One day after the loss, Johnson held a meeting with team brass and “suggested to the coaches that they bench Aaron Rodgers in favor of Tyrod Taylor because he felt Rodgers’ performance was holding the team back,” according to a report from The Athletic‘s Zack Rosenblatt and Dianna Russini. The report has since been confirmed by ProFootballTalk.com’s Mike Florio. Jets coaches and general manager Joe Douglas talked Johnson out of it.
Two months later, Douglas has been fired. New York is 3-8 and it would take a near-miracle to reach the playoffs this season. Rodgers has completed 63.4% of his passes for 2,442 yards with 17 touchdowns against seven interceptions through 11 games this fall.
It appears that the Jets never bounced back from that Broncos game.
According to Rosenblatt and Russini, Jets owner Woody Johnson actually wanted to bench quarterback Aaron Rodgers after the team’s Week 4 loss to the Denver Broncos.
Yes, you read that correctly. The Jets owner wanted to bench Rodgers four games into his comeback season from his 2023 Achilles injury.
If your jaw is on the floor, consider this is a franchise that has already fired its head coach (Robert Saleh) and general manager (Joe Douglas) this season. Here are Rosenblatt and Russini on the details on this reported fracas.
“According to those sources, the day after the Jets’ loss to the Denver Broncos on Sept. 29, there was a contentious meeting at the team facility,” the report read. “It included [Woody] Johnson, [Joe] Douglas, vice chairman Christopher Johnson, team president Hymie Elhai, and Ira Akselrad, an advisor to Johnson. It also included a group of coaches: then-head coach Robert Saleh, offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, then-defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich and special teams coordinator Brant Boyer among them.The coaches had been called in to explain what happened with their units during the 10-9 home loss to the Broncos. During the meeting, [Woody] Johnson suggested to the coaches that they bench Aaron Rodgers in favor of Tyrod Taylor because he felt Rodgers’ performance was holding the team back.
“The coaches and Douglas, stunned at the suggestion, talked him out of it and convinced Johnson to stay the course and that benching Rodgers, with his pedigree, four games into the season would not sit well with the locker room. The coaches also felt it would embarrass Rodgers. The idea of benching the future Hall of Famer sounded so absurd that one coach asked whether the owner was serious — multiple sources from that meeting believed he was.”
Welp! As if the Jets 3-8 season wasn’t bad enough, here’s this brand-new controversy. We’re sure Rodgers will take this report well.
Now, both Douglas and Saleh are unemployed because they gave Rodgers undue faith he didn’t deserve. On Tuesday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the Jets had fired Douglas just about a month after they jettisoned Saleh for the same “Rodgers let us down … badly” reasons.
If you weren’t born yesterday, you saw this news coming awhile ago:
More change in New York: Jets now have fired GM Joe Douglas, sources tell ESPN.
Last month, head coach Robert Saleh. Now, Douglas.
On some level, I do understand the inclination to label Douglas another Rodgers scapegoat while the woeful Jets flounder. Rodgers is one of the most prominent figures in football history. He has built up such a tremendous cache of goodwill over nearly two decades as a professional quarterback (on the field) that it would probably take a lot for an owner like Woody Johnson to ever (completely) punt on the (imaginary) possibilities he presents.
But I don’t think Douglas is a Rodgers scapegoat that lets the future Hall of Famer get off scot-free for incinerating any hope this Jets regime once had. That sentiment applied much more to Saleh, who was a vessel for Rodgers’ discontent because he had a precedent of showing that he thought he knew better than his coaches over the years. Saleh was someone who never vibed with Rodgers, so the Jets were happy to throw him under the bus without a second thought when their season still, technically, wasn’t over.
At 3-8, Douglas going down with the ship now feels very different. This is the Jets cutting everyone who bought Rodgers’ brazen snake oil loose without a second thought. It’s ownership making a tacit acknowledgment that acquiring a (then) semi-washed diva like Rodgers for multiple high-end draft picks was a mistake which wasted everyone’s time with the organization.
How do I know this for certain?
Well, dearest readers, that’s because Rodgers — a year after tearing his Achilles, mind you — is having the worst statistical season of his career.
Rodgers hasn’t thrown for 300 yards in a game all season. (The last time he threw for 300 yards in a game was in December 2021.) He’s also averaging his lowest yards per attempt and has his lowest passer rating since his two initial non-starter seasons in Green Bay in … 2005 and 2006. This is beyond a quarterback struggling. This is a player who is a hollow husk of the all-world talent he once was, now at the helm of the NFL’s 17th-ranked offense on an expected points added (EPA) per play basis. Any time you might think the Jets have a modicum of hope, at this point, Rodgers throws it away himself.
