The New York Jets brought a painfully long offseason saga to an end when they picked up four time MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers via a trade with the Green Bay Packers in April.
With a team that sees themselves as a bona fide championship contender, trading for Rodgers signifies their attempt to go for broke: at 39 years old, he won’t be a top quarterback much longer. They’ll need to win this season to make the move pay off.
According to the best sports betting sites , the New York Jets’ betting odds of winning the Super Bowl this season jumped to roughly +1800 after they acquired Rodgers, an impressive leap for a team long struggling with mediocrity.
Odds and promotions can vary wildly from sportsbook to sportsbook, so make sure you shop around first if you think you’ve got a winning bet so that you know you’re locking in the best possible odds of winning big.
Here’s a look at how picking up Rodgers affects New York’s chances of winning it all this year:
whether they’re a legitimate contender, or if this will just be another example of a flailing franchise going for broke and setting themselves back years in the process.
For once, New York has a pretty solid team assembled. With defensive players like cornerback Sauce Gardner and interior lineman Quinnen Williams giving them one of the highest-ranked units in the league last season, the onus isn’t all on Rodgers to perform. Were it not for terrible quarterback play last season (exacerbated by a middling offensive line that couldn’t keep New York’s signal-callers upright) the Jets would’ve had an excellent shot at the playoffs.
Unfortunately for Jets fans, I’m not sure that New York did enough to address their o-line. They picked center Joe Tippmann and tackle Carter Warren in the second and fourth rounds, specifically, but given the sorry state of the unit beforehand (and Rodgers’ shaky injury history) I would’ve liked to see the Jets go all out to protect their prized pick-up.
Rodgers sits in an interesting position now. His numbers lagged quite a bit last season, with his yards per attempt (6.8) the second-lowest of his career in a full season. Packers’ head coach Matt LaFleur deployed a conservative offensive style, with many short passes at or behind the line of scrimmage: while it didn’t inhibit Rodgers from winning back-to-back MVPs in 2021, it’s possible that teams figured LaFleur out last year, contributing to the diminished output. It’s also possible that Rodgers is no spring chicken, and that the constant media circus that he creates became a significant distraction. If that was a problem in Green Bay, it’ll reach apocalyptic levels in the Big Apple.
To be frank, at this stage of his career I’m no longer affording Rodgers the benefit of the doubt, especially as he grows increasingly eccentric. These days, Rodgers seems more interested in being a speaker at conferences held by groups that advocate for the usage of psychedelics and making headlines off the field for any number of curious things (like paying exorbitant amounts of money to lock himself in darkness for days on end while deciding what to do with his future—behavior that allegedly had the Packers ready to cut ties from him at a loss to get him out of their hair) than he seems interested in learning the playbook or building a rapport with his new teammates during offseason workouts.
It takes two to tango, and Rodgers has exposed himself as a diva again and again over the past couple years. I don’t think he has the wherewithal to lead a team deep into the playoffs (much less care enough to do so). His marriage with the Jets is doomed in failure.
