Not making move was the only move to make
MERRY Christmas to all my Jets fans, from Woody Johnson: The Three Amigos — Joe Douglas and Robert Saleh, and by extension Nathaniel Hackett — will be back in 2024 to help Aaron Rodgers win Super Bowl LIX, on Feb. 9, 2025, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
Go ahead and call Woody The Grinch Who Stole Christmas if you disagree, and enough of you who focus on You Are What Your 17-32 Record Says You Are during the Saleh Era undoubtedly will.
But Woody got this one right.
It isn’t only the right call, it is the only call now that Rodgers has assumed the role of de facto general manager because of the investment Johnson made when he moved heaven and earth to lure him out of the darkness and bring those forever Super Bowl dreams and the ticket and merchandise sales that go along with him.
Rodgers surrendering $35 million of his own riches and expressing his desire to play two more years essentially boxed Woody into gift-wrapping mulligans under the Christmas trees of Douglas and Saleh, and by extension Rodgers’ BFF Hackett.
It would make no sense to titillate your fan base with the arrival of a future first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback who had Joe Namath doing cartwheels and offering his retired No. 12 and then pull the rug out from under him four plays into his Jets career.
Woody revealed his plans to The Post’s Brian Costello prior to the Jets’ 30-28 victory over the woebegone Commanders. Woody either had a good feeling that the Jets would not suffer what would have been an ignominious loss to the Sam Howell Commanders — and after blowing a 27-7 lead they nearly did — or didn’t care about the result, or all the Jets fans disguised as empty seats.
“The culture of the team is a lot better,” Woody told The Post. “The defense is better. The offense needs a few pieces.”
Rodgers was the missing piece Woody craved, and when the missing piece went missing, the season went missing along with him as Douglas compounded his mistake of drafting Zach Wilson second overall three years ago by failing to sign a backup more competent and experienced in the event of an Only The Jets catastrophe.
“Obviously I can sit here and give you a reason why I think I’m the right coach,” Saleh said, “but at the same time there’s gonna be a lot of things that I’ve gotta reflect on and acknowledge and get better at, not just for myself but globally, and use this offseason to make sure we’re attacking it in a way that gets us to our goal that we all believe we can get to, which is a championship.”
Saleh needs Rodgers to coach the offense while he and DC Jeff Ulbrich coach the defense.
Captain C.J. Mosley is on board with Saleh. “I just believe his mindset and his message is true to this game and true to our team,” Mosley said. “I really believe that he’s the right guy for this team, right guy for this job, because when he’s up there talking, I can relate, and sometimes mimic exactly what he’s saying or trying to say to the team to try to get us to that next level, so I have full faith in him.”
Breece Hall, who unleashed The Beast inside him (20-95-2 TDs, 12-96 receiving), assumed the regime would return. Asked why he believes Saleh is the right man for the job, Hall told The Post: “He’s the same guy every day. I think he just tells you how it is. He’s a great leader. He’s a guy that when he says something, you’re gonna go listen to it.”
Hackett’s hiring helped entice Rodgers, and Trevor Siemian marching the Jets into position for Greg Zuerlein’s gamewinning 54-yard field goal at the end and deploying Hall as a dual threat was a rare feather in his embattled 2023 cap.
“I think he’s a great guy, I think he does call really good plays,” Hall said of Hackett. “You gotta watch the tape and look at what’s really happening. He does right by everybody, and I hate that he gets the slander that he does. Everybody on our team loves him. Sometimes it’s not the play call, it’s the play.”
Sometimes it’s the play call, but Rodgers swears by Hackett and so that is that. Now, even with Rodgers showing up next summer at 40 with a healthy left Achilles there can be no excuses: The mandate must be Super Bowl Or Bust, even more so than this season.
“There’s gonna be a lot adversity, even more heat us on next year, probably more than this year,” Mosley said, “so just gotta understand what it’s gonna take. It’s gonna take everybody together, injuries are gonna happen, things are gonna go left and right that we can’t control, but it’s how we hold things together, just like a game like this.”
If Woody’s Over/Under number on consecutive playoff misses is 13, he won’t oblige a 14th in 2024 and he will be joining the Blow It Up crowd.
Rodgers will need to help Douglas recruit a small army of offensive linemen and nudge him to trade his first-round pick for Davante Adams. If not, Mike Evans and Tee Higgins will be free agents.
This doesn’t mean Douglas, with his neck on the line, surrenders anything close to carte blanche decision-making power to Rodgers, of course. If Douglas doesn’t trade for Adams, he should use that first-round pick on a replacement for Mekhi Becton at left tackle.
Déjà vu all over again next season. “I didn’t even know that was news,” Garrett Wilson said. “We feel like we’re close, we gotta figure it out as far as us playing, but yeah, that was never a doubt. We’ll be here next year and we’re gonna be ready to rock.”
Yule Gotta Believe.