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When Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets take the field in San Francisco for their season opener on Monday Night Football, it will have been nearly a year to the day since Rodgers, in his first and so far only regular season appearance with the Jets, tore his Achilles tendon on the opening drive of the 2023 season. Though Rodgers flirted with the idea of making a return late in the 2023 season, anyone who was thinking rationally conceded that in all likelihood, the four-time MVP probably wouldn't see the field again until the 2024 season began.
Now, less than a week away from playing in his first game in 363 days, Aaron Rodgers is being pegged by executives around the NFL as the favorite to win a major award at season's end. No, Rodgers is not the favorite to collect a fifth MVP trophy. Instead, execs believe that Rodgers has the leg up over the rest of the field in the Comeback Player of the Year race.
According to a poll conducted by ESPN.com and senior NFL reporter Jeremy Fowler, Rodgers was the top vote-getter in what could shape up to be a crowded field of candidates for the NFL's Comeback Player of the Year Award. Given Rodgers' name, his legacy, the severity of his injury, and the New York media market, one would assume that if Rodgers had a season that even comes remotely close to a vintage Aaron Rodgers season, voters would be eager to hand him the award at season's end.
With that said, Aaron Rodgers is 40 years old and already began showing signs of slight slippage during the back half of the 2022 season, so it's certainly not a guarantee that the guy who is under center for the Jets in 2024 will contend for the MVP.
“The thing with Rodgers is if he can move with efficiency like he's been able to in the past,” one AFC scout told Fowler. “While Tom Brady threw more traditionally from the pocket, Rodgers has always had more subtle movements and athleticism to his game, throwing on the run. If he can get that back, then watch out. If he can't, then the Jets will need a steady dose of running the football to help him. I think they need to do that regardless.”
This is an award that has historically been handed out to quarterbacks. 14 of the last 20 winners have been QBs, including the previous six. Of the four other players who received votes in this ESPN poll, three of them — Joe Burrow, Kirk Cousins and Anthony Richardson — are also quarterbacks.
Jets banking on big Aaron Rodgers season
Even though the New York Jets boast one of the league's best defense and most dynamic young running backs in Breece Hall, to break a nearly six-decade-long Super Bowl drought, the Jets will need Aaron Rodgers to put on his Superman cape every now and then. Poor quarterback play has doomed the Jets for, well, the better part of six decades, and the entire reason Rodgers was brought to the Big Apple was to put an end to this unfortunate trend.
As for how Rodgers looks in his comeback bid?
“He’s as good as he’s ever been, honestly,” Rodgers former Packers teammate and current Jets teammate Allen Lazard said about his QB, per Mark Cannizzaro of the New York Post. “I don’t want to hype him up too much or anything, but … ”
But you did, Allen. And when Rodgers steps on the field for the first time in 363 days on Monday night, he'll have the chance to prove you right.
