No one knows what Aaron Rodgers is going to do next season. Maybe he doesn’t. Off what we saw when he was still a Jet, Rodgers often frequently acts as if his head is full of sky when he doesn’t have a football in his hands. But we sure do know this today: He has at least one more game to play on Monday night because of what he did last Sunday night against the Ravens, when he could have been looking at the end of his career if he didn’t show up in the second half.
And over those last thirty minutes, he did more than simply show up. This became one of the great football moments Rodgers has ever had — really since he left the Packers — and one of the great dramas of the entire NFL season. For this one half of football when all the seasons could have been on the line, Rodgers reminded you of what he was like in Green Bay when he was young. At 42 he wasn’t everything he had been, back when at his best he played quarterback as well as it could ever be played. But he was close enough. He was going to finish in first place the way he used to in Green Bay. He was back in the playoffs.
It took a missed field goal from a young Ravens kicker at the end, after it looked like a missed extra point by Chris Boswell might cost Rodgers and the Steelers everything. Rodgers did it without his best receivers. But he flung the ball around the way he used to and found a way to win himself one more Monday night, this one in the Wild Card round. As he did all that, he reminded the Jets and their fans of something else: What might have been if he hadn’t torn his Achilles on another Monday night, Sept. 11 of 2023. No one will ever know for sure how that season might have played out for the Jets, how much might be different now if he hadn’t gotten hurt. No one will know if the ’23 Jets might have had the kind of year Rodgers and the Steelers just had.
But it’s not just crazy to think they might have, with Rodgers two years younger and not doing what he’s doing in Pittsburgh, which means trying to get away from the rush on that surgically rebuilt Achilles. We know how much went wrong with Rodgers, on and off the field, after he did get hurt. But again: We’re allowed to wonder how right things might have gone, even for the Jets. Maybe Robert Saleh wouldn’t have gotten fired if Rodgers had remained upright in his first season in New York. Maybe the Jets wouldn’t be looking to draft another young quarterback now that they’re back at the top of the draft. Maybe they would even have ended a playoff drought that is starting to feel as if it stretches all the way back to Namath. And Rodgers might have ended up with one more big January game here, instead of there.
Of course he did nothing while he was here to endear himself to not only his fan base, but sometimes to his own wide receivers. This isn’t about vaccines and Jimmy Kimmel and those Tuesday appearances with Pat McAfee where he wandered all over the lot. This isn’t even about the way it officially ended for him with the Jets, when the new coach, Aaron Glenn, had him fly across the country just to show him the door.
This is about the way he absolutely did show up last Sunday night when it was all on the line for him, and for his team. And I can’t imagine how even Jets fans who couldn’t wait to see him go could have been rooting against him getting it done; rooting for him not to get the game that not only got the Steelers this home game against the Texans, but got John Harbaugh fired.
He had done so little in the first half. It looked as if this was going to be such a bad ending for him, as painful as the one with the Jets, especially after the way the Steelers had lost to the Browns the week before. Only that wasn’t the way the story ended, at least for now. He wasn’t MVP Rodgers or Super Bowl Rodgers. No one would say that he was. But late in the game — late in THIS game — he was close enough.
Here is what he said about the drive that should have won the game for the Steelers and almost didn’t:
“It was Joe Montana and Steve Young. And it was Michael Jordan,” he said. “The conversation about those guys is there is an incredible belief that when it’s the last seconds and MJ has the ball in his hands, he’s going to make it. When it’s the ball on the 8-yard line, and you need a touchdown to win the game, Joe is making comments about John Candy up in the stands, and everyone kind of has the belief that they’re going to go down and score.
“When you grow up reading about that stuff and want to emulate your idols you want to have that belief from your teammates. So when you get the ball with 2:20 left there isn’t a doubt in your mind that you’re going to go down and score.”
Rodgers had to die a little when Boswell missed that point after. And probably died a little bit more when the Tyler Loop field goal that would have sent him home — maybe for good — was in the air before drifting wide right. Loop, you should know, was born just four years before Rodgers was a rookie with the Packers.
He never won the way Jordan did. He never won the way Montana did, four Super Bowls with the 49ers, 4-0 record, 11 touchdown passes in those games and no interceptions. He will probably retire having won as many Super Bowls as Young did with the 49ers, which means one. The Super Bowl he won — against the Steelers — was 14 years ago. Rodgers’ Packers never went back after that. But he still won four MVPs. Even five years ago, when he was 37, Rodgers completed 70% of his passes and threw 48 touchdown passes against just five interceptions. He didn’t come close to winning the way Tom Brady did. But at his best, his best was as good as Brady’s.
And when he had to take another team of his down the field last Sunday night, he did that. And did remind us in Pittsburgh what he once was in Green Bay and who he was. After everything Rodgers had done in pro football over two decades, all those Sundays, he got himself one more Monday night.
GOOD MOVE BY THE PHILLIES, GET READY FOR KIFFIN’S NEXT MOVE & HARBAUGH’S SUPER HURDLE …
Good for Donald Arthur Mattingly for going with the Phillies.
And good for the Phillies having the good sense to hire him.
We found out this week that an ICE officer could shoot somebody in the middle of Portland Ave., Minneapolis and get away with it.
And anybody in the chattering class who can watch the video and come to the conclusion that it was a righteous shoot by that ICE officer would be better off trying to explain cold fusion.
I love people still saying it was The System’s fault Lane Kiffin took the LSU job even while Ole Miss was fighting for a national title.
Sure, it was.
Say it again, from the balcony:
We can all just start marking time for when Kiffin bails out on his new team for one in the pros.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.
Oh wait.
That’s the big fat dope’s line.
Here is what Jimmy Dolan, Mr. Basketball, said on the radio the other day:
“Getting to the Finals, we absolutely have to do. Winning the Finals, we should do.”
I’m just sort of wondering what happens if they don’t.
He fires Tom Thibodeau a second time?
Dolan also talked about how there needs to be more “collaborating.”
Got it.
How about more defense or more ball movement?
People on television now talk about the transfer portal in college football as if it’s the new national pastime.
Wait, I’m confused.
If the Yankees don’t have a Plan B if Cody Bellinger leaves … why don’t they?
John Harbaugh would be a terrific hire for the Giants.
Or for anybody.
He’s got a Super Bowl on his resume and the only other coach out there looking for a job who can say that is Mike McCarthy, Rodgers’ old coach in Green Bay.
But would you like to know how many coaches in the Super Bowl era have won Super Bowls with different teams?
Not one.
And not ever.
Bill Parcells took the Giants and then the Patriots to the big game, Andy Reid took the Eagles and the Chiefs, Don Shula was the Colts’ coach when they lost to Namath in Super Bowl III.
There are others who coached in two.
But no Super Bowl winner has ever gone somewhere else and won again.
At least, not yet.
I like the work Nick Sirianni has done in Philly a lot, but after allowing the Eagles to basically take the week off against the Commanders last Sunday, they better beat the 49ers Sunday.
For over a half-century we have read and heard all the talk about the Jets need for a “New Namath,” an expression that they really should have trademarked.
Now they are set up again, way up there in the draft, up there in Sam Darnoldville and Zach Wilsonville, and the fans desperately want them to draft their latest franchise quarterback.
There’s just one problem with that:
You need to have an actual franchise first, right?
What, I can’t ask?
