Content Post JETS SUCK 2023 EDITION (JOKER CERTIFIED): HARD KNOCKERS

[203Pat]

I think it's karma for the NFL in so many ways.

Rogers to NYJ was manufactured hype. Green Bay was moving on from him, there's no way he was going to be on GB's roster this season. If da Jete had any discipline whatsover they would have waited GB out till they released him, but they don't. There was exactly one team pursuing Rodgers, it was NYJ. Woody got onto his private jet and flew out to CA to kiss Aaron's ring and his ass too. I'm positive this is where the financials of Rodgers's contract were worked out. IMO there was no voluntary $33M pay cut from the goodness of his heart, if you believe that you also believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. He was told what the Jete would pay, take it or leave it. At least he was smart enough to get it fully guaranteed.

And of course this was followed up with hype, hype and more hype. Aaron at major sporting events. Hard Knocks. Back pages.

What was lacking was anyone talking about how a 40 year old guy with a significant injury guy would hold up behind one of the poorest OLs in the league.

Looked great in Hard Knocks when no one was hitting him, didn't last four plays once they were.

Same kind of hype driven **** we saw in LA where Jerry Jones drove the league to ignore their own committee's recommendation and give LA to Kroenke, a move that cost the league hundreds of millions in legal fees and penalties in a law suite by St Louis that they lost. The league got a $6B monument to itself that after a year of success now has empty seats on game day because LA is a front runner's town who tunes out losing teams.

The league was a lot better when it didn't have blue bloods like Goodell, Kroenke and Woody thinking that they could use money to steer things to work in their favor.

My point is NFL thinks of itself as so clever and does so much to manufacture story lines based on its own sensibilities, but they are just that, manufactured, and they often fail.

You summed up the whole Rodgers Jets experience better than I ever could have. This whole offseason has been one big PR campaign for Rodgers after he slowly started burning bridges and good will in Green Bay. He ran McCarthy out of town (which was warranted to some extent) then he played nice for a while with Lefleur for a while but Rodgers was basically running the show until things went wrong and someone needed to be blamed. Even the fans got sick of him and a radio station ran a poll at the end of last season and the majority wanted him gone. That relationship was over there and the Jets could have waited it out but their dopey owner, desperate coach and GM, and talk radio fandom got the better of them and they gave Green Bay assets for a guy who wasn't playing there again regardless.

Hard Knocks and the little story about the payout Rodgers so generously decided to take was all to rehab his image in a major media market. He is still the same tool he always was. Playing coach on and Hard Knocks and taking credit for Mekhai Beckton winning the starting tackle role because "sometimes when you put your arm around a guy and lift them up you'd be surprised what they can do". What a knob. Him coming out last night with the American flag on 9/11 also irked me considering his comments to Deshone Kizer in their first meeting.

Appearing on The Breneman Show podcast, former Packers quarterback DeShone Kizer said that Rodgers asked Kizer whether he believes that 9/11 actually happened.

“The first thing that comes out of Aaron Rodgers’s mouth was, ‘You believe in 9/11?’” Kizer said. “‘What? Do I believe in 9/11? Yeah, why wouldn’t I?’”

Rodgers told Kizer that he should “read up on that.”

The way you put this whole situation as manufactured is the perfect word for it. He is the same me-first fraud he always was. 9/11 conspiracies while running out with the flag, anti-vaxxer while cashing paychecks from Johnson & Johnson, and pretending to be a leader. This is the Jets. There was only one way this was ever going to go.

 

[203Pat]

Indeed. ATN has a Reddit page I post to from time to time under a different alias. I made a recent post saying I think their last three podcasts before the season started were not great. What I wrote was that they are often too self-referential, they are breathing their own exhaust a lot. The really could use a fourth person in the Wes role, a strong analyst who keeps Dan and Marc from diving into the mirth and hot takes too much.

If not that, having a new producer in their traditional role would help add some fresh air to the room. I think they feel burned after the NFL laid off their last producer (and seemingly suffered some internal blow back for promoting the last one so much?). They seem to be afraid to engage the new producer to the degree they have done with the last several. The new guy got some prominence for slicing his thumb, and a bit for his Bills fandom, but seems to get a much smaller role than other earlier producers.

