SANTA CLARA, Calif. — This time around, Aaron Rodgers didn’t lead the New York Jets out of the tunnel wielding an American flag. Rather, he blended in with a crowd of teammates, took his place at the sideline for the national anthem flanked by his top two wide receivers, put on a Jets cap and took it all in. When Boyz II Men finished “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Rodgers hugged Allen Lazard, hugged Garrett Wilson, chatted briefly with special teams coordinator Brant Boyer and then went to midfield for the coin toss.
The 49ers won the coin toss and deferred, so the Jets were up first. Rodgers got through the first series unscathed. He got past the fourth snap, and the fifth.
Last year he tore his Achilles on the fourth play of the season, on a sack by then-Buffalo Bills pass rusher Leonard Floyd. On Monday, the first big hit Rodgers took was on a sack by now-San Francisco 49ers pass rusher Leonard Floyd. Rodgers jumped up, just fine.
He led an efficient scoring drive in the first quarter. In the third quarter he threw a vintage touchdown pass. It was a dime on a free play — a Rodgers classic, as he’s maybe the NFL’s best-ever at capitalizing when the defense jumps offside. The throw was to Lazard, a fitting target for his first touchdown as a Jet, 36 yards for a score.
.@AaronRodgers12 deep ball to @AllenLazard TD❕
📺 #NYJvsSF on ESPN pic.twitter.com/5YA7S4kM8p
— New York Jets (@nyjets) September 10, 2024
Those moments were encouraging. He survived a game. But there won’t be a celebration for survival. In between all of those moments — running out of the tunnel, the anthem, the coin toss, the first snaps, the fourth snaps, the fifth snaps, the touchdown — Rodgers and the Jets got a rude awakening against the 49ers. San Francisco is a Super Bowl contender; that’s what the Jets fancy themselves to be — Rodgers has said as much. Instead, the chasm between the two teams on Monday night was as large as an Egyptian pyramid. One team looked ready for another Super Bowl trot; the other did not. The Jets led 7-3 in the first quarter. They trailed 26-7 at one point in the third, and waved the white flag with 3:06 left in the fourth, down 32-13. They lost 32-19.
“We’ve got to play better,” Rodgers said. “I’ve got to play better.”
The offense was inconsistent. The defense was utterly dominated by a 49ers rushing attack sans Christian McCaffrey. Before Monday, third-year back Jordan Mason had never had more than 11 carries or 69 yards in a game; he ran for 147 yards and a touchdown on 28 carries against the Jets. Mason averaged 1.82 yards before contact per rush, which would’ve ranked fifth-best among running backs last season. The defensive line barely generated any pressure — the defensive line combined for two QB hits and one sack (Haason Reddick, anyone?) and struggled to get off blocks in the running game.
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“They beat us up front,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said. “Plain and simple.”
It was concerning for a defense that has been a Top-5 unit each of the last two years, and was supposed to do that again in 2024.
“They introduced us to some championship football,” Saleh said. “We’ll get that s— fixed.”
As for Rodgers and the offense: Maybe the Jets breathed a sigh of relief when he got past the fourth snap, but they certainly didn’t have reason to celebrate that moment, as running back Breece Hall fumbled the ball away after a reception. It was an unfortunate follow-up to the previous drive, when Lazard’s third-down drop capped a season-opening three-and-out.
As for Hall, it was only the second fumble of his NFL career. He had a bad drop later in the game too.
“Aaron said he needed to play better and everybody on our offense needs to play better but for me personally I had a misread or two, a drop and a fumble,” said Hall, who finished with 54 yards on 16 carries. “I put that on myself. I’m going to get better.”
Hall did score a touchdown on the drive after the fumble — the Jets’ best possession of the game, a glimmer of hope that maybe the offense can get on the right track and not look like the boring, bland, three-and-out offense they were in 2023. That drive opened with two short Hall runs — offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett has not abandoned his ineffective run-run-pass tendencies just yet — and then Rodgers hit Wilson on a 16-yard completion, and another 14-yard completion a couple plays later. At this point, Rodgers was dealing; he hit Hall for 13 yards, and then Wilson again after a couple of plays for eight. Hall capped it off with a three-yard score, giving the Jets a 7-3 lead.
Then, the 49ers scored on the next seven possessions. After a three-and-out to start the game, San Francisco scored on all eight drives until they kneeled out the clock in the final seconds. Rodgers cooled off and made a few errant throws — he tried to force a pass to Wilson in the third quarter that was deflected and intercepted by linebacker Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles. And then on a fourth-and-1 in the fourth quarter, he threw it behind Wilson on a slant for a turnover on downs. That was his last pass of the game — backup Tyrod Taylor finished things off with a garbage-time touchdown pass to Lazard, his second of the day, doubling his total from a year ago on one day.
But that drive in the first quarter, ending with the Hall touchdown, was a sign of what the Jets can be when everything is working. It included three third-down conversions. It was also a red-zone drive that ended with a touchdown. Those sort of drives were rare the last two years with Zach Wilson (and others) leading the way. The Jets never had more than two third-down conversions in a first quarter all of last season.
“I feel like when we’re rolling I know what that can look like,” Garrett Wilson said. “We weren’t rolling throughout the game but we found it in spurts there and we gotta find a way to bottle it up and take it to every drive. But yeah, maybe that’s what it can look like … it felt good at the time and we gotta get back to that.”
Added Hall: “We showed how we can move the ball when we want to be and be a high powered offense, but we just didn’t click how we should’ve today and that’s what cost us. We just gotta be better.”
It would’ve helped if they got more opportunities. The 49ers ran 70 offensive plays. The Jets ran 49, and their time of possession, 21:20, was the lowest of any start in Rodgers’ career. Wilson had four catches on the first-quarter scoring drive, and then only received five targets (catching one) from Rodgers the rest of the way.
“They played keep away,” Saleh said. “Our offense never got a chance to get in rhythm.”
Rodgers pointed out that the Jets were “just bad on first and second downs,” though admitted “we just didn’t have a lot of opportunities.”
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The Jets will have two more opportunities in the next 10 days, against two opponents that aren’t expected to contend for the playoffs. They play Sunday against the Titans in Tennessee, and then a few days later host the New England Patriots in their home opener on a Thursday night.
The Jets are supposed to contend for a Super Bowl. On Monday night they saw what a team that has reached that level looks like, and they weren’t ready for it.
“They just played harder than us,” Hall said.
Wilson said that “you realize all of a sudden you’re not there. We gotta go prepare, get better every week, every day, every rep because we’re not there yet. They whipped our ass today and that’s the reality of it, and we’ve gotta find a way to get better. The great teams, they bounce back from this and that’s what we plan to do.”
Rodgers’ final tally wasn’t particularly impressive — 13 of 21 for 167 yards, one touchdown and one interception — but he showed signs that he’s still good enough to lead a contender. For once, the quarterback wasn’t the Jets’ biggest problem. Though if they don’t fix the rest of the problems that came up on Monday, specifically on defense, Rodgers’ dreams of making it back to a Super Bowl will go unrealized.
Asked if he thought the 49ers were a championship-level team, Rodgers concurred, then added “I hope we see them there.”
(Top photo: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
