The last thing I want to be is a killjoy during this Aaron Rodgers Flight 23 celebration.
Only five teams (Chiefs, Eagles, Bengals, Bills, 49ers) have shorter odds to win the Super Bowl than the Jets (+1400). The networks have made the prime-time Jets one of the league’s marquee teams.
Who deserves a sweet, long-lasting honeymoon more than long-suffering Jets fans?
Who could have imagined that Joe Namath would turn 80 before the Jets so much as made it back to a Super Bowl?
What? You haven’t gotten your Aaron Rodgers No. 8 jersey yet? It’s already the top-selling NFL jersey, with Jalen Hurts second and Patrick Mahomes third.
It’s only June. No one wants to come down from Cloud 8, and maybe no one will have to once Rodgers, who will turn 40 in December, starts reminding us why he is a first-ballot Hall of Famer by turning Garrett Wilson into his Davante Adams and Breece Hall into his Aaron Jones, backed by an offensive coordinator he loves, Nathaniel Hackett, and what promises to be an elite defense.
But I would be remiss if I didn’t call to your attention the cautionary tales of would-be, thirtysomething New York sports saviors.
And that by no means is the express domain of the Jets: the majority of veteran players who have been summoned by our desperate franchises to help deliver a championship have ended up in the dustbin of unfulfilled and unfulfilling history.
The greatest success was Captain Mark Messier, who was 30 when Edmonton general manager Glen Sather traded him to the Rangers. The force of Messier’s iron will enabled the Blueshirts to win the Stanley Cup in 1994 and end their oppressive 54-year curse.
(Ironically, the 2022 Jets extended their franchise’s Super Bowl drought to … 54 years.)
Messier once recalled his home opener at a raucous Garden this way: “I felt a sense of tremendous pride, and didn’t expect to be greeted like that. I said to myself, ‘I will die trying to bring a Stanley Cup to the fans of New York.’”
The Jets will need Rodgers to be their Messier.
And merely ending the Jets’ 12-year playoff drought is not what we’re talking about.
Even after winning the 1998 World Series with that powerhouse Yankees team, George Steinbrenner couldn’t resist trading for 36-year-old Roger Clemens, who overcame a tortured playoff history to close out the 1999 World Series in Game 4 against the Braves for his first of back-to-back rings in the Pinstripes.
“I’ve got a team of All-Stars behind me,” Clemens said after the trade. “When I take the mound, it’ll be exciting.”
Alas, those are the exceptions to the rule:
Tom Glavine, 37 and a two-time Cy Young winner, started his first game as a Met in 2003. “I look forward to coming here and bringing the New York Mets to that next level they’re trying to get to,” Glavine said.
Former Mets GM Omar Minaya signed three-time Cy Young winner Pedro Martinez, 33, in December 2004. “The Mets had become irrelevant in New York,” Minaya said.
The Yankees signed five-time Cy Young winner Randy Johnson, 41, in 2005.
He lasted two championship-less seasons in The Bronx.
Brett Favre, three-time NFL MVP, was 38 when former Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum traded for him in August 2008.
“He represents a significant addition to this franchise,” Woody Johnson said.
Kevin Garnett, a 15-time NBA All-Star, was 37 when he played his first game as a Net following former GM Billy King’s ill-fated trade in 2013. Paul Pierce, a 10-time NBA All-Star, was 36 when he played his first game as a Net.
“We’ve got all the ingredients we need to win a championship,” Pierce said at the introductory press conference.
Two-time NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant was 31 and rehabbing a torn Achilles when he stiffed the Knicks during free agency to team with Kyrie Irving on the Nets. “I didn’t want to be the savior of the Knicks or New York,” Durant later said.
James Harden was 31 when the Nets talked championship with their Big 3. “It was amazing basketball for 17 games,” Durant later said.
The Mets are counting on three-time Cy Young winner Max Scherzer, who will turn 39 next month, and three-time Cy Young winner Justin Verlander, 40, to help end their 37-year championship drought.
We have learned the hard way in New York professional sports that Canyon of Heroes parades are few and far between.
The moral of the story for Aaron Rodgers? Broadway Joe won’t like this:
No guarantees.
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