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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Aaron Rodgers didn’t come to the Jets for this.
“Yeah, frustration for sure,” Rodgers said after the Jets’ 25-22 loss to the Patriots.
Rodgers didn’t come to the Jets to fail to score more than 24 points in any one game this season.
“We’ve got to score touchdowns,” Rodgers said. “Can’t leave it up to Greg [Zuerlein] or try and pin it on Greg. We had a lot of opportunities to score 30, to make it a two-score game at times and didn’t do it.”
Rodgers didn’t come here to have to overcome a kicker who already had cost two games and missed a PAT and 44-yard field goal wide left.
But burning three timeouts in the first quarter isn’t on the kicker.
“On one of them, we were lagging out of the huddle, one I was trying to get the protection right,” Rodgers said. “One I felt like we could have gotten off, but it was fine to take it there. Yeah, our operation was a little slow at times.”
It is mind-boggling that with a future first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback and experienced veterans all around him that the operation is anything but efficient.
“You can’t objectively say this is the reason why,” Rodgers said. “We had some substitution stuff at times. We were laid-back in the huddle. Sometimes after a big play, that can be a slow operation. We have shifts and motions on plays after some of those. We were trying to get lined up, trying to get the play off, trying to get the perfect call. There’s a lot to look at.”
He mentioned a second-and-1 at the New England 11 in the third quarter where Breece Hall was stuffed for no gain before he threw incomplete for Davante Adams before interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich summoned Zuerlein for a go-ahead 29-yard field goal.
“We’re not playing complementary football,” Rodgers said. “We haven’t put it together really since the last time we won a game where all three phases played really well. Same thing today.”
Truly a team effort, and no one is absolved.
“We’ve just got to be better collectively,” Ulbrich said. “Every single human being out there has got to be better. Aaron has got to be better. Coaches got to be better. All of us got to be better.”
And so Aaron Rodgers is the quarterback of the 2-6 Jets.