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Jay Glazer announced on Sunday the Jets are moving on from Aaron Rodgers. Strange time to make this announcement, but I think I know why it happened on this day. I will get to that in a moment.
We should have seen the writing on the wall when Aaron Glenn made it clear in his opening press conference, that evaluating Aaron Rodgers is no different than guards and defensive tackles.
The headline on a column by New York Post scribe Steve Serby on the Jets decisions sums it up best – “Aaron Glenn is free of Aaron Rodgers and can make Jets his.”
That’s what this is about.
But while a coach can want to make a team his own, if he doesn’t have a QB, he’s going to have a hard time being successful.
And if anybody thinks hitting the reset button will buy him extra time from the critics, he might be mistaken.
Especially if they struggle at QB next year, and Rodgers goes somewhere else and shines.
Glenn should not be graded on a curve next year. He made this decision and owns it.
Look, this could work out fine. None of us how a crystal ball. But as we sit here right now, he got rid of a QB who threw 28 TDs last season, the same as NFL MVP Josh Allen and showed in the season finale, he can still play.
Glenn is going from Rodgers to perhaps QB Never-Never land.
And all the coaches who were fired after last season, all had something in common – they didn’t have an answer at QB.
Last year, maybe the greatest coach of all time, Bill Belichick, got fired, because he didn’t have a QB his last three years after Tom Brady left the building.
So you could be perhaps the greatest coach of all time, and get fired without a “cube.”
Aaron Glenn was asked at his introductory press conference, what he looks for in a quarterback and responded, “A winner.”
Well, he just got rid of one 153-87-1 lifetime record.
You can call a lot of these college prospects “winners” but they did it with mainly one-read offenses against mostly awful college defenses. So that doesn’t mean they will be “winners” in the NFL having to go through progressions. Most can’t.
They are most likely going to go with Tyrod Taylor as their QB, with a young guy being trained as the heir apparent, perhaps Jordan Travis, their 2024 fifth-round pick. They could also draft a QB and have him compete with Travis for the heir apparent opportunity.
So why did this come out of Super Bowl Sunday?
It’s pretty obvious what happened.
In the morning, some of the top NFL Insiders were telling America that Rodgers’ future with the Jets was still up in the air.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported the situation remains “far from decided.”
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Tom Pellisaro announced, “The Jets and Aaron Rodgers have been in discussions about his future and a decision on whether the four-time NFL MVP returns to New York could come as soon as this week, per sources.”
A couple of hours after these reports from the morning, at 1:40 pm, Fox’s Jay Glazer tweeted, “Aaron Rodgers flew back to New Jersey last week to meet with the Jets about his future with the team, only to be told that the team was moving on from him.”
Clearly what happened was that Rodgers, or somebody in his camp, was calling BS on the initial reports.
In other words, they were essentially saying, “Why are these sources leaking to these insiders it’s undecided when they told me to my face they are moving on?”
This reminds me a little of the Mike LaFleur situation after the 2022 season.
Remember, on Monday, after that season ended, NFL insiders Aaron Wilson and Mike Lombardi, both reported that Woody Johnson wanted the OC fired.
But then some beat writers were told that no decision was made and they were still deliberating, essentially gaslighting Wilson and Lombardi.
Two days later, the Jets announced the split, and said the coach left to pursue other opportunities. Robert Saleh didn’t want to fire him, so they reached a compromise on how they would announce the news, and not paint it as a firing.
In this case, according to Glazer, who likely got it from the Rodgers camp, a decision was already made, contradicting the morning reports (somebody is going to have hell to pay with Schefter – I’m tell you right now as somebody who once had hell to pay from him – LOL).
Surely Rodgers, or somebody from his camp, after hearing the reports from Schefter, Rapoport and Pellisero, were thinking “this is nonsense, they already made a decision.” So it’s pretty obvious somebody from Rodgers’ camp leaked this to Glazer to put an end to this narrative that no decision had been made.
Remember, Rodgers isn’t a fan of Schefter or Rapoport, so this was clearly leaked to a guy he likes.
We will have plenty more on this breaking news throughout the week.
February 10, 2025
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