Pack legend could become a NY icon

EVERYONE wants to be wanted, and if Aaron Rodgers bases his next career choice on who wants him the most, he will be playing quarterback next September for your New York Jets.

By what they have said and by what they have not said, the Green Bay Packers have declared their preferences. They are over Rodgers just like they were over Brett Favre 15 years ago, and if No. 12 decides to return for season No. 19, he should do so in the colors of a franchise not nearly as iconic as the one that made him famous.

The word “Jets” isn’t cited as an antonym of the word

“iconic” in any thesaurus, though it probably should be.

And that’s why Jets general manager Joe

Douglas decided to wait on Rodgers rather than fight the Saints to the death for the services of Derek Carr, whose initial visit to the team’s Florham Park facility was said to be a lovefest to end all lovefests.

In discussing the New York market, Douglas had this to say to The Post last year: “I feel like it’s a Knicks-Yankees town. Hopefully it can be a Jets town soon.”

The GM knows that Rodgers gives him a better chance than Carr did of making this a Jets town.

Now comes the hard part — waiting for Rodgers to decide that he still wants to play, and hoping the quarterback acts on the Packers’ vibe and requests a trade. Actually, the even harder part is convincing Rodgers that a franchise that hasn’t advanced to a Super Bowl since Richard Nixon succeeded Lyndon Johnson as president is the best audible available to him.

But the fact that the Jets are the Jets is exactly what should appeal most to a 39-year-old Rodgers, who could sure use something dramatic to happen in his sunset years to elevate his standing as an all-time great.

Rodgers has won only one Super Bowl title, and since his sole appearance in the big game a dozen years ago, he is 7-9 in the playoffs. Though an overwhelming majority of NFL quarterbacks would sign up for that résumé in a heartbeat, Rodgers is most often compared to Tom Brady, who won seven Super Bowls, appeared in 10, and posted a 35-13 postseason record.

If Rodgers did what Favre failed to do in his one-and-done season in New York, and led the Jets to a championship, that would go a long way toward closing the canyonesque gap between his career and Brady’s. If Rodgers became the team’s first quarterback since

Joe Namath to win it all, he wouldn’t just one-up his old friend Favre (9-7 as a Jet in one non-playoff season) and return as an ultra-relevant figure in a league now dominated by his State Farm commercial co-star Patrick Mahomes.

Rodgers would author one of the greatest stories ever told in the NFL, or in all of New York sports.

That’s a whole lot of upside to turn down, especially when the Packers have been busy recently expressing so much affection for Jordan Love.

Though I am on record as a Jimmy Garoppolo guy, the Jets have made their terms of veteran quarterback engagement very clear. There is Aaron Rodgers, and there is everybody else. Jimmy G is now at the top of their Everybody Else bin, which won’t be touched until Rodgers makes his call.

So be it. Zach Wilson was a bust-out case as a No. 2 overall draft pick, and Douglas and head coach Robert Saleh are swinging for the fences to cover the tab. Or maybe that noted stargazer, team owner Woody Johnson, is the one doing the big swinging just like he did for Favre in 2008.

Either way, the Jets offer Rodgers things that other organizations simply do not, starting with the biggest market and the biggest drought. Mark Messier had won five championships in Edmonton before ending the Rangers’ 54-year drought in 1994, and he would say his pursuit of his sixth title, in New York, “became bigger than hockey and bigger than the Stanley Cup.”

A Rodgers championship with the Jets would be bigger than football and bigger than the Lombardi Trophy.

Once the most famous New York free agent of all, Reggie Jackson said his legacy “would be significantly smaller” had he not made World Series history in the big city. “If [Michael] Jordan won four in New York rather than six in Chicago,” Jackson once told me, “he’d be even bigger than he is now.”

Nobody is asking Rodgers to win four rings for the Jets. Just one will do.

Just one with a defense that is already strong enough to contend, and with an offense that features a circle of exciting playmakers, including Garrett Wilson, and a coordinator in Nathaniel Hackett who is a Rodgers favorite.

Of course there is a downside with the Jets, because there’s always a downside with the Jets. It’s who they are. But Aaron Rodgers should know that the upside with this team in this town is an all-timer for an all-time great.