And I think it’d be silly to assert that Johnson and Jets ownership doesn’t recognize this grim reality. Rodgers will be 42 come December of next year. He has just one year left on his current contract. The Jets, as it stands, have the No. 7 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. Given the way Gang Green is in a complete nosedive now, don’t be surprised if that draft selection ends up being a top-five pick with the next Jets regime sticking its neck out for a new young quarterback to develop while Rodgers plays his usual brand of high-profile obscurity. That is, if they even keep him around for another season.
Nonetheless, until Rodgers’ fate is decided, the Jets will offload every way-too-willing sycophant who dared trust him in the first place. Without question. The likely next suspect on the list? Offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, who has sworn by Rodgers’ antics for the last half-decade like a lowly barnacle attaches itself to the hull of a well-worn ship.
In the coming weeks, if I were Hackett, I would make sure to have my bags packed. Just in case. The Jets’ purge of everything and everyone even somewhat connected to Rodgers has likely only just begun.
Joe Douglas had to go, but will his firing actually fix the Jets? (no.)
Joe Douglas had to go. In five-plus seasons as the New York Jets general manager, his rosters put together a 30-64 record. His teams never won more than seven games.
There were extenuating circumstances, of course. His first head coach was Adam Gase, a man constructed solely of Monster energy drinks and pizza grease who coached up to his constitution. Zach Wilson was incredible throwing Pro Day passes against theoretical defenses and genuinely horrible against actual humans. Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles four snaps into his 2023 season and saw the defense behind him collapse in 2024.
These were all things Douglas should have had the foresight or authority to correct. He did not, and now the Jets will almost certainly extend the longest postseason drought in major men’s professional sports. So, 11 weeks into a 3-8 campaign, he was fired.
This will change nothing for a team that alternates between betting on high risk quick fixes and sitting on potential long-term solutions long after they’ve become untenable. The Jets remain a team with a below average quarterback who turns 41 in two weeks. Their defense is less than the sum of its parts. New York is less a franchise than a ravenous black hole consuming all light that attempts to grace its boundary.
A knee-jerk reaction would be to blame Rodgers for this. The veteran was given the keys to the clubhouse and allowed to play Augustus as potential free agent and trade additions duked it out, waiting for his thumbs up or down. Former Green Bay Packers like Randall Cobb, Allen Lazard and Davante Adams joined the lineup to varying effect.
Cobb is currently a college football analyst. Lazard was overpaid ($11 million annually). Adams’s 6.0 yards per target are his lowest since 2015. Nathaniel Hackett, the offensive coordinator hand picked thanks in part to his past success with Rodgers, was stripped of his play calling duties.
But Douglas paved a road of disappointment well before Rodgers arrived. Sam Darnold went 7-6 in his first season with Douglas at GM and Gase as his head coach. Rather than prop him up with receiving help like the Buffalo Bills would do to unlock the best version of Josh Allen, the Jets opted to rebuild his offensive line in free agency.
They doled out contracts to George Fant, Connor McGovern and Greg Van Roten. Darnold’s blitz rate dropped, but his pressure and sack rates both rose. There was no reliable wideout to bail him out of tough situations because New York’s answer for Robbie Chosen’s departure was to sign Breshad Perriman.
Darnold went 2-10 that season and was summarily traded to the Carolina Panthers. Gase was fired. Douglas was paired with Robert Saleh, a rising young defensive-minded head coach and given the directive to find a franchise quarterback who could thrive along the rising tide of an improving defense. He landed on Zach Wilson, the second overall pick in a crop of cursed quarterbacks.
Wilson failed — an understandable miss, given the abject lack of success from guys selected after him like Trey Lance, Justin Fields and Mac Jones — and the directive changed. Douglas needed to save his job with a big swing. He landed on an unhappy quarterback nearing his 40th birthday and coming off his least efficient season as a starter. 2022 was a season in which the Packers missed the playoffs with a healthy Rodgers for only the second time in 13 years.
Rodgers can’t be faulted for playing like a 40-year-old just because Tom Brady broke our collective brains. His decline was obvious, even before landing on the fact the Jets offered him many of the same issues that chased him out of Green Bay, from offensive line concerns to wideout depth.
What was surprising was Saleh’s sacrifice after Week 5, a desperate bid to shake things up that instead destabilized New York’s defense. The Jets ranked sixth in expected points added (EPA) allowed per play under Saleh. Since firing him, they’re 30th, nestled between the Panthers and Dallas Cowboys in the rankings.
via rbsdm.com and the author.
