Mike Lupica: Woody Johnson’s Jets under Aaron Rodgers aren’t iconic, just irrelevant

It was 17 months ago when Aaron Rodgers was formally introduced as the latest savior of the New York Jets. That means before he would tear his Achilles tendon and long before he would turn himself into a reality series, and not just on Tuesdays with Pat McAfee. This was when the Jets still had Joe Douglas as a general manager and Robert Saleh as a coach, and Rodgers, even about to turn 40, was going to take them all and the Jets to the top. Boy, those were the days.

Rodgers held up his new No. 8 jersey that day, and no one could have dreamt that Rodgers and the Jets would find themselves where they are now, with the Jets trying to win as many games with him — seven — as Zach Wilson and Trevor Siemian and Tim Boyle did without him a year ago.

Here is one thing Rodgers said that day, April of ’23:

“Not every franchise is like the Jets. There are a few iconic franchises in the league, and when you win there, it’s different.”

He’s not right about a lot of things when he’s not throwing a football around, occasionally as well as he did last Sunday against a Jaguars team even worse than his own. But he was right on the money with the part about not every franchise being like the Jets, and not just in pro football, now that the Jets have gone longer than any team in pro sports in this country without making it to the playoffs.

The banner that ought to be flying over MetLife Stadium on Sunday before the Jets continue playing out the string against the Rams writes itself, as derivative as it would be:

“14 Years of Lousy Football is Enough….”

All athletes, especially star athletes, coming to new teams say what they think the fan base wants to hear. So you bet people ate it up when Rodgers looked at the one Lombardi Trophy the Jets have won and said it needed a friend. But the real money quote from the day he was introduced was the one that suggested the Jets are an iconic franchise, just because it should have been a laugh line to bring down the house that day.

By now everybody knows about an extraordinarily damning piece about the Jets owner, Woody Johnson, in The Athletic the other day, because at this point if there’s life on Mars, they know about the piece, too; about Johnson’s teenaged sons talking him out of a trade for Jerry Jeudy and all the rest of it.

A friend of mine, after reading it, and Johnson’s immense legacy of being the ridiculous figure that he is, sent me the following email:

“He’s worse than I thought.”

There’s even something in the piece about Johnson getting the last pick in the NFL draft because he was fixed on drafting Mr. Irrelevant. Only it wasn’t the player he drafted. It’s Woody himself.
It all comes out about Johnson at a point where he’s starting all over again yet again; about to hire a new general manager and a new coach. And he has to decide, less than a year-and-a-half after Rodgers was finally going to change everything for the Jets, if the Jets can run Rodgers out there in 2025, the season when he will turn 42 years old, because he really might give them their best chance at respectability.

This isn’t about Rodgers’ own and continuing diva-like silliness, which continued this past week when he was acting as thin-skinned as ever, still fixed on vaccines and beefs with ESPN personalities in his weekly appearance with McAfee, for whom Aaron Rodgers has been infinitely more productive, just in terms of the clicks he continues to generate, than he has been playing quarterback for the Jets.

This is about whether or not the Jets might be stuck with him and he might be stuck with them, which would be another kind of wonderful Jets things to have happened, just in light of all the bright promise and expectations — and all that Super Bowl chatter — from the spring of ’23.

Everybody gets why the Jets decided they had to go for him at the time, because of all the dominoes than started falling when they first drafted Sam Darnold at No. 3, gave up on Darnold, then turned around and drafted Wilson with the second pick in the draft. And because this is the Jets we’re talking about, absolutely, Darnold has already won one more game with the Vikings this season than the Jets have won the last two seasons combined. He’s 12-2. The Jets are 11-20.

Now the Jets are faced with the prospect that a quarterback who has never been the same after that Achilles injury — and of course it’s fair to wonder how this story would have turned out if Rodgers hadn’t gotten hurt in that opener against the Bills on Sept. 11 of ’23 — is worth rolling out there for another year, while the latest Crack Football Committee over there in Florham Park commences its own search for … wait for it … the next Joe Namath.

For most of this century, when it was the Knicks who were the NBA version of the Jets, it seemed laughable to keep calling Madison Square Garden a “mecca,” just because it had only become a mecca of bad management and bad basketball and truly awful ownership by James Dolan. That’s why it’s pretty amazing, in retrospect, for Rodgers to have described the Jets as being iconic seeing what they’ve become under Johnson since they last made the playoffs, a period in which he has been as bad an owner as we’ve ever had around here.

Over a half-century since the Jets played in, and won, their only Super Bowl. Fourteen years since they had a chance to go back. Rodgers now trying to win as many games as Wilson and Siemian and Boyle and them did. Another lost season playing itself out at MetLife Stadium.

You always hear there’s no “I” in team. With this team there is. Just not iconic. Irrelevant.

IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY, TIME TO FIX ADAM SILVER’S NBA & MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY NEWS FAMILY …

Did I not tell you that the Yankee coverage would begin to tell you — and almost at warp speed — that somehow the Yankees would be better off without Juan Soto?

By the way?

When you hear what Soto said when he got to the Mets, and what Max Fried said the other day, you always go back to the wisdom from George Young:

When they say it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money.

Hey, if I were Garrett Wilson, I’d be wondering if I wanted to say a Jet, too?

Malik Nabers is probably thinking the same way.

And Nabers hasn’t even been here for a full season.

LeBron James is absolutely right:

The NBA has become the Hoist-Up-a-3 League, which is why the product becomes increasingly unappealing.

And why a very smart guy like Adam Silver has to know his product is getting weaker and not stronger, whatever he’s saying when he’s out front.

They came up with a tricked-up in-season tournament.

They keep trying to trick up the All-Star Game yet again.

I know, I know, the NBA is still rolling in TV dough with their new contracts.

But let’s see how the networks feel about their investment over the next few years if the ratings don’t get better than they are right now.

Tell you this:

I honestly believe they need to move back the 3-point line, even if that means the deep-corner shot is no longer in play.

Baseball found ways to make the game better.

Pro basketball can do the same.

Right now, this minute, if you give me a choice between a regular-season NBA game or a regular-season college game, I’m going college every single time.

If you haven’t yet seen the music video Chris Martin and 99-year-old Dick Van Dyke did together for Martin’s song, “All My Love,” do yourself a favor, because it’s pretty wonderful.

Finally today:

At the end of this last Sunday column before Christmas, I send out my best wishes and my admiration to all those who continue to put out the Daily News sports section, every day, with both passion and professionalism.

That means Kyle and Andy and Will the Back Page Guy and my Hall of Fame pal, Bill Madden; and everybody else with whom it is my high honor, after all my years at this paper, to work.

And I also send out best wishes and admiration to those with whom I no longer am privileged to work, like the great Delores Thompson, who was the boss of us all once, and Teri Thompson.

I will always miss Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, and Michael O’Neill, who gave me a column here, and Edward Kosner and  the great Jim Willse, who brought me back from The National so we could fight together, which we sure did.

Every time I sit down to write a column, I imagine I’m still working with the late Bill Boyle, who always made me better when my work space was in the front of the newspaper after Pete and Jimmy were no longer there.

That’s just the short list of people who helped me along the way, and make me still want to do this work.

Not just do the work.

It’s more than that.

Do the work here.

Merry Christmas.