How the Jets Should Look to Replace Aaron Rodgers
There aren't a lot of great options out there, but sticking with Zach Wilson shouldn't be a consideration
After an offseason of intrigue and hype, the Aaron Rodgers era in New York might already be over, with the list of 40-year-olds to recover and thrive after an achilles tear a blank page.1 The Jets have gone from the seventh highest Super Bowl odds in the preseason to 16th at DraftKings Sportsbook right now, below the Green Bay Packers. I discussed some of the implications of Rodgers’ injury, and how the Jets played without him last night, in my MNF Advanced Game Review. The fact that the Jets are even seen in the middle of the pack for Super Bowl chances, while playing in a stacked AFC East, is all about their defense, not the possibility Zach Wilson becomes a functional quarterback. The Jets held down Josh Allen and the Bills in Week 1, after finishing as a top-6 defense in 2022, while finishing middle-of-the-pack with 14 interceptions.
The Jets have a delicate balance to pursue their Rodgers replacement, not wanting to mortgage the future further for an incremental gain in Super Bowl probability, but also not wanting to be passive. Even if he never plays another down, Rodgers has already cost the Jets a first-round pick swap and second rounders in this year’s draft, plus another second in 2024. Rodgers’ contract is fully guaranteed up to $75 million, which would accelerate on the cap with release or retirement, putting an anchor on the Jets’ ability to go out and pay much to his replacement.
Theoretically, the Jets could trade for a backup on another team, but it’s less of a realistic option than most think. Teams have been planning their quarterback contingencies all offseason, and everyone is technically in the hunt at this point in the season, making backups less expendable. The marginal gains from trading for a Jameis Winston from the Saints probably isn’t worth the cost, when the Saints are trying to win their division this year.
I did include one backup in the replacement options of this analysis: Andy Dalton. With Bryce Young locked in as the starter and not much a realistic chance of making the playoffs (< 20% in markets), the Panthers could be more amenable to letting Dalton go, who they acquired before they knew Young would be the Week 1 starter. Dalton also is on a very palatable two-year contract with roughly $5 million in remaining salary. Maybe the Panthers won’t want to bit the bullet on the $4.8 million they already paid in signing bonus, but that’s a sunk cost at this point, and it should translate into more trade compensation.
PROJECTING POSSIBLE REPLACEMENT
I’m going to, once again, turn to my Bayesian updating methodology to project possible Rodgers replacements, as I did to project how quarterbacks would performance this season across the NFL. In this analysis, I’m going to focus more on the quarterbacks’ ranges of outcomes than their median projections, since the Jets will need upside from whoever they start to have a realistic shot of a longer playoffs run.
Bayesian updating give us a median projection that updates with each piece of evidence (i.e. each quarterback rep), but also estimates a standard deviation of true ability, which narrow as evidence is collected. Logically, we know more about quarterbacks as we’ve seen more of them, with the ceiling and floor coming closer together over time.
I didn’t have a system for choosing the quarterbacks here, going with the aforementioned Dalton, plus available free agents Carson Wentz, Joe Flacco, Colt McCoy and the theoretically available Matt Ryan. I didn’t include Philip Rivers, with two years out of the NFL and 41 years old (three-and-a-half years older than Ryan) disqualifying him as an option.
Taking in all the evidence from each possible replacement, plus that from Zach Wilson, we can compare the Bayesian updating ranges for “true” quarterback efficiency, which heavily discounts evidence earlier than 2017, and decays the sample from the last several years according to recency. One this I have not done is add an additional age-decline estimate, which I’ll discuss further below, especially for Ryan.
None of the replacements project as league-average franchise quarterbacks by their median outcome, but Ryan is the closest and has the largest sample to judge. Ryan had a Hall-of-Fame adjacent career (QB GOAT No. 28), but his efficiency has been in decline the last several seasons. Ryan was MVP with the top EPA/play efficiency in 2016, maintained top-10 status the next two years, then fell to 20th, 15th, 22nd and 28th from 2019 to 2022. Ryan’s age-related uncertainty would motivate me to move his project down a bit, but I wouldn’t rule him out. The Colts and Falcons teams he played with in recent years have been a mess, and you at least know he’ll bring professionalism and less drama than some other options.
Carson Wentz has the second-highest median projection to Ryan, and also has a wider range of outcomes. We might think of Wentz as a totally known commodity, but he has only a few hundred more pass attempts than Jameis Winston, with the latter serving as a backup for the last three years. Just two years ago he was statistically above average for the Colts, even if it didn’t feel that way. If the Jets could somehow get the 2021 version of Wentz, with a 1.4% interception rate (4th lowest) and 5.8% sack rate (14th lowest), he would be a vastly superior option to what they could expect from Wilson. Substitute Breece Hall for Jonathan Taylor with their shared ability to create implosive runs, and you should have a solidly playoff-level team. Wentz turns 31 years old this season, which is four years younger than Dalton.
Joe Flacco and Andy Dalton look very similar in their projections, solidly slightly below average, but with little upside. Flacco’s familiarity in the system might be a selling point, but I think the Jets have had enough of him by now. Dalton isn’t a bad choice, but giving up picks doesn’t seem worth it if you can find similar production among free agents.
Colt McCoy’s projection is fairly poor, but still better than Zach Wilson’s. Wilson projects as a below 25th percentile franchise quarter, though will a lot of uncertainty still left after fewer than 650 career pass attempts. Even so, his range of outcomes only has a sliver above the 50th percentile, a threshold the Jets need to maximize to a playoff run.
I didn’t actually research this, so correct me if this is wrong.
I fear the Jets just aren’t meant to have nice things
So anything is better than Wilson...