


There was no sighting of Aaron Rodgers riding along One Jets Drive and into the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center on a white horse early in the morning on the first day of the rest of his Hall of Fame life.
It may have been cloudy, but that couldn’t keep the Jets from letting the sunshine in because, well, the sky is the limit for Flight ’23.
This was no day on Cloud 8 for the longest-suffering fans and habitual skeptics to be dreading any obligatory turbulence somewhere on the horizon.
With “Hard Knocks” cameras mostly inconspicuous on the interview patio, with the new double-decker bleachers standing proudly overlooking the green grass of the practice fields, this amounted to the calm before the storm, when Rodgers will begin the desperate pursuit of that elusive Super Bowl, for his new franchise more than for him, with his first training camp practice Thursday.
How Rodgers and the Jets shelter from that storm will be telling.
“More so than any time now,” Mosley said, “it’s easy to get distracted. If we let things be a distraction it’s gonna become a distraction.”
On Day 1, it wasn’t a distraction.
Heaven help the Jets if it was.
“In the facility, it’s almost like we don’t even see the cameras, really,” Alijah Vera-Tucker said. “They’re doing their thing, we’re gonna be doing ours.”
The 1985 Bears embraced the spotlight.
The great teams can both embrace it and find a way to ignore the noise when it must.
“When people hear the New York Jets,” Mosley said, “they’re either going to think losses, or now when they hear the New York Jets, they’re going to think automatic Super Bowl. We can’t think that way. We have to stay focused.”
Let the honeymoon begin.
From Joe Namath on down, you won’t find any member of the organization who doesn’t believe that Rodgers and the Jets will be a match made in heaven.
J-E-T-S: Jumbo Expectations This Season.
On Wednesday, the Jets trotted out Mosley, Vera-Tucker, Quinnen Williams and D.J. Reed for the media. There was no “happy to be here and start this next chapter, love the energy in the building, feeling great for a 39-year-old man, are those ‘Hard Knocks’ cameras in the back there?” press conference scheduled for the erstwhile 39-year-old savior.
There are 54 days before the regular-season opener, and every one of them will be filled with imaginations running wild in Mr. Rodgers’ Neighborhood.
Each and every summer each, every NFL franchise shows up at training camp undefeated and dreaming that “Why not us?” dream, and the Jets and their fans can sure tell you what false hope looks and sounds like.

Not this time. Not this summer.
No hard knocks this fall and winter.
Not if Aaron Rodgers has anything to say about it.
The Jets are betting heavily that he will have plenty to say about it.
About 12 consecutive years without a playoff berth.

About 55 years since a Super Bowl appearance and championship.
“His first day here you can kind of feel a lot of screws and bolts kind of tighten up,” Mosley said. “Everybody’s excited from top to bottom.”
Rodgers has been welcomed as the conquering hero, and he has welcomed every facet of New York with open arms.
“The résumé he has, the character he is, the guy that he is brings a spark to everybody,” Williams said. “Spark to the defense ’cause we get to go against a Hall of Fame quarterback every single day at practice. I get to pick his brain about all the great D-tackles, all the great D-linemen that he’s played against that gave him problems.”
The Jets are targeting more takeaways this season and a perch atop all NFL defenses.
“If the offense is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’re gonna be up some of the time or most of the time,” Reed said, “so that’s gonna make the offense on the other side be aggressive.”
The first A-bombs are scheduled to be dropped Thursday.
“Him and Patrick Mahomes, I’ll say have the best deep ball,” Reed said.
The chess matches will be compelling: Mosley trying to read Rodgers’ mind, and vice versa.
Rodgers challenging Reed and Sauce Gardner, and vice versa.
“We’re gonna get a lot of deep balls in practice,” Reed said. “Last year we didn’t really throw the ball deep that much in practice.”
J-E-T-S, for too many years for too many fans, has meant Just End The Season.
Not this season.
Not with Aaron Rodgers in town.