Aaron Rodgers didn't beat the Jets; the Jets did
Jets head coach Aaron Glenn reacts in the second half against the Pittsburgh Steelers at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
As much as those four touchdown passes and the game-winning drive he engineered scream otherwise, Aaron Rodgers did not beat the Jets.
He may think he did, and he probably feels some vindication after his Steelers posted a 34-32 victory over a team that just a few months ago decided it would be better off without him. He said as much with his self-satisfied “happy to beat everybody associated with the Jets” line on his way out the doors of MetLife Stadium on Sunday.
But he was in that locker room with them for two years, he was on the field with them through all of last season, and there were the half-dozen or so games in 2024 in which he had a chance to lead them to late-game comeback wins the way he did with the Steelers in this Week 1 contest . . . but didn’t. So deep down, he probably knows who actually beat the Jets.
Just as they almost always do. Just as they did last year with Rodgers. Just as they have been doing since new coach Aaron Glenn was playing for the team himself three decades ago.
It’s a lesson that Garrett Wilson (seven receptions, 95 yards, one touchdown) and Breece Hall (107 yards on 19 carries) know well. It’s one that Justin Fields (three touchdowns in his debut for the team, two of them rushing) is just starting to learn. They played great. They just played for the Jets.
Watching Rodgers on Sunday, you may have asked: Where was this guy last year? Where was Aaron to the Rescue in 2024?
It’s very clear. He was a Jet back then. That’s why he couldn’t do it.
Until this franchise can figure out how to break that nasty habit of inflicting pain on itself, the actual opponent will remain irrelevant. Even in situations like this one, when the foe is a four-time MVP, a future Hall of Famer, a living swirl of controversy whose most recent games were played here and whose departure came amid a cloud of contention, it really always comes down to the Jets versus the Jets. The losing streak in that matchup is closing in on 60 years.
Consider that “game-winning” drive that Rodgers will get credit for in which he completed three clean passes for nine eye-rolling yards. The biggest gains on that possession for the Steelers? A 19-yard pass-interference penalty against Brandon Stephens that easily could have been ignored by the officials and an 11-yard “completion” to DK Metcalf that was broken up by Sauce Gardner, ricocheted off a Steeler and landed on Metcalf’s chest as he lay on the ground. All of that to set up a 60-yard field goal by Chris Boswell with 1:03 remaining that gave the Steelers their final lead.
Then there was Xavier Gipson. His special-teams plays have allowed Rodgers’ team to win the last two times he opened a season at MetLife Stadium. In 2023, with Rodgers long removed from the game with a torn Achilles, it was Gipson who returned an overtime punt for a touchdown to beat the Bills. This time it was Gipson who coughed up a kickoff return early in the fourth quarter and helped the Steelers score 14 points in 50 seconds and take a 31-26 lead.
Throw in the penalty against Quincy Williams for a late hit out of bounds late in the third quarter that sparked the first of those consecutive touchdown drives. And the gaps in the secondary that left receivers wide open; Rodgers said he couldn’t believe how uncovered Ben Skowronek was on his first touchdown pass as a Steeler or that the Steelers ran the exact same play again later in the game and scored a touchdown on that one, too. And the two failed two-point conversions by the Jets that would have changed the math of everything that followed.
“The one thing to me that turned this game is, man, we can’t have turnovers, we can’t do it,” Glenn said. “We have to be a more disciplined team. There were some penalties that happened in that game that were true discipline issues. That’s something that will be addressed because you will not be on the field with this team if you are going to cause us to lose games.”
If he truly stands by that bold statement to the letter, the Jets might have trouble finding 11 guys to put on the field for any given play.
The good news is that Glenn does seem hellbent on fixing this, and there is a good chance he will. It’ll take some time to unroot the deep weeds, but he understands the problems from firsthand experience. If he acts on these matters with as much toughness as he has been talking about them — and there is no reason to believe he won’t — then it could happen sooner than expected. The Jets could start to show some signs of progress before too long.
And yes, at some point, it will become clear that the Jets are better off without Rodgers than they would have been with him this season.
Glenn just wasn’t able to complete that conversion in time for Rodgers’ return.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
