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While Aaron Rodgers hasn’t even been a member of the New York Jets for two months, his impact is certainly being felt far and wide.
Not only is Rodgers popping up seemingly everywhere — from playoffs games to concerts to the Tony Awards — but he’s also been putting in work at the Jets’ OTA practices.
And due to his participation in OTAs, Rodgers has raised the bar for the rest of the team, explained head coach Robert Saleh, who used two specific examples to detail the 39-year-old’s impact on the team.
“When he let it go, I was like, Well, that’s overthrown,” Saleh told the media last week. “And then, the ball just kept floating and floating and floating, and it hit the guy in stride. I was like, Oh my God. It was unbelievable.”
“The second one, it’s because you see it in games, you just never see it that way,” Saleh continued. “Me, personally, I’ve never been around a quarterback like that. We’ve had some good quarterbacks—Russell [Wilson], Jimmy [Garoppolo], Matt Schaub. This is different, and not to speak poorly on them. So he throws a ball to C.J. Uzomah. And I was like, He’s covered! And he says, Guy’s not looking at me, he’s open.”
Seeing an organization as historically miserable as the Jets is certainly fun to see, especially considering the fact that they’re the current owners of the longest postseason drought in the National Football League, having not qualified for the playoffs since 2010.
Heading into the 2023 season, the Jets are not only expected to make the playoffs but compete for the Super Bowl, as the team currently has the seventh-shortest odds to lift next season’s Lombardi Trophy, which trails on the Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, and Dallas Cowboys.