Beware Patriots Doomsday Takes Amid Aaron Rodgers-Jets Rumors
(For what it’s worth, Rodgers strongly denied those rumors during his appearance on Wednesday’s “The Pat McAfee Show” episode.)
Everyone will say the right things in the coming days and weeks. The honeymoon period between Rodgers and the Jets will look and sound like a Disney movie — when Disney movies were good.
But don’t be surprised if it ends up feeling more like a “White Lotus” episode.
NFL fans and bloggers weren’t the only ones annoyed by Rodgers’ drawn-out decision-making process. Some Jets players reportedly also were turned off by the week-long saga.
Others, like cornerback DJ Reed, are loving it. Whatever it takes to move on from the Zach Wilson era, apparently.
Maybe Rodgers really will turn over a new leaf in the Meadowlands. After all, Brady went from being a self-described “miserable” quarterback on a declining team in 2019 to leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl title in 2020.
But Rodgers isn’t Brady. That much is clear by now. Plus, it only took a couple of years for Brady to pull rank on the Bucs and put that franchise through its own baffling retirement drama.
Honestly, the more we think about it, perhaps those situations are more analogous than we initially gave them credit for. Despite the way things went in 2022, the Bucs surely don’t have buyer’s remorse over signing Brady in 2020. And if Rodgers leads the Jets to their first championship in 1969, few will care if the whole thing goes up in flames in a couple of years.
But the reality is there is no guarantee that the Rodgers-Jets experiment will work in Year 1 — far from it, in fact. And Rodgers hasn’t even been that good against the Patriots during his career despite Belichick fawning over him whenever he gets the chance.
There’s also no guarantee that the Jets will be better than the Patriots in 2023. Yeah, it’s easy to rag on Mac Jones and say that Belichick has been exposed since Brady left, but New England has good players on its roster, especially on defense. There still are very smart football minds in Foxboro.
Let’s see what the Patriots do in free agency and during the draft before we write their obituaries. Perhaps they will go out and swing a trade for DeAndre Hopkins after swapping out Meyers for JuJu Smith-Schuster. Who knows? Maybe they won’t make any offseason noise and still end up sweeping the Rodgers and the Jets. That would be par for the course for these franchises.
And therein lies the crux of this diatribe: We have no idea what’s going to happen over the next 10 months. We’re all just guessing and making projections based on limited information.
It might not be the preferred strategy in today’s day and age, but let’s all take a deep breath, cool it on the hot takes and just see what happens.
