Aaron Rodgers Expresses Interest In 2025 Return, But The Jets Have Bigger Problems

Reporters asked quarterback Aaron Rodgers if he intended to return to the New York Jets for the 2025 season this week.

“I think so, yeah,” Rodgers said.

Most Jets fans have been ensnared in a thousand-yard stare for weeks and presumably didn’t react to the news.

To say that the Jets’ 2024 season has not gone to plan would be like saying that the Titanic came up a little short. With an army of young talent on both sides of the ball and a four-time MVP under center, New York is 2-8 and eliminated from playoff contention. Head coach Robert Saleh was fired and scapegoated for the team’s struggles, but the team hasn’t improved since his departure. It has been an unmitigated disaster.

Rodgers announcing a vague, non-committal intent to return certainly doesn’t feel like good news. It’s not just his poor performance this season, which has been a consistent issue. In 2023, the Jets’ front office made every accommodation to secure Rodgers, signing many former teammates and even notoriously shaky offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. 

It all turned out to be dead weight—even newly acquired star Davante Adams has been underwhelming—but Rodgers was supposed to be the foundation and carry it. It simply hasn’t worked out, and it will take an entire offseason to untangle the mess of young stars and washed-up former Packers and get back to square one. That offseason will apparently be delayed now, as Rodgers claims not to be done yet.

On the other hand, what’s the rush? The Jets haven’t done anything previously to prove that they can move on from Rodgers. The problem isn’t that the team can’t pick quarterback prospects. Geno Smith and Sam Darnold both turned out to be highly capable NFL quarterbacks. The problem is that they only realized their potential after leaving New York and developing in more competent hands. At this point, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before Zach Wilson finds a forever home and makes a playoff appearance or two while the Jets wallow in the AFC East.

Worse than Rodgers, the failure of the month for a team in perpetual meltdown, the Jets have issues on a systemic, organizational level. They have made it an insidious habit to waste young talent, blame the wrong people and invest in misguided solutions.

So when Rodgers took the stand Wednesday and announced that he might chill in East Rutherford for another season, it was difficult to get too broken up about it. Sure, things are bad now, terrible even. But the only difference between this season and every Jets season of the last decade is that there was hope for improvement. 2025 feels like more of the same either way.