Getty A pair of former Green Bay Packers quarterbacks sharing a moment before an NFL game.
Aaron Rodgers is now a member of the New York Jets. And his predecessor in Green Bay sees Rodgers’ transition going well.
“Aaron will do great!!!!” Favre said in a text message to ESPN’s Ed Werder according to a story by ESPN’s Rich Cimini. “He will handle the transition as well as anyone. [He’s a] very smart and instinctive person, on and off the field. In other words, you’re not going to catch him by surprise very often. And I think [he’s] the best at making everyone around him better. I would rather not bet at all than best against him.”
Aaron Rodgers Follows the Brett Favre Packers-Jets Path
Rodgers appears to be continuing to follow in Favre’s footsteps. Both players were 39 years old and coming off long careers with the Packers — 16 years for Favre; 18 years for Rodgers — when they were traded to the Jets. Each won a Super Bowl and multiple league MVP awards.
The 2008 blockbuster deal for Favre put the Jets back on the map — for one season. As Rodgers does in 2023, Favre brought with him Super Bowl expectations — for a while, it looked like he was going to deliver.
Gang Green started that season 8-3 and was talked about as a favorite to win the Super Bowl. But Favre tore his biceps tendon and, without disclosing the injury, attempted to play through it. The Jets lost four of its final five games and missed the playoffs with a 9-7 record.
Rodgers also comes to the Jets with Super Bowl expectations.
“I’m not showing up here to be part of a team that I think is OK,” Rodgers told reporters during his introductory press conference on April 26. “Every year there’s a handful of teams that can win it. Most people don’t say that out loud. They say in training camp the goal is the same for all 32 teams, but in actuality there’s anywhere from 8-12 teams that can actually do it, and I believe we’re one of those teams.”
Aaron Rodgers Wanted to Come to Jets to One-up Brett Favre
Rodgers, already a first-ballot Hall of Famer, has a chance to make more history by becoming the third starting quarterback to win two Super Bowls with two different teams, after Peyton Manning, with the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, and Tom Brady, with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“If anything, Aaron Rodgers gets to do something Brett Favre never did in the exact same situation,” Peter Bukowski of The Leap, a Packers-focused newsletter on Substack, told me in a February 1 interview. “Let me go to another team and prove that I can still do it. Brett Favre didn’t do that. I think [Rodgers] would relish an opportunity to go and do what Favre couldn’t.”
The Jets have not won a Super Bowl since the 1968-69 season, when Joe Namath was the quarterback.
“I grew up watching old VHS tapes of the Super Bowls,” Rodgers said at his press conference. “So, obviously I know about the guarantee and Broadway Joe. It’s been a while since then. I noticed walking in this morning that that Super Bowl III trophy is looking a little lonely.”
