jones.
There’s logic behind drafting a good-not-great quarterback prospect and giving him a year to sit behind a legend. Rodgers has long been respected in the locker room and is an effective, if rigid teacher. Would he want to take on a mentor role as his career winds down? Would he see the Jets’ drafting of a first round quarterback over reinforcements elsewhere as a slight?
Does he see himself in the twilight of his career? Would he give New York a straight answer if asked? If he wants a trade, is he going to bring back a meaningful return? How are prospective head coaching candidates going to view his place (or absence) in the lineup?
TAE ADAMS #NYJvsJAX on FOX pic.twitter.com/9FqFL48Tbm
— New York Jets (@nyjets) December 15, 2024
This is the peril of having Rodgers. This is the minefield the Jets will have to navigate without an obvious plan moving forward. It’s a series of questions that get a bit trickier with each win, threatening to leave the Jets in a postseason-less hell for the foreseeable future.
New York has managed to find a new purgatory; one where victories are bad and big performances from Rodgers only make things more difficult. Sunday’s win was a vision of what could have been. It was also a too-close win over the Jacksonville Jaguars and the NFL’s worst defense. The only thing we can really glean from Week 15 is that the Jets malaise has no obvious cure.
