How Jets QB Aaron Rodgers is changing his style to get most out of new team

Expectations too high for Aaron Rodgers, Jets this season?Aaron Rodgers’ Jets have to perform under a microscope

Henry McKenna

AFC East Reporter

Aaron Rodgers pulled receiver Garrett Wilson aside underneath the goal post on Thursday during the New York Jets‘ first training camp practice in New Jersey.

It was one of many moments over the course of the day when Rodgers acted as a coach.

“I think I had busted a play,” Wilson said after practice. “He just said: ‘Get it right. Know your details.'”

Rodgers wasn’t always as forgiving when he wore yellow and green. As the longtime Green Bay Packers quarterback, Rodgers had a reputation for urgency. He’d come down hard on every player, whether they were a rookie or a veteran.

But so far it has been different in New York. Receiver Allen Lazard, who joined the Jets this offseason in free agency after spending five years in Green Bay, has seen a new side to Rodgers.

“Not to say that he was hard to play with at first in Green Bay, but he was a little bit more like, ‘You guys have got to pick it up.’ He’s a little bit slower here in realizing that there’s a lot of young players,” Lazard said. “He plays in a state of flow. … He’s taking his time.

“I’m seeing how much he cares for these guys. He just really wants to put the icing on his cake as far as his career goes.”

New York is chock-full of young talent that can help Rodgers bake that cake.

Wilson won the Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2022. Running back Breece Hall might have won the OPOY award if not for a torn ACL. The list of young developmental talent goes on: receiver Mecole Hardman, running back Zonovan Knight and tight ends Tyler Conklin and C.J. Uzomah. Perhaps even Lazard, 27, has more upside.

Rodgers might have some familiar friends around, like Lazard and Randall Cobb, but he’s also joining a cast of up-and-coming stars. The veteran QB will be key in ensuring they evolve into bona-fide studs.

Expectations too high for Aaron Rodgers, Jets this season?

“I think it’s always important to have patience in shorts and helmets, have patience in the first few days of camp,” Rodgers said Thursday. “Sometimes the patience can wear thin if there’s repeat mistakes. Just building this thing right now. I want to build it the right way. And, yeah, I would say earlier in my career, I was a little bit more easily angered.

“And I feel like I’m a little less triggered as I get older.”

Rodgers’ patience won’t last forever. Eventually, these youngsters do have to get it right.

“Mistakes are going to happen, and you actually want them to happen at this time,” Rodgers said. “But the repeat mistakes are the ones that give you a little bit of pause.”

Lazard said he’s also lending a hand in teaching the younger players how to run the offense, which is new with the arrival of Rodgers and offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, another Green Bay transplant (by way of Denver).

If Lazard knows this offense in and out, that begs the question: Is it the Packers’ offense?

“It’s the Aaron Rodgers offense,” Lazard told reporters.

Rodgers pushed back against that statement, however.

“I’m not going to say it’s my offense. It’s what I’ve had success in, sure. But back in 2020, it was a conglomeration of what Matt [LaFleur] wanted to run, what Hackett had run in the past and what I had run in the past. We fit it together,” Rodgers said. “This is kind of an offshoot of that, with maybe a little more West Coast flavor to it.”

Aaron Rodgers’ Jets have to perform under a microscope

As the Jets put together this playbook — whether it’s the Rodgers offense or the Hackett offense — the 39-year-old quarterback is trying a new tact with guys like Wilson, whom the QB has compared to the favorite target of his career: Davante Adams. Rodgers said it has been a “rejuvenation” of sorts to join the Jets. He also said he sought advice from retired quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Carson Palmer and NHL star Joe Pavelski about changing teams after a long stint in one place.

Perhaps some of his adjustments on the field have come from those conversations off the field.

That isn’t to say that Rodgers isn’t doing his thing. He might not be terrorizing the offensive skill players, but he remains a nightmare for those who line up across from him.

“He messes with the defense, looking at the safety, telling him to come on down. [He’ll say,] ‘I know you’re coming’ when we’re trying the disguise, and it makes me laugh,” coach Robert Saleh said on Thursday after the team’s first practice. “He’s a coach that can still play football.”

But let’s get back to that cake we were talking about, the one that Lazard said Rodgers and the Jets are trying to put the icing atop. What would that look like?

“I’m not going to beat around the bush. We want to win a Super Bowl,” Wilson said. “You don’t make moves in the offseason like we did unless you’re trying to get there.”

It’s not the only thing the Jets talk about, but it’s one of the key talking points. They want a Super Bowl badly. Urgently. Ironically, Rodgers has — at least for now — abandoned that urgency to make sure this team doesn’t get ahead of itself.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as the AFC East reporter, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.

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