Sure, it's good to have Aaron Rodgers on your team. If you've forgotten that, Robert Saleh will remind you at least a half-dozen times that “Every time I touch the ball, I feel like I can score.” It's good to have Rodgers on your side, even if that's still more theory than reality.
But Rodgers won't be able to help the Jets anymore.
The Tennessee Titans had first-and-goal at the Jets' 10-yard line, 90 seconds left in the game, Jets 24, Titans 17. Will Revis, a fan who normally walks around in shoulder pads and a helmet, got out of a sack and sprinted 13 yards to set up the Titans, with the Nashville crowd of 65,509 standing and screaming at Nissan Stadium.
“That's the moment,” Quincy Williams later said, “that's the moment you have to give it your all. You have to fight back. You have to play. That's the game.”
The Jets lived on the brink for much of the day, trailing 7-0 and possibly even worse without Levi's generosity, but it was Levi who somehow found a sliver of space to catch Calvin Ridley's incredible 40-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter.
“The guy can make plays,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said.
The Jets were desperate. So were the Titans. The season doesn't end 0-2, but it certainly gets tough. Revis dropped back, got surrounded again, scrambled again for two, then looked for DeAndre Hopkins. Sauce Gardner may or may not have grabbed Hopkins' shirt. The ball fell incomplete.
Third down. 34 seconds left. Revis steps back and is sucked into a green vacuum, this time similar to the pack he escaped a few plays earlier, but this time Will McDonald takes him to the ground. It's McDonald's third sack of the day.
“I've got to throw that ball away,” Revis said later with regret.
Down four. One play to win the game, one play to make it 1-1. The crowd was still going wild. It was clear to everyone that if Revis could reach the end zone, Titans coach Brian Callahan would do what Brian Daboll did two years earlier when he was looking for his first career win in this same stadium: go for two points and go for the win.
The Jets wanted to make it moot. 23 seconds left. Tennessee called time.
“I have confidence in our guys over there,” Rodgers will say.
There was nothing he could do about it now. Rodgers was good for much of the day, and his modest numbers (18-of-30 for 176 yards) belied a pair of breathtakingly perfect passes to Garrett Wilson and Mike Williams on the game-winning drive. He threw two touchdown passes, the first of which was to Breron Allen, connecting with the oldest and youngest players in the NFL.
He threw another pass to Breece Hall, who led the final drive to put the Jets at 1-1.
But he had his cap on now. No help. Revis took the snap. The Jets were closing in, rushing him. Revis threw. The ball hit the ground safely. No flags strewn across the grass. The game was over. The Jets held on. They won. They arrived here alone last in the AFC East and went home tied for second.
Up next are the Patriots. Thursday night. Home opener. Three games in 11 days. It's a tough stretch whether you're 40 years, 288 days old (Rodgers) or 20 years, 239 days old (Allen). Still, 1-1 is a lot better than 0-2.
“It's the heartbeat of our team,” Saleh said of the Jets' defense, specifically the line. “When they move, we move.”
The Jets were already thinner up front than they were the previous two years, but sadly, they're even thinner now with their engine, Jermaine Johnson, sidelined with what appears to be an Achilles issue. Bad luck for the Jets, even worse for Johnson.
Saleh has a tough task. On Thursday, the Jets start the first day of the rest of their lives, facing the Patriots without the perennial thorn in Bill Belichick. They still have a chance to get off to a fast start and get to 4-1 before facing the Bills in a few weeks. But they wouldn't get to 4-1 without getting to 1-1 first. Enough already.
It wasn't a perfect day in the Tennessee sun, by any means, and it didn't need to be a perfect day – in this case, good was good enough.
