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The New York Jets 2024 season has been nothing short of a disaster, as the team sits at 3-8 and will surely extend a 13-year-long postseason drought to 14 years. Head coach Robert Saleh was fired in October followed by general manager Joe Douglas earlier this week.
It’s all falling apart in New York and the only one that remains left to pick up the pieces is quarterback Aaron Rodgers (who likely won’t be with the team next season anyway, according to recent reports).
It’s unlikely that Rodgers is able to rescue the Jets’ season, however, as beyond all the dysfunction that’s undermining the organization, former Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason believes that Rodgers is battling through an injury — a different injury than the torn Achilles that sidelined him for the entirety of the 2023 season.
Aaron Rodgers passing chart from today via @NextGenStats
Almost no attempts to push the ball anywhere. pic.twitter.com/40ydIMHuHO
— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) November 18, 2024
“I watched the tape with Aaron Rodgers — I just wanted to see what’s going on. Why wasn’t he throwing the ball down the field, and if he was throwing the ball down the field, why wasn’t he hitting anybody? I think I only saw one pass that went over 20 yards and it was behind the intended receiver. I’m telling you right now: he’s injured,” Esiason said on the Wednesday, November 20 episode of his WFAN morning radio show.
“He’s 100% injured, and I want to say it’s on his left leg, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a hamstring [that’s injured]. You can just tell by the way everything’s coming off his back foot, you can tell by the way it looks like he’s trying to protect his left leg. I’m sure we’re going to hear about it eventually, but if I had to guess, it kind of looks like it’s a hamstring just by the way he’s moving around and not going through the proper mechanics,” the former Bengals, Cardinals and Jets signal-caller continued.
Interesting by @7BOOMERESIASON this morning on why Aaron Rodgers not throwing passes further that 10 yards almost every pass. #Jets #WFAN #CBSSN pic.twitter.com/VlSbzkXSYu
— Connie Carberg (@ConnieScouts) November 20, 2024
Esiason noted that while Rodgers has had a penchant for throwing off his back foot (and doing so with massive success) throughout his career, the way he’s doing it now seems to be as a result of playing through an injury and is inhibiting his performance.
“And I know that he’s always been a different kind of guy when he’s throwing and does throw off his back foot quite a bit, and that’s kind of the way he’s played over the course of his career, I just don’t see him putting a lot of pressure on that front leg, I really don’t. That tells me it’s got to either be a pulled calf muscle or a pulled hamstring, or something that is torn that he is fighting through and he’s probably fighting through it because of what happened to him last year.”
Following their Week 12 bye week, the Jets will resume their miserable campaign on December 1 with a matchup against the Seattle Seahawks, who are quarterback by Geno Smith, whom the Jets drafted and nearly ruined before he went on to find success elsewhere.