Yes, Aaron Rodgers’ Injury Lowers the New York Jets’ Ceiling. But Exactly How Much?

On the steep descent from Rodgers to Zach Wilson, and whether Carson Wentz can help.

When Aaron Rodgers went down with a season-ending Achilles injury on Monday night, it felt like the New York Jets’ season was over after it had scarcely even begun. Jets coach Robert Saleh vowed that his team would overcome — "I don't know why people are trying to put an obituary under our team name," he said to reporters — but it’s clear that the sky-high expectations for this season in New York now need to be lowered.

How much so? We can estimate the effect of losing Rodgers on the Jets’ season by calling upon Elo ratings, which measure a team’s strength at any given moment and can be adjusted to account for quarterback injuries. And on average, we would have expected this team to win about 10 games with Rodgers under center all season. Even though the downside risk was surprisingly high (relative to the hype at least), there would have been roughly a 55% chance for the Jets to post double-digit wins — every AFC team with that many made the playoffs last year — and an 8% chance of a truly special season of 14+ victories.

That’s basically all gone now. Saleh says the Jets are sticking with last year’s primary starter, Zach Wilson: “Zach's our quarterback," he said. "This is Zach's team, and we're rolling with Zach.” But based on Wilson’s QB adjustment from the end of last season, he would be worth about 2.3 fewer wins than Rodgers over a full season. Moreover, Wilson limits the Jets’ upside pretty significantly. New York’s chance at 10 or more wins drops to 26% with Wilson starting — this is even including Monday’s win over the Bills —and the Jets’ odds of that special season drop to 1.5%. (They now have a much greater chance of losing 14 games, at 3.6%.)

Essentially, swapping Rodgers out for Wilson shifts the distribution curve of the Jets’ possible season outcomes to the left, robbing them of their upside and amplifying their downside risk.

Some of New York’s latent potential might be salvaged by upgrading from Wilson to a veteran such as Carson Wentz, Joe Flacco or Matt Ryan. Although none have been especially good in a long time, each had a QB adjustment last season that was only about 1 win worse than Rodgers (who, we must remember, was not exactly in peak form last year either) over a full season. The chart above shows that a stopgap QB like Wentz would essentially split the difference between Wilson and Rodgers, offering a greater chance at that 10+ win season (around 40%) and mitigating the odds of a truly horrible campaign.

None of this can restore the promise that this Jets season once seemed to hold before Rodgers got hurt, of course. But then again, this was always the bargain the team was making by betting everything on Rodgers to stay healthy and productive as he approaches his 40th birthday in December. Every Hall of Fame QB runs into his limits eventually.

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