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Aaron Rodgers’ Injury Unlikely to Alter Jets’ TV Flight Plan

anthony crupi
·6 min read

Aaron Rodgers’ tenure with the Jets never got off the ground, as the 39-year-old quarterback’s New York debut ended Monday night just four snaps into the team’s opening possession. Sacked for a 10-yard loss by Buffalo’s Leonard Floyd in the fourth minute of the first quarter, Rodgers crumpled to the ground, the back of his left calf rippling in the telltale fashion of an Achilles tendon rupture.

The acquisition of the future Hall of Famer had Jets fans dreaming of their first Super Bowl celebration since Broadway Joe made good on his brash guarantee way back in 1969, but those visions were dashed as Rodgers hobbled his way over to the medical tent. After the game—a wildly improbable 22-16 overtime win for Gang Green—head coach Robert Saleh said the Jets feared the worst. “Concerned with his Achilles,” a subdued Saleh told reporters. “MRI’s probably gonna confirm what we think is already gonna happen, so: Prayers tonight. But it’s not good.”

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Reports Tuesday morning affirmed that worst-case scenario, with Rodgers lost for the season with an Achilles tear. Which leaves the NFL’s broadcast partners with a whole bunch of Zach Wilson and not a lot of options.

Eight of the Jets’ first 12 games are scheduled to air in national TV windows, a high-profile run that was designed to squeeze the most ratings juice out of Rodgers’ Big Apple vision quest. Now the de facto QB1, Wilson may not be ready for primetime, but in the near term, the Jets are going to be all over the TV dial.

Among the Jets’ upcoming appearances include next week’s coast-to-coast outing against Dallas in CBS’ late Sunday afternoon slot and a Week 4 showdown with the Chiefs on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. Per the terms of the NFL’s flex-scheduling procedures, those games are locked in, although neither network is sweating out the implications. The Cowboys could play a couple sets of pickleball and still put up massive Nielsen ratings, while Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs scared up 27.5 million viewers in NBC’s Thursday night opener.

Wilson is not Rodgers—he finished Monday night’s game with 14 completions for 140 yards and one interception, before connecting on a touchdown pass that was all Garrett Wilson—but deliveries for the Jets’ next few coast-to-coast games should hold up thanks to the teams on the other side of the line of scrimmage. Things get decidedly more worrisome between Weeks 6 and 11, when each of the core four NFL TV partners has the Jets penciled in during a national window.

If the outsized on-field antics of Wilson and Hard Knocks standout Xavier Gipson aren’t enough to keep the Week 6 Eagles-Jets game in Fox’s “America’s Game of the Week” slot—the unsigned rookie returned a punt 65 yards in OT for Monday night’s game-winning touchdown—the network has a viable backup in its 4:25 p.m. ET backup (Cardinals-Rams). Fox may elect to split the difference between the two games, much as it did with on Oct. 30, 2022, when 47% of its affiliates were served up the 49ers-Rams feed while 44% were treated to Giants-Seahawks. The compromise helped Fox average a hair under 25 million viewers in that same Week 8 window.

Under the new flex doctrine, ESPN can’t replace its Nov. 6 Chargers-Jets game; scheduled Monday Night Football matchups can only be swapped out in Weeks 12 to 17, at the league’s discretion. That said, the size of the two representative markets should serve as a considerable consolation for a Rodgers-free outing. Per Nielsen, New York and Los Angeles are home to more than 13.6 million TV households, accounting for 11% of the country’s total audience base.

That leaves NBC with plenty of time to ponder the implications of its Week 10 Jets-Raiders game, while CBS puzzles over its scheduled Nov. 19 rematch of Monday night’s shocker. NBC has the wherewithal to flex two Sunday Night Football games between Weeks 5 and 10, which leaves the network in the driver’s seat. (The NFL has final say over SNF flexes in Weeks 11-17.) Trouble is, the pickings on Nov. 12 are rather slim, unless Fox agrees to punt away its scheduled Giants-Cowboys matchup. While currently slated for Fox’s national window, that rivalry game is now perhaps slightly less appetizing in the wake of Dallas’ 40-0 dismantling of Big Blue on Sunday night, which drew a lower-than-expected 20.2 million TV viewers.

Should CBS choose to fiddle with its Week 11 slate, it has the option of beaming the Bucs-49ers signal to a greater share of its affiliates, while leaving Jets-Bills intact as the go-to game in the larger East Coast markets. CBS may have missed out on a Josh Allen-Aaron Rodgers air war, but with one week of NFL games on the books, a Baker Mayfield-Brock Purdy duel now sounds a lot more promising than it might have even just four days ago.

Lastly, there’s no altering the course of the NFL’s first-ever Black Friday game, a Dolphins-Jets showcase that will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Not that it matters; the online retail colossus is far less interested in scaring up media impressions than it is in separating consumers from their holiday shopping dollars. Amazon will miss not having the chance to celebrate the start of the spending season with the highly marketable Rodgers, but even Zach Wilson can’t Grinch up a day in which Americans spend more than $9 billion online.

There’s still a lot of ground to cover and games to play before the networks must start making any tough decisions about their upcoming NFL schedules. Like the pregame rainbow that appeared briefly in the skies over MetLife Stadium Monday night before vanishing just as quickly, Aaron Rodgers’ New York interlude was short-lived. As much as everyone tends to overreact after Week 1—take a deep breath, Bengals and Bills fans, and slow your roll, JerryWorld—the TV sports chiefs are calmly assessing the situation in New York while gearing up for this Sunday.

All is not lost, even if No. 8 never plays another down of football; between now and the end of the season, Dallas and Kansas City are set to appear in another 22 combined national TV windows.

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