Yet I really liked their Sunday night recap, it felt like old days again. There was enough interesting real football to talk about so the "bits" were a lot less prominent like they should be. I'm glad their careers are doing well, but there is a concept of saturation, too much of a good thing.

The show has gone downhill since Wes died and while it is still a solid listen most of the time, I agree it needs another strong personality to push back on Dan and reel Marc in from his various rabbit holes. Since they got this new deal they seem to be feeling themselves a bit and view themselves as the show and any substantial football talk as secondary. With the new deal they got, which I would assume came with decent pay raises, there does seem to me more oversight from the "shadowy league figures" and the whole Graver situation was strange and vague. They seemed to hint it may have been more than just a traditional layoff that NFLN has done quite a bit recently but they do need a producer to interject sometimes and be quick on the drops otherwise Dan will go off on a tangent about the bit and they spend 5 minutes discussing some ongoing nonsense that's nothing to do with football. I also agree that the flagship Sunday recap is still them at their best. A decent discussion on each of the games from the day and some news and notes that I might otherwise have missed. I don't know have the NFL+ subscription so I don't know what they will have on there but they're already cranking out a ton of shows at some point they're not going to have enough to talk about.

 

[Tunescribe]

I'm wondering if Colin is considered a viable prospect by anyone at this stage.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I'm wondering if Colin is considered a viable prospect by anyone at this stage.

Publicity stunt/ political statement

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Josh Rosen lmfao

 

[Ghost of Autumn]

With a short week, I wonder what the chances are that Punky gets the start this Sunday.

Guy needs a confidence boost (along with a binky, juice box, etc), and unless they run the ball 80 times, Micah Parsons is going to put a load in his diaper at least more than once.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I think as usual they've been held back by their stupidity. They used their resources on shiny new things that look great on the back pages of the tabloids, such as Aaron Rodgers, his binkies Randall Cobb and Alan Lazard, flashy players like Mecole Hardman and Dalvin Cook, but nothing other than some draft capital and old vets for their OL. This is what has led to their downfall. They knew after last season they had huge question marks on OL but didn't do much if anything to improve it, and now they're paying the price.

It’s the same arrogance everywhere. They could have solved it by drafting Wirfs instead of Becton. Everyone said Becton was going to need a ton of development, the right coaches, discipline, etc. But he graded out with like a 5% higher ceiling than Wirfs, although Wirfs had the floor of a perennial pro bowl tackle.

 

[Tunescribe]

With a short week, I wonder what the chances are that Punky gets the start this Sunday.

Guy needs a confidence boost (along with a binky, juice box, etc), and unless they run the ball 80 times, Micah Parsons is going is going to put a load in his diaper at least more than once.

Saleh has anointed him starter for rest of the season. He's the only choice. They have a journeyman named Boyle on the practice squad and are conducting FA tryouts.

 

[Bill Lee]

It’s the same arrogance everywhere. They could have solved it by drafting Wirfs instead of Becton. Everyone said Becton was going to need a ton of development, the right coaches, discipline, etc. But he graded out with like a 5% higher ceiling than Wirfs, although Wirfs had the floor of a perennial pro bowl tackle.

The "what if" that is running through my head, was, "what if" the Jete Front Office didn't get a giant hard on for Milfson and found a more NFL-ready QB?

We can never know, but oh man, "what if" they got a serviceable QB in the draft two years ago?

Here's what went down in terms of QB drafted in 2021:

• No. 1: Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars
• No. 2: Zach Wilson, New York Jets
• No. 3: Trey Lance, San Francisco 49ers
• No. 11: Justin Fields, Chicago Bears
• No. 15: Mac Jones, New England Patriots
• No. 64: Kyle Trask, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• No. 66: Kellen Mond, Minnesota Vikings
• No. 67: Davis Mills, Houston Texans

It really sucks to try to think of things from a Jete perspective, but if one has to do so, "what if" they move down a few spots to a safe spot to draft Mac Jones? They gain Jones over Wilson, gain more draft capital, and don't have to make the move to get Rodgers which has cost a lot of cash, cap and draft capital. They also don't have to bring in the expensive aging vets that Rodgers insisted on. They could have built a team around Jones the last two years with a better OL and been a true contender. They could have also changed the trajectory of our team. IIRC Bill liked Mills? We would probably have drafted another D stud in the first round and gone with Mills somewhere later in the draft, who knows. Yet the Jete do Jete things, and Woody is all about being on the back page of the tabloids, so Wilson it was.

