Mike Lupica: It’s time for Aaron Rodgers to be a star on the field for the Jets

If Aaron Rodgers is going to look like the Rodgers of old and not just plain old, if he’s going to be more than the other Green Bay guy, Brett Favre, was as a Jet, Sunday would be a good place to start.

That means even against a Patriots team that on paper looks like nothing more than a JV team at this point. Really, it would be a most excellent time for Rodgers to look as if he’s not on his way to being as colossal a mistake as the Jets have ever made. Which, as Jets fans know, is saying plenty.

Rodgers was supposed to save the Jets from Zach Wilson. But it’s worth noting that Wilson was 4-3 after seven games a year ago. Rodgers’ Jets — whose are they if they’re not his, Joe Namath’s? — are 2-5 going into the Patriots game. He’s thrown three more touchdown passes than Wilson had thrown at this point a year ago, and three more interceptions. Good times.

Before the Jets have even gotten to the halfway point of what we kept hearing was a Super Bowl-or-bust season, Rodgers has even thrown a “you guys” at the media as if he were throwing one more pick. Oh, sure. When asked after the Steelers game about what the Jets have to do to get things turned around, he started by saying, “Stop listening to you guys.” I immediately wondered if I’d been the one running bad routes.

So far, seven games in, the Jets have fired the former head coach, Robert Saleh, and lost both games they’ve played since then, and have also watched their defense get worse instead of better as we all have.

We’ve also all heard Ambassador Woody, who continues to be one of the worst sports owners we’ve ever had around here — and THAT is saying plenty — say after that firing of Saleh to look out, because the Jets were about to kick some, well, you know. And that’s all happened after Ambassador Woody has repeatedly said this is the best Jets team he’s ever had.

In addition to those tons of fun, the Jets have essentially fired their former offensive coordinator, Rodgers’ good buddy Nathaniel Hackett, and replaced him with Todd Downing. And just scored a grand total of 15 points against the Steelers last Monday night.

That one was Davante Adams’ first game after the Jets had just up and traded for another one of Rodgers’ old buddies (and we’re going to find out just how old with him, too). Not only did the Jets lose in Pittsburgh, they got stuffed in their lockers as the Steelers were scoring the last 31 points of the game.

A long time ago, April of 1998, I was with Yogi Berra on television at a time when the Yankees had started out what would turn out to be the greatest season in their history at 0-3. This was after they had lost to Cleveland the year before in the first round of the playoffs.

I asked Yogi that night if he had any advice for Joe Torre.

“Yeah,” Yogi said. “Tell him to win some games.”

Those Yankees sure did, going 114-45 the rest of the way and then winning it all. Of course, what has been nothing more than a mediocre — at best — Jets team so far doesn’t belong in the same conversation with the ’98 Yankees, despite all that Super Bowl-or-bust chatter. But even after the times when the Jets have moved the ball and have gotten some stops, tell me who can look at this team, as presently constituted, and see them winning a playoff game against the Chiefs if they could somehow make the playoffs, or the Ravens, or the Bills or the Steelers? Seriously — in what world does anybody see that happening.

Do the Jets have a favorable schedule the rest of the way? They really do, starting with Sunday’s game against the Patriots. Here’s the rest of it after that:

Texans.

At Cardinals.

Colts.

Seahawks (in the Geno Smith Bowl.)

At Dolphins.

At Jaguars.

Rams.

At Bills.

Dolphins.

There are plenty of winnable games on that schedule, absolutely. But so was the Broncos game a few weeks ago. Is there a path to nine wins if Rodgers lights up the Patriots on Sunday, as he sure ought to? There absolutely is. If they can go 7-3 the rest of the way, that does get them to 9-8. But just saying that reminds you of times out of the past when we’d watch one of our struggling baseball teams be still talking about making the playoffs after a season of treading water. When we’d hear somebody say this, or write this:

“They just have to play .600 ball the rest of the way.”

And you’d always wonder: What in the world had they done to make anybody think they had .600 ball in them? Now we’re asking the Jets to play .700 ball if they want to get to nine wins, which might be enough to get them into the tournament.