Having exhausted the “blame Saleh” stack (which looks even worse in hindsight) and unwilling to alienate the quarterback upon which they once staked their future, the Jets had little recourse but to fire the architect of it all. Douglas could have survived these events in a vacuum, but at some point bad luck gives way to incompetence. It’s easy to fire a general manager who was given more than five years to turn things around and couldn’t even win a third of his games.
This does not fix the organizational rot that existed before Douglas and threatens to linger long into the future. All evidence suggests building around Rodgers was a mistake. Douglas’s replacement will have to walk on eggshells around the veteran quarterback, all the while knowing he could shave money from a below-average salary cap situation by releasing the former four-time MVP. He’ll likely be tasked with using New York’s pending top-10 draft pick to either find his next franchise quarterback (in a draft filled with flawed prospects) or a playmaker who may not find his rhythm in the NFL until Rodgers is gone.
The Jets should not be as bad as they are. There are several genuinely good young players around which they should build. Instead, the franchise’s insistence on throwing good money after bad has left a team with Super Bowl hopes staring at a 3-8 record. Maybe things get better without Douglas around. But odds are, he’s just another scapegoat for a team unable or unwilling to create the long-term fix it desperately needs.
After the win over the Houston Texans, Jets fans were told everything was ahead of them.
More like the train bearing down on Gang Green.
The Indianapolis Colts got a four-yard touchdown run by Anthony Richardson in the final minute on Sunday at MetLife Stadium to pick up a 28-27 win.
The loss dropped Aaron Rodgers and the lowly Jets to 3-8. All New York needs to have a season with a better than .500 record is to win out over its next six games.
The Jets’ last drive pretty much sums up the Rodgers experience:
Rodgers was sacked by Kwity Paye and fumbled on the first play, but the Jets recovered. After Breece Hall had an 11-yard catch and a delay-of-game penalty was called on the Colts’ E.J. Speed, Rodgers was sacked again by Paye — sealing the win for the Colts (5-6), who snapped a three-game skid.
Arizona Cardinals QB Kyler Murray has elitism that is represented by one key 2024 NFL passing statistic.
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray has undoubtedly had his career edified by head coach Jonathan Gannon this NFL season. Murray’s elitism is represented by one key statistic keeping the offense on schedule.
Murray ranks No. 6 among NFL quarterbacks with a completion percentage of 69.2%. For perspective, sitting ahead of Murray at No. 5 in this category is Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. That is great company.
Murray has just 2,058 total yards passing through Week 10, so it is clear that Gannon isn’t expecting Murray to be a high-volume guy. Instead, Gannon has used Murray’s rhythmic play style to an advantage, sequencing in QB running plays and RPO to give Murray easy reads in the pass game.
At State Farm Stadium this past Sunday, Murray ignited a 17-0 Cardinals’ scoring run when he threw a precision touchdown pass to wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. in the second quarter.
Ultimately, as long as Gannon continues to establish the running game, he can bait defenses into playing man coverage where opponents will be susceptible to both the athleticism of the Cardinals skills players, and impeccable throwing accuracy of Murray.
Get more Cardinals and NFL coverage from Cards Wire’s Jess Root and others by listening to the latest on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on Spotify, YouTubeor Apple podcasts.
Aaron Rodgers dismissed Mike Williams’ jab about their “red line” drama, choosing resolution over rivalry after the Steelers’ Week 10 win.
While New York Jets QB Aaron Rodgers may have started the drama between himself and former Jet and current Pittsburgh Steelers WR Mike Williams, he is certainly the first to put it behind him.
Rodgers publicly ridiculed Williams for running the wrong route during the Jets’ Week 6 loss to the Buffalo Bills, referring to the correct route he should’ve ran as the “red line.”
After scoring the game-winning touchdown in the Steelers’ Week 10 victory over the Washington Commanders, Williams took to social media to jab at his former QB, using “red line” in one of his hashtags.
When asked for his reaction to Williams’ apparent shot at him, Rodgers could have thrown gasoline on the fire, but he instead chose to extinguish it.
“I like Mike, I’m happy for Mike”
Aaron Rodgers was asked about Mike Williams appearing to troll him on Instagram: pic.twitter.com/HUJpHAS12l
While it’s highly unlikely that Rodgers and Williams will be exchanging Christmas cards anytime soon, perhaps the two former teammates can now leave the past behind.
As Williams prepares to take on more responsibilities in Pittsburgh’s offense, his Week 11 performance will be pivotal in the team’s matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, on November 17th at 1:00 PM EST.
