NASHVILLE – As the New York Jets made their way to their locker room Sunday afternoon, relief blooming across their faces, they agreed, one by one, on a common theme as they shook hands.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty,” they said over and over.
It doesn’t and it wasn’t. But the Jets, blemishes and all, are 1-1, beating the Tennessee Titans 24-17 in the kind of win they badly needed – yes, they badly needed it in Week 2 -- a win that came when the offense is still not in rhythm and the defense still sometimes gets gashed, and they make just enough big plays to squeak by.
This was Aaron Rodgers’ first win as a Jets quarterback, although he jokingly noted that he gets credit for the win in the 2023 season opener, even though he exited after four snaps with his Achilles torn and the Jets season in tatters. This is the season born from that rubble, and if you thought it was going to be perfect execution from the opening whistle, well, Rodgers would advise you to R-E-L-A-X, the same message he is gamely delivering right now to everyone in the Jets’ orbit.
“A lot of times people freak out,” Rodgers said. “You have to be a calming force in there. I felt like the whole game we were frustrated at times, but we never got on each other. I was frustrated not getting [Garrett Wilson] balls. Didn’t run the ball very well the first 2 1/2 quarters. We stayed confident. The defense came up with some really big plays to keep it a one score game.”
This is precisely why the Jets wanted Rodgers, because even when things around him are not perfect, he can construct a victory and, just as importantly, he can convey the confidence that he can construct a victory to those who have never before enjoyed the experience of playing with a future Hall of Famer at quarterback. Rookie running back Braelon Allen, who scored two touchdowns Sunday, called Rodgers the conductor, and it was a vintage performance on the Jets’ most important drive, when the score was tied and the defense was finally holding the Titans off. Rodgers hit short passes to Breece Hall and Allen Lazard and then a beauty of a 26-yarder to Wilson on the left sideline, a catch that Rodgers said was routine for Wilson and would be on anybody else’s highlight reel. Then Rodgers finally found Mike Williams for his only catch of the game. The touchdown was an untouched run by Allen. The Jets took the lead and the defense did the rest, exactly the way they hope this season will go, the way it did not go at all in a startlingly bad loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 1, and in a somnolent start to this game.
Coach Robert Saleh, who might have already been feeling his seat start to incinerate when the Jets were struggling in the first half, said he feels the Jets can score every time they touch the ball, which is something no Jets coach has said in decades.
“It’s a good feeling,” he said.
By Saleh’s own admission, the Jets continue to work through things. The run defense still got gashed occasionally, (it gave up 130 yards rushing) but nothing like the bulldozing it took at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers. Early on, the pass rush was not getting home, although Will Levis wound up getting sacked four times. Still, the rush is now likely to be an urgent topic because Jermaine Johnson II exited with what the Jets believe is an Achilles tear, an injury that is almost certain to ramp up speculation about whether the Jets will renew efforts to get Hassan Reddick to join the team. Reddick will, of course, greatly help the pass rush. But the Jets will go as far as Rodgers can take them, as Sunday made crystal clear. It’s not that other quarterbacks are incapable of leading that winning drive. It’s that the Jets might not believe so fervently in anybody else as they do now in Rodgers. He has brought a certainty to an organization that has struggled for 13 seasons, and that confidence extends even to coaches. At one point Sunday after a play, Rodgers pointed to the sideline -- to offensive coordinator Nate Hackett, he said later -- because the play came about with a personnel package that the two had discussed last week, with Hackett unsure about it and Rodgers advocating for it. Rodgers wanted it.
It worked.
For now, it is not always working. The Jets had delay of game penalties and needed to use timeouts to avoid more. They are still inconsistent, and Rodgers pointed to one sequence that provided a good measure of where the offense is in its development. The Jets led 14-10 midway through the third quarter when they blocked a Tennessee punt and began the drive at the 30-yard line. The run game worked then, the passing game did not and the Jets had to settle for a 33-yard field goal.
“Great teams, when you’re up 14-10, block a punt, you score a touchdown to go up two scores,” he said. “Not quite there yet. Good teams close out games in tough environments.”
This was good enough, then, the kind of game that teams have to grind through -- and win -- while sharpening their approach. Last week, safety Chuck Clark told me that the loss to San Francisco was being viewed internally as just the first game of the first quarter of the season. The Jets could still finish the first quarter 3-1 and then said, everybody would say the Jets are hot.
Saleh believes that eventually the mindset that the offense can score on every drive will take over the Jets. The biggest thing in football, Saleh said, is confidence, and for an organization that has been through some things in the last 13 years, that has not always been in abundance. Rodgers stated the obvious, that last year negative vibes overtook the Jets. He does not want them to ever get back in that spot. For the first time Sunday, the results of his confidence began to be visible. It was not perfect, but it was well more than the Jets have had in a long while, and it is enough for now, while the Jets do what good teams have to do -- work out the kinks while winning anyway.
“We’re early in the process, unfortunately,” Rodgers said, when asked where the team is in getting the offense to where it can be. “We haven’t put it together."
He continued: “We’re just kind of one little thing off. Sometimes it’s a bad throw, sometimes the route concepts get screwed up. It’s little things. It’s correctable. It is little, though. The difference between 350, 400 yards and whatever we had today is really minute. We’ve got to figure out how to fill in the gaps.”
For too many years, there was a confidence gap between the Jets and their opponents. That gap, at least, has already been filled.