Parallels between Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre’s NFL careers

FLORHAM PARK, NJ – The New York Jets celebrated Thanksgiving 2008 in the best places – first in the AFC East. They were 8-3 and earned a commanding victory over the previously undefeated Tennessee Titans. Quarterback Brett Favre, signed as a legend about a month before the season, was doing Favre things at age 39.

“I felt like this was a Super Bowl team,” former Jets tackle Damien Woody recalled last week.

The 2024 Jets entered the season with the same high expectations, but they enter Thanksgiving week in the exact opposite position — a 3-8 record, tied for last place. Aaron Rodgers, who is a week shy of his 41st birthday, has looked nothing like the quarterback who won four MVP awards with the Green Bay Packers.

Rodgers’ tenure in New York was a failure. 16 years ago, the Favre experiment failed after a promising start. The Jets are 0-2 when importing former Packers icons.

Rodgers and Favre, former Green Bay teammates, are connected in many ways, and now they have something else to talk about when they meet at remembrance events or in Canton, Ohio, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. where Rodgers will one day join Favre.

Their business to New York sparked hope and excitement for an abandoned franchise. Favre made more highlights in one year than Rodgers did in two (including an injury-shortened 2023), but her final epitaph will likely read the same:

Two aging legends who didn’t make the playoffs and whose coaches were fired.

Eric Mangini was fired after going 9-7 in 2008, his second winning season in three years. Robert Saleh was fired after a 2-3 start this season; he was 20-36 overall.

“I really believed in what we did,” Mangini said last week. “Looking back, I would say it’s never a good thing to get that one character that’s supposed to surpass you. I think we would have won a lot of games with Chad (Pennington).”

Oh yes – the proverbial “missing piece”.

The jets were dumped Pennington in 2008. He then led the Miami Dolphins to the AFC East title that year – a painful moment for Jets fans. The reason for the quarterback change was that Favre would add a dynamic element to an already talented offense.

In 2023, the Jets traded for Rodgers because they needed a replacement for the disappointing Zach Wilson, who was drafted No. 2 overall in 2021, and because they felt Rodgers would complete a playoff-caliber roster.

Rodgers said in his 2023 introductory press conference that he and Favre discussed his move to the Jets in 2008. A hopeful Rodgers expected a better result, saying, “It was a different coaching staff, a different GM, different circumstances.” I “I’m excited about the opportunity with these guys and my new teammates.”

Since then, they are 10-18, with Rodgers missing 16 games because of his ruptured left Achilles tendon. They haven’t scored 30 points in any of his starts.

“Sometimes a player of this stature can be a gift and a curse,” said former running back Thomas Jones, who ran for 1,312 yards in 2008. “Having an Aaron Rodgers or Brett Favre is great, but you can’t let their mystique replace everything else.”

The current Jets could be to blame for this, as they built everything around Rodgers. They hired his close friend Nathaniel Hackett to lead the offensive. They installed Rodgers’ system and acquired some of his former receivers, most recently Davante Adams.

Jones said putting a player on a pedestal could be “dangerous.” He doesn’t think that was the case with Favre.

“We didn’t see Brett as a leader of the team,” he said. “We saw Brett as an asset. We didn’t rely on Brett to take the lead. We didn’t rely on him to be the hero.”

Favre was surrounded by six other teammates who made the Pro Bowl that year, including Jones. It was a championship-caliber effort, but Favre tore the biceps tendon in his throwing arm and everything fell apart. They have lost four of their last five games, with Favre throwing nine interceptions in that span. Along with his 22 touchdown passes, he finished the game with a league-high 22.

“Without even knowing Aaron, but looking from the outside in, it seems like a completely different approach,” Mangini said, making comparisons now and then. “Brett wanted to be part of the team. Brett wanted to do the things we did. He wanted to be one of the boys instead of being seen as a special savior.”

“He never said, ‘This is what I want to do’ or ‘This is what I’m going to do.'” There was none of that. He never talked about players and said, “This guy has to start” or “I want this guy.”

Mangini described Favre’s post-trade stance. At first he didn’t want to play for the Jets. It took three weeks of hard recruiting before they convinced him to agree to the trade.

Favre wanted to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after a bitter divorce from the Packers, but the Packers had no plans to trade him within their conference.

So it was either play for the Jets or stay home in Mississippi. When Favre arrived, he shopped, according to Mangini and former teammates. At this point, in mid-August, Favre jumped on a train that had already left the station. Unlike Rodgers, he didn’t have a long period of preparation for the season. It limited his ability to make an impact on the staff, but he had to learn the playbook and his teammates on the fly.

Rodgers also had an acrimonious split with the Packers, but he didn’t play hard to get. He publicly stated his desire to play for the Jets, which meant a lot to the franchise and its fan base. Imagine if a true legend actually wanted to play for them. Still, he fights the notion that Mangini has a “me-first attitude” that Mangini alluded to because of the way the organization caters to his desires.

Unlike Favre, who threw six touchdown passes in a blowout win over the Arizona Cardinals, Rodgers hasn’t produced any standout games.

His 17:7 touchdown-to-interception ratio is fine by Jets’ historical standards, but it’s not a typical Rodgers year. He has gone 33 straight games without a 300-yard passing performance since 2021.

Favre didn’t have any 300-yard games with the Jets. It’s mind-boggling that two of the greatest passers in history have failed to reach this plateau in a total of 28 starts.

“I see a guy in Aaron, he looks like a guy who doesn’t want to get hit anymore,” Woody said. “He looks old. He doesn’t push the ball down the field at all. He can’t run. He looks like a 40-year-old quarterback. This is what he looks like.”

Former Packers fullback John Kuhn, who played with Rodgers and Favre in Green Bay, believes that Rodgers was weakened by the team’s dysfunction – the in-season changes in head coach, game manager and general manager.

“There’s a lot of chaos in New York,” Kuhn said. “I don’t know how to create continuity, I don’t know how to create rhythm, I don’t know how to create scheduling when there’s so much chaos and change around you all the time.”

“Aaron didn’t do his best, but I don’t know if this place is conducive to peak performance.”

In 2008, the Jets faced Favre until he injured his arm. Nobody knows exactly when this happened, including Mangini. Woody says he believes it happened in training before the crunch after five games at the end of the season. Mangini, GM Mike Tannenbaum and the team were ultimately fined by the league office for withholding injury report information.

“You could just say, ‘Uh-oh, something bad just happened,'” Woody said. “They knew we were in a bad situation. We were on a high. Then Brett suddenly got injured in training and that just derailed everything.”

Jones said, “We crashed and burned.”

Favre had surgery after the season, requested his release from the Jets, signed with the Minnesota Vikings and led them to the NFC Championship Game. The Vikings got what the Jets thought they were getting.

Now Rodgers’ future is uncertain, although a split seems likely. Kuhn suspects that his old friend wants to continue his career in hopes of finding a happy ending, but he wonders if there is an ideal place for that.

“I don’t know if there’s a team out there where you could point to the roster and say, ‘Hey, they just need a good quarterback for a solid year,'” Kuhn said. “Two years ago we thought the Jets were that team. We thought the Jets were as close a team as you can be when you’re just a stone away.”

Unfortunately for them, a fired coach, a fired GM, a demoted playcaller and a 3-8 record say otherwise.