Did the Mets turn everything around this season? They did. Can the Jets do the same? As another Yankee manager, Aaron Boone, likes to say, “It’s right there in front of them.” Maybe if they do win some games, we won’t have to endure all these endless assessments of the mood of the team from Rodgers. How they’re too flat. Or too angry. He said they had to stick together after he threw that pick against the Vikings and his team lost to Sam Darnold, and before you knew it the owner had fired Saleh and Hackett had been demoted and Mike Williams was under the team bus, if only briefly, for running a bad pass route; and more reinforcements were on the way in the form of Adams and Haason Reddick.

This Jets season now becomes even more of a referendum on Aaron Rodgers than it already was, if such a thing is possible. Even more of a referendum on him than Ambassador Woody. And you know what happens if they do turn things around and get to nine wins, right? It will mean this experiment with an aging Green Bay legend will have produced the same number of wins that Brett Favre did.

The Jets have to not just beat the Patriots, but beat them up. Light them up. Ernie Accorsi once sat in the stands at the Super Bowl when the Giants got the ball back against the Patriots in Glendale and said this about Eli Manning, “If he’s what I thought he was, he’ll be that now.”

If Rodgers is even close to being the player the Jets obviously still thought he was, he’ll be that player now. He’s going to be 41 in a month. If not now, when exactly? Time for him to be a star somewhere other than Pat McAfee’s show.

FREDDIE JOINS GIBBY IN DODGERS LORE, VOTE OF CONFIDENCE NO GIANT RELIEF & DELIVER SOME GUTS TO BEZOS …

I was lucky enough to be at Dodger Stadium for Game 1 in 1988 when Kirk Gibson, who couldn’t run and could barely walk, still hit that ninth-inning home run off the great Dennis Eckersley.

And it wasn’t just Jack Buck who couldn’t believe what we’d just seen, because none of us could.

Tom Brokaw was over near the third-base dugout that night and yelled, “We just saw the ending to ‘The Natural.’”

Now Freddie Freeman — his ankle wasn’t nearly as bad as Gibson’s legs were in ’88, but still — does it again, in the bottom of the 10th this time, his team down a run the same as the Dodgers were against the A’s, the bases loaded for Freddie.

Who then produced one of those swings, one that produced a truly wonderful call from Joe Davis:

“Gibby meet Freddie!”

Still a lot of World Series to be played, for sure.

The Yankees have already come back in these playoffs after crushing late inning home runs from that Big Christmas guy and David Fry of the Guardians.

But even though the ’88 Series went five games, the A’s never really recovered from a Game 1 home run that felt a lot like a Game 7 home run.

The Yankees have to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to them.

By the way?

Nestor Cortes, one of the good guys, wanted to pitch in the World Series in the worst way.

And now the first Series game of his life ended in the very worst way.

One more thing?

Baseball still does moments like this the best.

Always has, always will.

How do you suppose Malik Nabers is liking Jersey so far?

You know what Giants fans really didn’t want to hear this week from one of their owners?

Votes of confidence for the coach and general manager, whether John Mara’s heart was in the right place or not.

The third season of “Lincoln Lawyer” is pretty great, if you ask me.

You did ask, right?

I’m pretty sure the Celtics just made another 3.

Too soon?

Juan Soto didn’t exactly look like 700 million bucks in the outfield on Friday night, did he?

But Gleyber Torres still should have been able to field Soto’s throw cleanly after Ohtani’s double, just because Ohtani getting to third saved the night for the Dodgers at the time.

It’s always fun in sports when, even after the first game of the season — and the first of 82, the way it was for the Knicks and Celtics the other night — when that game gets treated like the end of everything.

If Giancarlo Stanton keeps this up, they’re going to name a candy bar after him.

The Washington Post not making a presidential endorsement — the Washington Post of Kay Graham and Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — was an act of cowardice.

Maybe Jeff Bezos, who owns the paper, could get overnighted some guts on Amazon.