The New York Jets are one of a few NFL teams seemingly on the brink of breaking through to contender status, but they also don’t have the feel of a team that is going to be teetering on the edge any longer one way or the other. The New York Jets appear poised to land on one of the extreme ends of the spectrum this season. Either things are going to go really well, or they could go really off the rails.
History has a tendency of repeating itself and given the Jets now have veteran QB Aaron Rodgers at the helm, it’s fair to compare this roster to some other teams in recent years that have gone out and acquired big-name, MVP-winning (or MVP-caliber) quarterbacks to try and create a championship window.
In arguably the most prominent examples, there really are only two different directions these teams have been going. There aren’t many teams acquiring future Hall of Fame quarterbacks that are landing in the 7-9 win range. These teams are either competing for championships right away or they’re absolutely tanking.
The Denver Broncos know this all too well in multiple instances. Back in 2012, the Broncos acquired Peyton Manning via free agency, and in Manning’s four years with the team, the Broncos were bordering on being an unstoppable force. Three of those four years, Manning was the primary reason for that. In the fourth season, it was the Denver defense.
But the Broncos also acquired Russell Wilson last offseason, a former Super Bowl champion with the Seattle Seahawks and one of the winningest quarterbacks in league history. That plan absolutely crashed and burned in its first year, and the 2022 Broncos have a common denominator with the 2023 New York Jets: Nathaniel Hackett.
This is nothing new to point out. Everyone knows about the connection between Hackett and Aaron Rodgers, and many people have drawn the same parallels between the 2022 Broncos and the 2023 Jets in terms of the way they are going about trying to win.
I think the 2023 New York Jets have a lot more similarities to the 2012 Denver Broncos than they do the 2022 Denver Broncos, and frankly, there are more similarities between the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Jets than perhaps either iteration of the Broncos.
Given the fact that the New York Jets established themselves last year as a top-flight defense, I think you can draw those parallels to the 2012 Broncos or 2020 Buccaneers as opposed to the 2022 Broncos with Russell Wilson or the 2022 Colts with Matt Ryan.
The Broncos’ defense was somewhat of a sleeping giant in 2012, and that sleeping giant woke up in a big way, ranking 4th in the NFL in points allowed during that 2012 season when the Broncos went 13-3. Of course, that group also had Peyton Manning playing at an MVP level, whereas Rodgers is coming off of a very down year in Green Bay.
The Jets — on paper — don’t really resemble the 2022 Broncos or 2022 Colts, teams that added big-name quarterbacks and failed to find actual results on the field. The infrastructure in New York is much better overall with the defense ranking 4th in the league in points allowed and somehow not making the playoffs. I don’t know that you could ask anyone who didn’t think the Jets got better on paper this offseason, nor do I think you’re going to find many who don’t like Robert Saleh as a head coach.
Because of the Jets’ defense and because of Saleh, I don’t see the 2023 New York Jets falling into the “2022 Broncos” or “2022 Colts” category of teams that tried adding star quarterbacks and failed.
I see this Jets team falling firmly in the 2012 Denver Broncos camp, or even the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers camp, where the ceiling is really Super Bowl contention. We didn’t see a Matt Ryan-like regression from Aaron Rodgers last year, although the regression in his play from winning back-to-back MVP Awards in 2020 and 2021 was a little shocking.
Because we didn’t see that level of regression, however, I’m much more inclined to believe that Rodgers makes the Jets a new version of the 2020 Bucs or 2012 Broncos, in that he is truly the missing piece as Peyton Manning and Tom Brady were for those clubs.
Can Aaron Rodgers now join those two in their legacy as two of just three QBs in NFL history to win Super Bowls with multiple NFL franchises? If I had to bet on it, I would say there’s a much more likely chance of that than this team possibly bottoming out, provided Rodgers is healthy most of the season.