 

[slam]

The Jets futile quest to find a QB, a mini trip down memory lane.

In 2016, the Jets go 5-11 in Ryan Fitzpatrick's second and final year. This is what happens next.

• 2017. Jets draft Jamal Adams at #6. Mahomes goes at 8 and Watson goes at 10. Josh McNown plays QB, and perhaps the team hopes that last year's 2nd round pick Christian Hackenberg will develop. Entire fanbase in on the "Suck for Sam" tank, except the team plays better than expected (5-11).
• 2018. Having lost out on the Kirk Cousins sweepstakes, Jets trade up from #6 to #3 and draft Sam Darnold, using and additional three #2's to do it. Josh Allen goes #7. Lamar goes #32
• 2019. Jets draft Quennin Williams #3 while Darnold sees ghosts. I don't think anyone there is really bemoaning not taking Daniel Jones who went at #6 or 7th rounder Gardner Minshew, but they were both probably better than, or at least as good as, Darnold.
• 2020. Committed to Darnold for one more year, the Jets take Mekhi Becton at #11 instead of trading up and contending for Tua or Herbert, who go #5 and #6. #1 Joe Burrow is well out of reach. But Jalen Hurts and Jordan Love go later as well. The resulting terrible year is Adam Gase's swan song and the second tank job campaign in four years, but they win a meaningless game at the end of the season to lose out on the #1 pick next year. Brady goes to Tampa this year as well, and we know how that went.
• 2021. Zach Wilson #2 after Trevor Lawrence goes #1. Need I say more? Here's more. Stafford was traded to the Rams for Goff and picks to Lions and both of those franchises have benefitted from it. Mac Jones and Justin Fields are still starters trying to establish their job security. And who knows about Davis Mills and Trey Lance's future? I'd take a flyer on them before Wilson.
• 2022. Jets take Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson in the first round, and it's be hard to be unhappy about that. They did pass on Kenny Pickett who went later in the first round, and then Brock Purdy was the very last player taken in the whole draft. The resulting season is a talented team held hostage by it's starting QB, with flirtations to Mike White and emergency starts by the corpse of Joe Flacco, to a 7-10 record. Jet's refugee Geno Smith comes out of nowhere to have a top ten QB season.
• 2023. The Jets trade for one Aaron Rodgers and everything is solved! The end. Oh, the Patriots trade their first round pick letting the Steelers leapfrog the Jets to get the OT the Jets wanted. (Nevermind that he was beaten out in Pittsburgh for a journeyman.) But the Jets can't protect the elderly QB, and a Buffalo DE steps around a cut blocking Mekhi Becton and twists Rodger's ankle off on the Metlife turf four plays into the season. Who knows what the high draftees Richardson, Young, and Stroud will do? Rodgers contract promises to tank the Jets salary cap in future years, and Zach Wilson back as the starter... for now.

So all in all, the Jets could have obtained any of the above QBs I've bolded very easily with their existing draft capital or cap space. That's 12 of the league's current established starters. I haven't listed the more placeholder starters currently in place or midlevel guys like Garappolo or Derek Carr. The bolded QBs are all QBs that their teams hope are the QBs of the present and future, including all of the league's current tier of elite QBs save for Burrow, Lawrence, Herbert and I suppose you have to say Tua if healthy. Franchise QBs have been raining down on the league for the past few years, but the Jets have been choosing the door with the booby prize every single time. And it couldn't have happened to a better franchise.

Edit: Great minds thinking alike, Bill Lee. I was also working on a Jets What If? post.

 

[Hammer of Thor]

First half of this Rich Eisen monologue was gold today, compared it to the guy from The Shining coming all the way up from Florida just to take an axe to the chest. 2nd part isn’t as good but shows the Jets fan mindset.