Since Raiders traded Davante Adams to the Jets his numbers have actually gone down while losses have gone up.
It’s been a month now since Davante Adams got his wish and was traded to the New York Jets. Things weren’t going as Adams had hoped with the Raiders. The former Packers receiver wanted to be reunited with his old pal Aaron Rodgers in. New York in the hopes they could rekindle their connection from Green Bay.
That hasn’t really happened so far.
By every metric, things are actually going worse for Adams with the Jets than they were over the his three games with the Raiders to begin this season.
He has fewer receiving yards in four games with the Jets (206) than he did in three games with the Raiders (209) and has been on the losing end of more games (3) as well.
If you’re looking for a straight up comparisons, the fair thing to do would be to remove his first game from the equation since he played that game less than a week after joining the team. So, let’s put his numbers over the his last three games up against those of his first three games of this season in Las Vegas.
Team
Gms
Tgts
Rec
Yds
TDs
YPC
Wins
Raiders
3
27
18
209
1
11.6
1
Jets
3
30
17
176
1
10.3
1
It is pretty surprisingly honestly to see him go from a clunky offense led by Gardner Minshew to reuniting with his former MVP QB and actually see his numbers go down. Not to mention the team not perform any better in the win column.
For all this, his new team has lost just as many games (7) as his old team, and has the same number of wins with him on the field.
In terms of the compensation on the trade, this isn’t necessarily something Raiders fans should be celebrating. The conditions for the pick to jump from a third rounder to a second rounder were either the Jets making the AFC Championship game or Adams being named at least second team All Pro. Neither of those things appears likely at this point.
The only possible good news here is if the Jets keep losing, at least that third round pick will be a high pick. If they were to start winning now and not reach those conditions, that would be the worst case scenario for where the Raiders would be picking.
Mike Williams took a shot at Aaron Rodgers on social media after his Week 10 game-winning TD, referencing their past tension
It’s safe to say that QB Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets won’t be getting the last laugh anytime soon, as former Jet and current Steelers WR Mike Williams is quickly becoming a fan favorite in the Steel City. Williams seemingly still has a chip on his shoulder following his exit from New York and took a shot at his former QB.
After his team’s victory over the Washington Commanders in Week 10, Williams quickly took to social media to showcase an image of his incredible game-deciding TD reception late in the fourth quarter, with a caption containing an interesting jab at Rodgers: “RedLine”.
DAMN: New #Steelers WR Mike Williams TAKES SHOTS at his former QB Aaron Rodgers on Instagram….
“#REDLINE” – Term that Aaron Rodgers used while blaming Williams for an INT he once threw
This is, of course, referencing Rodgers’ infamous public call-out of Williams for running the wrong route, the ‘red line,’ following the Jets’ loss to the Buffalo Bills in Week 6.
Rodgers and Williams seemingly have unresolved drama from their time as teammates in New York. However, it’s reassuring that with his performance in Week 10—scoring as many points as the entire New York Jets’ offense did on Sunday—Williams can put this chapter to bed.
Rodgers stared down a bottom five pass defense… and did nothing. Daniels went flat when the Commanders needed him most.
Aaron Rodgers was riding high after beating the Houston Texans in Week 9. He’d unlocked the full capability of Garrett Wilson and had thrown a season-high three touchdown passes in an upset primetime win. It was only one game, but it showcased the promise the New York Jets had seen when they traded for a quarterback about to hit his fifth decade on this planet back in 2023.
This high did not last. Rodgers and the Jets were kept out of the end zone entirely in Week 10 against an underwhelming Arizona Cardinals defense. This was a major disappointment. But was Rodgers the most disappointing quarterback of Week 10?
Fortunately, we’ve got a metric that can help figure that out.
Using the advanced stat expected points added (EPA) can gauge how much a quarterback brings to the table compared to a typical player. By comparing each passer’s Week 10 EPA against their 2024 average to date we get a better picture of just how frustrating their performances were. And we can find both of those thanks to The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his incredibly useful stats sites RBSDM.com and HabitatRing.com.
This is a metric that gauges disappointment based on what we’d typically expect. Daniel Jones had a negative EPA in Week 10 while losing to the Carolina Panthers, but his -4.4 was still better than his season-long average of -5.0 EPA per game, so he missed the list. Who was the worst? There were several candidates but only one man can truly call himself the grossest quarterback of Week 10.
Please bear with me for any Twitter embed issues. Our editing software has become a whole problem on that front the past few weeks. Rest assured, if there’s a play alluded to in the text it’s worth clicking through to see if it didn’t make it into the article itself.
