Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre are the same guy from different generations. Two beloved Packers quarterbacks, each with on-again, off-again flirtations with retirement, unable to either walk away from football or willingly hand over control to a young guy on the bench.
Both stars ended up in New York at times where the Jets had a great defense and all the pieces, but believed they were a quarterback away from contending. The similarities don’t stop there, with both Rodgers and Favre being widely beloved around the NFL, before progressively getting more tiresome and annoying while drifting into the twilight.
On Monday Night Football, a rusty Aaron Rodgers took the field against the 49ers in a massive challenge. San Francisco have the NFL’s best defense, talent at every position, and an aggressive approach designed to punish quarterbacks. It’s not that Rodgers performed poorly, but he was far from the game-changed the Jets were banking on.
13-for-21, 167 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT — 82.8 passer rating
In a truly eerie coincidence, Rodgers’ performance against the 49ers was almost identical statistically to Zach Wilson when he played against the Bills in the 2023 season opening following Rodgers’ injury. In that game Wilson went 14-for-21, 140 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT — 81.4 passer rating.
Rodgers was supposed to be the savior of the Jets, but at least in this first game he wasn’t any better than the bust rookie he was brought in to replace. In addition, Rodgers was worse than Brett Favre when Favre made his debut for the Jets in 2008.
15-for-22, 194 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT — 125.9 passer rating
The Favre experiment is widely recognized as an abject failure in Jets history. New York missed the playoffs finishing the season 9-7, and Favre was cut. More damaging: The decision to bring in Favre led to the Jets choosing not to take a quarterback in the 2008 NFL Draft, which would have been Joe Flacco.
Flacco would go on to lead the defensive-focused Ravens to a Super Bowl, while the Jets waited until 2009 to find a new QB to lead them post-Favre, selecting Mark Sanchez with the No. 5 overall pick.
We don’t need to get too far ahead of ourselves. It’s just one game. Maybe Rodgers really can be the shot in the arm the Jets were hoping for. Honestly, the team better hope so — because if this flames out like Favre did in 2007 they’ll be looking for a QB in one of the worst classes in recent memory.
