At best, Aaron Rodgers has failed to transform the New York Jets into anything other than the New York Jets. At worst, he was a hindrance to the Jets’ efforts to escape their own fate as the NFL’s most consistent losing team. Last Sunday brought what might prove to be a low point: a 25-22 loss to the New England Patriots that left the Jets 2-6 the Patriots for last place in the AFC East. On Thursday they play the Houston Texans, a near-certain playoff team. Things are unlikely to get any better tonight, but whether the Jets come out of the game with a 2-7 or 3-6 record, their trajectory is the same.

Rodgers’ tenure with the Jets has been like a circus since a move in April 2023. He tore his Achilles heel on his first trip as a Jet and couldn’t endure a season in which he wasn’t the star of his team. The quarterback claimed all year that he was working toward a return before the end of the season, an outrageous and perhaps impossible interpretation of his injury recovery timeline, but one that gullible NFL insiders have provided him with all year. Fortunately, the story only ended when the Jets were eliminated from playoff contention, allowing Rodgers to save face and staying out only because it wouldn’t be worth returning.

The Jets’ entire last season revolved around a quarterback who wouldn’t play for them and who often created negative news for the team with his weekly appearances on ESPN Pat McAfee Show. (A highlight was Rodgers’ on-air conclusion that Jimmy Kimmel, arguably NFL broadcast partner Disney’s biggest star, had flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane. Rodgers humbly denied he had done it.)

It was all a farce, but you could understand that the Jets bringing Rodgers back this season was a piece of football realpolitik. The NFL is a league drunk on quarterbacks. Rodgers is Rodgers. Maybe the old man still had something left in the tank at 40. It was worth putting up with his nonsense for the Jets so they might have a renaissance and high-level performance in 2024. But now it’s clear that Rodgers doesn’t have it in him to save this iteration of the Jets and could be detrimental to the team. He is having by far the worst season of his career, ranking 25th^Th in the QBR league, which started last weekend. Rodgers was okay against the Pats — 233 yards on 17 of 28 passing, including two touchdowns — and his performance wasn’t game-changing for New York. One problem was that he was using valuable time off as he struggled to get his offense to his liking before time expired. It’s probably better than the 25th^Th-best quarterback in the league. A ranking of around 11^Th seems fair – but he’s also just a shell of what he once was.

The Rodgers saga could soon lead to massive social relief. The QB has been an inescapable cultural figure since several months into the pandemic, when he became one of the country’s most prominent vaccine skeptics. Rodgers had already been a celebrity for more than a decade at this point, but suddenly he was much more famous. Google searches for him rose to unprecedented levels, and countless media outlets met the demand by summarizing his frequent broadsides on The McAfee Show. Long before he suggested that Kimmel was a pedophile, he was on it McAfee He used a quote from Martin Luther King to defend his views on vaccines. We all learned a lot about Rodgers, more than even those who agree with him on politics or vaccines expected. For example, we know that he uses ghee to cleanse his intestines. Why do we know this? These are things we don’t know about most NFL players and we certainly don’t try to find out former NFL player. Rodgers is no longer a world-changing player, and sooner or later that will present an opportunity for so many people to turn the page. The Jets are getting a new QB. We will all think less of her last thought.

Let’s be careful not to overstate our impending freedom when we hear about Rodgers. He will always have fans and a platform. Such is life for one of the greatest signal callers of all time. But most of Rodgers’ beliefs and bombastic public statements wouldn’t be headlines if he weren’t an NFL quarterback, and an elite quarterback at that. Many athletes disagree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s political views. Only one can be considered as his vice presidential candidate. Many athletes have unconventional personal care techniques, most of which are still unknown to the public. Even great former quarterbacks have the opportunity to make high-profile political endorsements and attend rallies. But you would only know that Brett Favre appeared at a Trump rally in Wisconsin this week if you followed the political news closely. It would be easy not to know! Every statement from Rodgers becomes national news because he is still trying to recapture his quarterback magic and because his attempt to do so involves an NFL team in the New York area.

It’s hard to overstate how much less reach Rodgers’ words would have if he stopped playing, or even if he played another year after being so ordinary. He’s still capable of making elite shots and he has the same elite football mind as always. But his mediocrity this season for a terrible team threatens his strength as a Libertarian influencer because it threatens his longevity on the field.

Normally, a player like Rodgers having a year like this for an organization like the Jets would give reason to blame the team and assume the QB is being let down. That doesn’t matter in this case, though, since the Jets have so obviously gone after Rodgers’ taste over the last two years. They hired Rodgers’ old Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett to run their offense, even though Hackett had had a disastrous year as head coach of the Denver Broncos and his main qualification was that Rodgers liked him. They’ve hired a handful of Rodgers’ friends to play wide receiver, and only one of them, the great Davante Adams, is special. Even the Adams trade, no doubt made because Rodgers thought it was a great idea, was unwise. The Jets, who suck, don’t have a third-round draft pick next year, so Adams’ talents can benefit a non-playoff team. The Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh on Oct. 8, a move that Rodgers denies influenced him but that happened to come just before Saleh reportedly wanted to fire Rodgers’ preferred offensive coordinator. It’s fair to criticize Rodgers as both a quarterback and a quasi-manager.

Many NFL teams are desperate to find a good quarterback. Next year’s draft class at this point is not enticing. Rodgers could have options around the league for a few more years, including with the same Jets. But at some Point, enough general managers and owners will agree that Rodgers is done. That day is coming for everyone and Rodgers’ recent playing and injury history suggests it is fast approaching for him. There aren’t an infinite number of teams that would allow Rodgers to continue to occupy such a large place in the national consciousness.

After all, it’s hard to argue that the Jets are better off now than they were when they traded for Rodgers. The 2022 team lost its last six games, missed the playoffs and finished 7-10, so it wasn’t like that Good. They never are Good for a team experiencing the league’s worst playoff drought in an astounding 13 seasons. Zach Wilson, the No. 2 draft pick ahead of Rodgers, wouldn’t be the right guy either. The bar for Rodgers to improve this situation wasn’t high, but he didn’t reach it. At best, the Jets traded water. They own a regular roster of draft picks next year, not the deep roster that would result from a more traditional rebuild. You have the 21st^st– 2025 has the most salary cap room, although NFL teams can always play around a lot on that front as long as they accept that a bill will come due someday. The franchise has no clear path to a touted rookie QB. Would the team still dump Rodgers to try for one?

Rodgers was always worth any pain he could cause. In his later Packers years, it was natural for Green Bay to tolerate frequent retirement speculation (to which Rodgers was readily invited), Rodgers’ influence on the roster, and even his own demands for a trade, which the team rebuffed at one point and another smoothed to keep it close. The list of superstar quarterbacks who don’t bring drama is a short one, and it was worth dealing with everything Rodgers brought with him. A great quarterback is worth a side gig, just as a great quarterback is worth having reporters and bloggers breathlessly cover, even if the story at hand isn’t about football. When the quarterback is no longer great, he is less worthy of these things. And if he’s not a quarterback at all, eventually everyone else won’t be able to hear about it him.