This is the night and this is the flight, Jet Flight 23, piloted by Top Gun Aaron Rodgers, with all systems go to soar to that heavenly place last visited by Broadway Joe Namath aboard Flight 68.
For the last six months, ever since Aaron Rodgers emerged from the darkness and abandoned thoughts of retirement and saw the light of what a forever New York legacy could mean for him, a long-suffering fan base longing for a dream quarterback and a dream team to believe in has been waiting for what must seem like an eternity for the future first-ballot Hall of Famer to throttle up and fly Flight 23.
Ready, Jet, Showtime.
The journey begins against the Josh Allen Bills, looking for a fourth consecutive AFC East title with Super Bowl aspirations of their own.
Monday Night Fever at JetLife Stadium.
What better time and what better place to send a message to the Bills and to the league that Jets GM Joe Douglas has built a bully with Aaron Rodgers at the controls?
From Woody Johnson down to Douglas to HC Robert Saleh to every last coach and player and front office employee and maybe janitor and cafeteria worker, an entire franchise has been energized and galvanized by a soon-to-be 40-year-old quarterback summoned to be its savior.
There will be the inevitable turbulence, seat belts will have to be fastened, at which time Captain Aaron Rodgers will undoubtedly hop on the speakers from cockpit and advise his passengers to R-E-L-A-X while he continues Flight 23’s ascent to cloud nine.
Ever since he won Super Bowl XLV over the Steelers, only the sky has been the limit for Aaron Rodgers.
Anything short of the playoffs will be a colossal failure.
Saleh’s summer challenge to his team was NOW WHAT?
Be the eagle that flies so high the crow that dares to attack it falls on its face and dies.
“We know that there’s going to be a whole lot of people, a whole lot of crows, expecting us to fall on our face,” Saleh told his players on “Hard Knocks.”
NOW WHAT? … because you haven’t done anything yet.
The Jets haven’t won the division title since Herm Edwards coached them in 2002. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick owned an 11-year stranglehold on the AFC East from 2009-19. Brett Favre failed to win one on the final day of the 2008 season — against Dolphins quarterback Chad Pennington, the man he replaced. Sam Darnold and Zach Wilson were top-three draft picks to put an end to Same Old Jets. Since Namath, the Jets have drafted six quarterbacks in the first round.
It has proven to be risky business calling for the death of the Same Old Jets, but the Same Old Rodgers was brought here to change history and to make history:
End the 12-year playoff drought.
End the 20-year AFC East championship drought.
End the 54-year Super Bowl drought.
After a summer of witnessing his golden right arm whistling passes into the tightest of windows, sometimes with a flick of the wrist, of watching how he builds relationships with one and all and seamlessly assumed the mantel of leadership and ring generalship as this football savant, forgive the JetLife scoreboard operator for asking J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS fans to hush with GENIUS AT WORK in bright lights when Rodgers goes about the task of probing weaknesses in the Bills’ defense as only he can.
To the Jets and Jets fans alike, even to Broadway Joe, Aaron Rodgers is the 8 Wonder of the World.
“He’s never out of a game,” John Franklin-Myers said. “I think everybody understands that. What an opportunity we have to go out and play with him.”
What an opportunity for a highly motivated, rejuvenated Rodgers if the Jets’ defense, obsessed with being the NFL’s best, hands him the ball on a short field.
What an opportunity for Quinnen Williams and Sauce Gardner & Friends if Rodgers hands them a lead and Saleh’s wolf pack predators can pin their ears back and terrorize the opposing quarterback.
There are no Jets guarantees post-Broadway Joe, but Rodgers has mesmerized traumatized Jets fans, all but trading in his cheesehead for a fireman hat in his travels to Knicks and Rangers games and grooving at a Taylor Swift concert at MetLife and everywhere else he surfaces in public.
He has received the kind of honeymoon that Mark Messier received in 1991, when he arrived and ended the Rangers’ 54-year championship drought three seasons later, slaying the dragon.
He respectfully declined Namath’s offer to unretire his 12 jersey.
He voluntarily surrendered $35M to help the club pursue would-be recruits.
He has been a transformative leader/coach.
This is his first chance and this is their first chance to make a resounding MetLoud statement.
The emboldened Jets have plastered a bull’s-eye on their backs and they don’t care.
Because if the quarterback who talks about spotting UFOs can be as otherworldly as they expect him to be, MVP otherworldly for the third time in four years, that Lombardi Trophy that looked so lonely to him when he walked into the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center for the first time in April won’t be lonely too long.
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