Aaron Rodgers received the news Tuesday that had been widely feared since he left the Jets’ game against the Buffalo Bills on Monday night: He had ruptured his left Achilles tendon and would miss the season, the league said a social media Post Office.
After a long and illustrious career as quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Rodgers had joined the Jets at age 39 in hopes of pushing the team to the Super Bowl, which the franchise had not won since the days of Joe Namath. Rodgers already had an elite defense and young stars in key positions. It was assumed that Rodgers’ experience and leadership would be the final piece of the puzzle for a team that could contend for a championship.
But the star quarterback was sacked on Tuesday just three and a half minutes into his first game at MetLife Stadium. Although he stood for a moment after being tackled to the ground by Bills defensive end Leonard Floyd, he soon sat down on the turf. He was helped to the sideline and then taken to the locker room. Television cameras showed Rodgers wearing a protective boot.
The league announced this on Tuesday in a post on
After confirming that Rodgers would require surgery to repair the injury, coach Robert Saleh spent much of his press conference Tuesday reaffirming his confidence in the team and in 24-year-old quarterback Zach Wilson.
“I don’t know why people are trying to put an obituary on our team name,” Saleh said. He added: “We have all the confidence in the world in Zach and the best thing about Zach is that we all believe he is one step ahead of where he was a year ago.”
For now, the Jets will turn to Wilson, the backup quarterback who helped the team to a 22-16 win in Monday’s game against the Bills. Rodgers and Wilson are friends, and with the veteran’s arrival, Wilson had embraced his role as Rodgers’ understudy to improve problem areas in his mechanics and technique. However, Saleh declined to provide details on how the offensive strategy would change under Wilson, saying it would vary depending on the game plan.
Saleh also said the team will bring Tim Boyle off the practice squad and look to sign a free agent for the quarterback room.
The Jets have had a checkered history since Namath led them to a surprising Super Bowl victory in the 1968 season. Since then, the team has struggled to find another franchise quarterback who could lead them to a title game again, relying on first-round draft picks Richard Todd in 1976, Ken O’Brien in 1983, Chad Pennington in 2000 and Mark Sanchez in 2009, Sam Darnold in 2018 and Zach Wilson in 2021.
The Jets had also previously tried to poach an MVP quarterback from the Packers, trading for Brett Favre in 2007. These acquisitions weren’t enough to transform the Jets offense into title contenders.
There was hope that Rodgers could change that long history of inefficiency when he was acquired in exchange for draft picks in April. His long career has placed him in the top 10 in many passing categories, he has won four Most Valuable Player Awards, and in the 2010 season he led the Packers to their only Super Bowl victory of the century.
Rodgers’ arrival had raised the hopes of Jets fans and his teammates. “Getting a guy like him in the building just excites everyone in general because his resume, his character, the guy he is, sparks a spark in everyone,” defensive tackle Quinnen Williams said during training camp in July.
The fit seemed to be a good fit: Rodgers threw himself into city life, showing up at the Tony Awards, Knicks and Rangers games, the US Open and a Taylor Swift concert at MetLife.
With Rodgers’ absence, expectations for the Jets have now, as in so many other years, fallen significantly.
Santul Nerkar contributed reporting.