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While Aaron Rodgers may be entering his 40s and coming off of a serious Achilles injury, the New York Jets quarterback believes he’s still good enough to not only stick around in the Big Apple for a while but to lead the infamously moribund franchise to the Super Bowl.
Now that training camp has kicked off, Aaron Rodgers is being asked about both this season and beyond, and recently said that he “for sure” has enough left in the tank for this season, but he isn’t quite sure beyond that.
“I don’t know [how many more seasons he’ll play]. I’m not sure,” Rodgers said during a recent interview on the Pardon My Take podcast. “This one for sure. I wanted to do two good ones and to give us a chance to retire a Jet and win two Super Bowls.”
Rodgers then said something similar while appearing on NFL Network over the weekend.
“I would say there was a lot of sentiment that last year wasn’t a great year for me. I’d like to still have two great years,” the four-time NFL MVP said.
“The goal is New Orleans [where this year’s Super Bowl being played]. That’s got to be the focus, got to be the manifestation through our words and our actions. Everything has to be intentional that we do on the field, in the meeting rooms.”
If Rodgers did lead the Jets to the Super Bowl this year, he’d become the first-ever quarterback, of any age, to lead his team to the Super Bowl the year after suffering a season-ending injury. While both Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger led their respective teams to the playoffs after their season-ending injuries, neither ended in a Super Bowl.
Based on Rodgers’ recent comments and things he’s said in the past, it’s clear that if everything went according to plan, he would’ve been the Jets starter in 2023 and 2024, and then would’ve re-evaluated where he’s at afterward. Remembers, Rodgers claims that before heading into his darkness retreat, he was leaning towards retirement.
His September 2023 Achilles tear clearly derailed those best-laid plans, as Rodgers played just four snaps for the Jets during his debut season and didn’t even complete an official pass. Now, with his body breaking down and his 40th birthday in the rearview mirror, Rodgers is facing a race against the clock to reach the goals he set out to achieve when he first arrived.
While a Super Bowl appearance/win (let alone two), would obviously be, in the most genuine sense of the word, unreal for Jets fans, as a cursed Gang Green supporter myself, I can tell you that most of us simply want Rodgers to break out 13-year playoff drought, the longest in American professional sports.