5. Jared Goff, Detroit Lions
Thomas B. Shea-Imagn Images
2024 expected points added (EPA) per game: 4.8
Week 10 EPA: -1.5
Difference: 6.3 points worse
Goff completed 10 passes in his first half against the Houston Texans. Three were to guys wearing Battle Red uniforms.
In fairness, one came on a last second Hail Mary and the other two were deflected. This still showed an uncharacteristic lack of pocket awareness from the veteran quarterback who’d thrown 11 touchdowns without an interception over his previous five games.
The fresh start of the second half lasted less than two minutes before pick No. 4 — this one from the red zone to wipe out a scoring opportunity. A fifth interception followed.
Then the Lions came back from a 16-point halftime deficit anyway. I’m not sure exactly how you stop Detroit if five interceptions can’t do it.
4. Aaron Rodgers, New York Jets
Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images
2024 expected points added (EPA) per game: -1.3
Week 10 EPA: -8.4
Difference: 7.1 points worse
Rodgers had a tremendous opportunity against a bottom five passing defense. Instead, he failed to find the end zone, falling 31-6 to the Arizona Cardinals and leaving the Jets one defeat away from a ninth-straight losing record.
Rodgers gained a net 128 yards on 38 dropbacks. He completed a single pass that traveled more than 10 yards downfield. Behold, the pass chart of a game manager!
via nextgenstats.nfl.com
New York traded away multiple high value draft picks, then spent two seasons adding former Rodgers teammates of varying ability just to wind up with Davis Mills behind center in Arizona.
3. Joe Flacco, Indianapolis Colts
Grace Smith/IndyStar
2024 expected points added (EPA) per game: 0.9
Week 10 EPA: -11.9
Difference: 12.8 points worse
The Flacco of 2023, who launched bombs and propelled the Cleveland Browns to the playoffs, is dead. The Flacco of 2024 looks much more like the fading veteran to whom we’d come accustomed as a New York Jet and Denver Bronco.
His very first play of the game saw him blank Taron Johnson, sitting underneath in coverage waiting to turn Flacco’s mistake into six hard-fought points.
One drive later, Flacco threw another interception — this time in Buffalo territory to snuff out a potential scoring drive. Things improved from there, but the 39-year-old couldn’t complete a Colts comeback, taking a brutal sack on fourth down in the red zone in what was a 20-13 game, then effectively sealing this one with his third pick of the day. After churning this game film, it may be Anthony Richardson’s turn in the starting lineup once more.
2. Caleb Williams, Chicago Bears
David Banks-Imagn Images
2024 expected points added (EPA) per game: -3.9
Week 10 EPA: -18.2
Difference: 14.3 points worse
The New England Patriots and a bottom 10 defense allowed Williams a wonderful opportunity to throw his first touchdown pass since October 13. Instead, the Bears were held out of the end zone altogether thanks to an offensive line that allowed its young quarterback to be sacked nine times.
Williams had little room to operate against a bottom 10 pass rush. D’Andre Swift couldn’t find lanes because his blockers were getting smothered by a defense that had given up 100-plus rushing yards each of the last seven games. The end result was 39 dropbacks and 69 net passing yards. Each time Matt Eberflus dialed up a passing play, it averaged fewer than two yards of forward progress.
Williams didn’t complete a single pass that traveled more than 10 yards downfield. He only attempted four.
1. Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders
Amber Searls-Imagn Images
2024 expected points added (EPA) per game: 9.3
Week 10 EPA: -7.2
Difference: 16.5 points worse
Daniels wasn’t the worst quarterback of Week 10, but his incredible start left him with more room to fall than any other passer in the league. While he was able to spread the field and made Terry McLaurin look great once more:
Jayden Daniels stands in the pocket, takes a big hit and STILL drops an absolute rainbow into a tight window for Terry McLaurin. absolute stud behavior pic.twitter.com/fybQBYKFVX
The accuracy and efficiency that defined his rise to rookie of the year frontrunner washed away with the game on the line. Daniels had three drives in the final 17 minutes in which any points would have pushed the Commanders’ lead to two possessions and made a Pittsburgh Steelers comeback very unlikely. He gained two first downs between them (though a third was negated by a genuinely baffling fourth down spot in his final snap of the afternoon).
Daniels’s line over those final three drives? Nine attempts, four completions, 49 passing yards, one rushing yard and a sack for a loss of 11. 11 plays and 39 net yards with the game on the line. Rough scene.
Still, it’s merely a speed bump against a veteran-laden top 10 defense. Daniels will be back. Sunday’s setback just gives him a lower perch from which he’ll fall if he donks up again next week.