 

[Bill Lee]

Edit: Great minds thinking alike, Bill Lee. I was also working on a Jets What If? post.

I think you did an even better job with your post.

I just looked at the 2021 draft, you went back many years and examined potential trades and FAs as well.

In a way the superb job Tampa did by going after TB12 hard despite his age might have set up a big trap for da Jete. They were rumored to be the "other team" in the TB12 sweepstakes after SF went with "that mother****er" Jimmy G but the NYJ football situation wasn't as appealing and it seems they did not pursue like TPA did. Now da Jete say to themselves "we missed out once, let's go in hard after Rodgers" expecting it to work out like it did for Tampa, clearly without factoring in how bad their OL is. Wah, wah, same old ****ing Jets!

I also recall scratching my head about the Jamaal Adams pick. I get it, best player available, but man the Jete knew they needed a QB, and to spend #6 on a safety means you better end up with the GOAT safety. Adams was a better than average starting safety, but not the GOAT. There's a limit to how much you can impact the game as a safety, especially compared to a QB. Wah, wah, same old ****ing Jets!

 

[Koma]

The implications for da Jete are even worse than I thought.

He's already been paid most of his money for 2023 ($35M as a lump-sum bonus) and he has a similar payment due in 2024 (also $35M lump-sum bonus) fully guaranteed.

Clearly he's not going to retire and pass up on that, he'll come back to camp next year at least long enough to get that check.

The numbers more or less presume that he's playing not just this this year and next, but also you can make a strong case that da Jete really need him to play and restructure in 2025 as well:

Aaron Rodgers’ Contract Details, Salary Cap Impact, Bonuses, and Net Worth

What is the structure of Aaron Rodgers' contract, what is his salary-cap impact, and what options do the Jets have for the future?

www.profootballnetwork.com

Keep in mind the cap hit we had for TB12 when he left for Tampa was $35M and Tampa has the same $35M right now, and such a hit really makes it next to impossible to build a good team. Da Jete are looking at a hit at least that big, if not bigger.

In short, da Jete are ****ed. Everywhere they look is pain. They really made a huge commitment to the 40 year old Rodgers, and chances look grim that he's going to be able to play at a high level going forward after he rehabs from this major injury.

Gee, I remember multiple posts defending the Rodgers contract as the smartest, most team-friendly, no downsides contract in the history of written or verbal agreements. Unfortunately, the Jets did not bother to include an exploding achilles rider.

To be like Bert Breer and make this story about myself, I posted something yesterday about why Rodgers time in New York would be a disappointment. I had been procrastinating about posting it and wanted to make sure I got it in before the MNF kickoff. I thought it would take until late October/November for Rodgers to decide he had enough of the Jets experience. It speaks to how powerful and pervasive the Suckitude of the Jets is that, 4 plays into the season, Rodgers' achilles tendon determined "I'm not waiting a couple months, I'm out of here NOW!"

 

[Tunescribe]

Gee, I remember multiple posts defending the Rodgers contract as the smartest, most team-friendly, no downsides contract in the history of written or verbal agreements. Unfortunately, the Jets did not bother to include an exploding achilles rider.

To be like Bert Breer and make this story about myself, I posted something yesterday about why Rodgers time in New York would be a disappointment. I had been procrastinating about posting it and wanted to make sure I got it in before the MNF kickoff. I thought it would take until late October/November for Rodgers to decide he had enough of the Jets experience. It speaks to how powerful and pervasive the Suckitude of the Jets is that, 4 plays into the season, Rodgers' achilles tendon determined "I'm not waiting a couple months, I'm out of here NOW!"

I won't go as far as to call it premonitory, but Rodgers' quote bubble on "Jete Savior Parade" from this thread's opening illustrated narrative might be considered ... hmm ... prophetic?

 

[PATS16N0]

 

[PATS16N0]

 

[Bill Lee]

Over/under on how long it will remain "Zach's team"?

 

[PATS16N0]

Robert Saleh at the post-game podium:

 

[Ghost of Autumn]

Over/under on how long it will remain "Zach's team"?

Precisely 5 days, 17 hours, and 30 minutes.

That's ~ the start of the second quarter for this sunday's game.

 

[Tunescribe]