Yes, it’s good to have Aaron Rodgers on the team, and if you’d forgotten that, then Robert Saleh would soon remind you, no fewer than a half-dozen times, that “we feel we can score anytime we touch the ball.” And even if that’s still more a theory than a reality: Sure, it’s good to have Rodgers on your side.
But Rodgers wasn’t going to be able to help the Jets now.
Now, it was first-and-goal at the Jets 10-yard line for the Tennessee Titans. There were 90 seconds left in the game, Jets 24, Titans 17. Will Levis, a walking fan coronary in shoulder pads and a helmet most of the time, had just slithered out of a sack and scrambled 13 yards to set them up. There were 65,509 screaming Nashvillians on their feet at Nissan Stadium.
“That’s the time,” Quincy Williams would say later. “That’s the time where you got to sell out. You’ve got to make a stand. You’ve got to make plays. That’s the game there.”
The Jets had spent much of the day teetering on the brink. They’d fallen behind 7-0 and it probably could’ve been much worse if not for the largesse of Levis and yet it was Levis who’d somehow found the one molecule of space that had allowed Calvin Ridley to catch a crazy 40-yard TD pass in the third quarter.
“That guy,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said, “can make plays.”
The Jets were desperate. So were the Titans. Your season doesn’t end at 0-2, but it sure makes things harder. Levis dropped back, was surrounded again, scrambled again, picked up two. Then he looked for DeAndre Hopkins; maybe Sauce Gardner grabbed Hopkins’ shirt, maybe he didn’t. The ball fell incomplete.
Third down now. Thirty-four seconds left. Levis dropped back and now he was swallowed by a green vacuum. It was similar to the swarm he’d eluded a few plays earlier, but this time Will McDonald got him to the ground, third sack of the day for McDonald.
“I have to get rid of that ball,” Levis said ruefully later on.
Fourth down. One play to win the game, one play to get to 1-1. The crowd was still abuzz. It was fairly clear to everyone that if Levis could find the end zone, Titans coach Brian Callahan would do what Brian Daboll had done in this same stadium two years ago when he’d been searching for his first career win: Go for two, go for the win.
The Jets wanted to make that a moot point. Twenty-three seconds left now. Tennessee called for time.
“I have faith in our guys there,” Rodgers would say.
Nothing he could do now. Rodgers had been good most of the day, belying his modest numbers (18-for-30, 176 yards) by making a couple of breathtakingly perfect throws on the winning drive, one to Garrett Wilson and one to Mike Williams. He threw two TD passes, and when he connected on his first one to Braelon Allen, it was the NFL’s oldest player hooking up with its youngest one.
He’d thrown another to Breece Hall. He’d led that final drive, put the Jets in position for 1-1.
But he was wearing a baseball cap now. No way to help. Levis took the snap. Here came the Jets, rushing him, hurrying him. Levis threw. It landed safely to the ground. No flags littered the grass. It was over. The Jets had held. They had won. They’d arrived here alone in last place in the AFC East, flew home tied for second.
Patriots next. Thursday night. Home opener. End of three games in 11 days, which is quite a grind whether you’re 40 years, 288 days old (like Rodgers) or 20 years, 239 days (like Allen). Still, 1-1 looks so much better than 0-2.
“The heartbeat of our team,” Saleh said of the Jets defense, specifically the line. “We go as they go.”
The Jets were already shorter up front than they’d been the last two years, and sadly would get even shorter when the motor of that engine, Jermaine Johnson, went down with what looks like an Achilles issue. Tough luck for the Jets, tougher break for Johnson.
And a tough assignment for Saleh. Thursday the Jets start the first day of the rest of their lives, facing the Pats without their time-eternal tormentor, Bill Belichick. The opportunity still exists for a fast start, one that could still get them to 4-1 heading into the Bills game in a couple of weeks. But they couldn’t have gotten to 4-1 without first getting to 1-1. Done deal.
It wasn’t a perfect day in the Tennessee sun, by any stretch. It didn’t have to be. Good in this case is plenty good enough.