It's now or never for Aaron Rodgers to lead cursed Jets out of the darkness

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Aaron Rodgers unleashed a throw on Wednesday afternoon that seemed to travel back in time. He looked effortless as he leaned onto his back foot and fired the ball 55 yards in the air, dropping it right into Garrett Wilson's hands.

He looked like he did in his prime. And he made it easy to see why the Jets still believe he's the one who will lead them out of their five decades of Super Bowl-less misery.

Or at least that's what they desperately want to believe.

"Like I learned last year," Sauce Gardner said after practice, "things can be taken away from you at the snap of a finger."

That snap, of course, occurred just four plays into last season when Rodgers ruptured his left Achilles tendon and destroyed the New York Jets' hopes and dreams. He had just famously emerged from his darkness retreat and agreed to lead the star-crossed franchise into the spotlight. And just like that, the lights went out on them once again.

Now he's 40 years old and trying to make what would be an unprecedented comeback from such a serious injury at his age. And he's doing it against the backdrop of an all-or-nothing season, knowing there isn't time for any kind of long-term plan. If Rodgers can't recapture his old form, if he can't drag the Jets on a real run at their first championship in 56 long, agonizing seasons, the consequences for everyone in his orbit could be dire.

"Well, I think if I don't do what I know I'm capable of doing," Rodgers said back in May, "we're all probably going to be out of here."

He's not wrong. And both Jets general manager Joe Douglas and head coach Robert Saleh surely know it. They are entering their fourth season together and have lost double-digit games in all of them. Saleh's three-year record is a miserable 18-33. Douglas' teams are 27-56 in his six years at the helm. They've built a Top 5 defense. They've got star skill players like Wilson and running back Breece Hall. They have been convinced that a quarterback was the only missing piece.

But the missing piece they've chosen is running out of time. That's why there's no middle ground this season. There is no room for mediocrity. Rodgers will be 41 when the season is over and there's no guarantee he'll back in 2025 and there's no plan for his successor. The Jets simply can't be saying "Wait ‘til next year" anymore.

After 56 years of futility, "next year" has to finally be here.

The early signs, at least, are promising and hopeful. Rodgers has looked sharp in practice most of the summer and he absolutely lit up the New York Giants' young and questionable secondary in their joint practice on Wednesday afternoon. He's also made it through a training camp where Saleh has given his recovering quarterback 300 more snaps than he gave him last summer and notably turned up the intensity.

He won't play in the preseason at all, but he's been through a camp Rodgers called "maybe the hardest in the last seven or eight in my career" and he's still standing. And to the Jets, he sure looks like he's ready for an Opening Night that's a little more than two weeks away.

"I felt like he was where we needed him when he first walked in," Saleh said. "I'm telling you his arm is still 30. And he's got plenty of mobility. I think he is absolutely ready to go."

Gardner added: "I think he's the best quarterback I've ever seen. And I'm not saying that just because he's on our team."

Rodgers clearly can be the best quarterback the Jets have had in decades — maybe ever. They see him as the man who won back-to-back MVPs in 2020 and 2021, ignoring the regression of his final season in Green Bay in 2022. They believe that pairing him with his hand-picked offensive coordinator, Nathanial Hackett, who was with him in Green Bay from 2019-21, will restore his old greatness.

That hope is why they put up with the nonsense that comes with Rodgers — his weekly podcast appearances last season where he dabbled in conspiracy theories and occasionally criticized his struggling team; his decision to skip mandatory minicamp in June so he could ride camels in Egypt; his weird flirtation with running for vice president on a ticket with the quixotic Robert Kennedy Jr.; the ensuing CNN report that Rodgers told a reporter he believed in the conspiracy theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting wasn't real.

Those were all unwanted headlines and distractions that the Jets basically ignored because Rodgers really is so good that he's worth the headaches and the sideshow. Or at least he was. And based on practice, he thinks he can be again.

"I feel good about where I'm at with my body and what I've kind of put together," Rodgers said. "I feel like I've done different things throughout camp — rollouts and pulling up, getting out of the pocket and making plays, throwing back across my body, pump faking, actually extending plays and getting some yards. So I feel like I've done a lot."

Has he done enough? The Jets clearly think so. They've been raving about him since training camp began.

"When you've got him in front of you, you're like, 'This dude can throw anything, he can throw it anywhere,'" Wilson said last week. "For me, it feels like pure football. It feels like I'm a kid again, and I can kind of believe what I see."

They want to believe though, because they have no choice. Even Rodgers knows that if he doesn't deliver the Jets out of the darkness it could be the final chapter in his enigmatic, but Hall of Fame career. He's still chasing that second championship, just like he has been for 14 seasons. He might have one year left on his contract — which includes a non-guaranteed, $35 million roster bonus — but if he's not the same player, if he gets hurt again, if he can't lift the Jets out of mediocrity, he may not get another chance at another ring.

"That's the way the NFL is," Rodgers said in the spring. "I'm not saying anything monumental. This is how it is every single year. As you get older in the league, if you don't perform, they're going to get rid of you."

No one in the Jets organization is contemplating that endgame scenario just yet. For now, they are embracing the expectations, which Gardner laid out so clearly in May. 

"I feel like we can win a championship, a Super Bowl," he said. "We got the guys. We got the coaches. We got everything we need."

That's true if Rodgers really can complete his remarkable comeback. If not, they all could be headed back into the darkness for years.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.