The Jets Can Still Make the Playoffs Without Aaron Rodgers

Save your jokes about Nathaniel Hackett. With a great defense on the other side, he could still get enough out of Zach Wilson to salvage this season.

Aaron Rodgers’s season may be over, but the Jets’ season doesn’t have to be.

To be clear, I am not an internet masochist. I am not someone who plays dumb for attention. I think this take is far less controversial than those who spend their free time dunking on headlines for four likes at a time will claim it to be. It is with them in mind that I have decided to include this disclaimer.

The Jets can still make the playoffs without Rodgers, almost exclusively on the strength of their defense, but one of the other reasons they can do so is because they have Nathaniel Hackett as their offensive coordinator.

Hackett was hired on in late January.  :: Isaiah J. Downing/USA TODAY Sports

Before Hackett was the one-and-done coach of the Broncos and the grist for unfunny and repetitive jokes, he was a respected quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator both in college and the NFL. We profiled Hackett back in 2021, the year before he took the Broncos’ job, and talked to a number of people who had gained an understanding of his approach.

Here’s what we found: Hackett is obsessed with the science of learning and often consults those outside of coaching on how he can better impart information. He is one of the most disarming voices on a football headset. After getting to know his players intimately, he can tailor his approach to which quarterback is on the other end of the line. One of his college quarterbacks told me that Hackett once radioed to him in an old Western gunslinger voice to cut the tension. And he’s flexible schematically. At Syracuse, Hackett once scrapped the entire offense after a bad practice and installed the K-Gun, leading to the shattering of several school records and the drafting of quarterback Ryan Nassib in the fourth round.

In essence, Hackett is what Zach Wilson needs, should the Jets invest in Wilson as a full-time starter. Someone to make this climb feel a little less daunting. Someone to take the edges off the offense and make it seem more navigable. Someone who can understand what Wilson is feeling, what it’s like to get leg-swept in front of the football world and what it’s like to be everyone’s punch line.

If the Jets end up searching for a veteran quarterback (Matt Ryan had his best years in an outside-zone-themed system, and Hackett interviewed well for the Falcons job that eventually went to Arthur Smith), the take is still apt. Hackett had a winning season as a coordinator with Kyle Orton in Buffalo after the EJ Manuel experiment flamed out midseason. Hackett was also the only coordinator to ever get a consistently productive season out of Blake Bortles.

Speaking of which, the similarities between this Jets team and the Jaguars team Hackett was the offensive coordinator for—which reached the 2017 AFC championship game—shouldn’t be lost. Hackett once again has a team with a dominant defense that has roots in the Pete Carroll system, as well as a good running game. He is staring at another division and a conference that, as daunting as it seemed at the outset, may have an opening.

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Monday night, after a complete and total deflation—callers on WFAN Tuesday morning were likening it to a death—the Jets came back and beat the class of their division with a mix of contributions from their defense and special teams. Zach Wilson’s touchdown pass to Garrett Wilson, which was a throw I’m not going to defend and a catch that left me completely floored—was an audible. At the very least, it shows a confidence that didn’t necessarily exist in the last two seasons, when Wilson was perpetually The Guy Who Isn’t Getting It and The Reason We Are Not Good.

Time ends up providing a perspective on everything, and as we watch Sean Payton struggle to find the old Russell Wilson just as feverishly as Hackett did, maybe we can make some room for the possibility that hiring Hackett in Florham Park was more than just a fishing lure for Rodgers. It was a way for the team to accomplish what had always been the flip side of its audacious quarterback trade: to salvage the career of the 2021 No. 2 pick.

I’m not saying it’s going to be immediate. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m not saying it’s going to be beautiful. If we’re going back to that Jaguars season, there were enough Bortles throws headed for the St. Johns River to white-knuckle our grip. But I am saying that it feels a bit silly to use one season in Denver—a season with its own very complicated set of internal politics and relationships—as a blindfold toward the truth: that Hackett has almost always been good with quarterbacks, and he may be good with this one, too.