Jets gave Aaron Rodgers an incredibly low bar to clear for success, and it shows

The New York Jets are 1-1 through two uneven weeks of football. After getting stomped by the San Francisco 49ers on Monday Night Football in the season opener, the Jets pulled out a solid 24-17 victory over the Tennessee Titans in Week 2. It was not a perfect performance — in fact, Tennessee blew several golden opportunities — but it was a win on the road in which Aaron Rodgers threw a couple touchdowns. You take what you can get.

The last couple years in East Rutherford have been a whirlwind. The Jets acquired Rodgers to rabid anticipation last season, only for the four-time MVP to rupture his Achilles a few seconds into his first start. That left New York with Zach Wilson, again, trudging through a mediocre season with an erratic and perpetually unreliable former top-3 pick at the reins.

Now Wilson is in Denver, relegated to QB3 duties behind the worst rookie quarterback in the NFL and Jarrett Stidham. Some Jets fans will call it karma. Others are a bit for forgiving, understanding that Wilson was never put in the optimal position to succeed. This Jets roster is still heavily flawed, but it was even worse a season ago. And much worse the season before that.

Rodgers has certainly been an upgrade over Wilson, but the bar is not set very high. The 40-year-old gunslinger looks slow navigating pressure or rolling outside the pocket. He can still fling it with unbelievable precision, but Rodgers is "more of a point guard distributing at this stage," as one AFC exec told ESPN's Jeremy Fowler.

The Pro Bowl era may be over for Rodgers, but the Jets are still celebrating his arrival, because nothing could be worse than what preceded Rodgers.

Aaron Rodgers praise is a bit rich, but the Jets sure aren't complaining

ESPN's entire NFL panel was asked to reflect on Rodgers' first couple weeks and take the temperature on Rodgers around the league. It would appear that, despite a few noteworthy blunders in the season-opener against San Francisco, Rodgers has led most folks back on the hype train. Rodgers still has unmatched arm talent and football I.Q., which could be enough to drown out criticisms of his limited athleticism and obvious rust.

"They're saying that the ball still goes exactly where he wants it to go when he throws it, and that he has brought a swagger to the offense that has injected it with a confidence it didn't have last season," writes ESPN's Dan Graziano. "People readily admit he's not very mobile nor will he put up huge numbers. But when a throw needs to be made this season, the Jets can reasonably expect that it will be made. And while that might sound simplistic, it was missing from last season's team and could be enough of a difference to land the Jets in the playoffs."

That is, again, an exceedingly low bar for a player as hyped and well-paid as Rodgers, but we must bear in mind what New York fans (and the team execs) suffered through to reach this point. Just getting to the playoffs with a competent signal-caller would qualify as a huge step forward compared to the perpetual agony and uncertainty of watching Zach Wilson throw the football every Sunday.

Rodgers may not mount the same explosive drives he once did in Green Bay — at least, not at his standard clip — but he won't make half as many boneheaded errors as Wilson. The Jets offense is going to be far more efficient with Rodgers at the helm, even if he is primarily funneling touches to Garrett Wilson or Breece Hall and doing a lot more dinking and dunking than we're used to from the 2011 Super Bowl champ.

Did the Jets make the right choice is committing so much time, money, effort, and mental foritude to the Aaron Rodgers experience and all it entails, on and off the court? Maybe, maybe not. What the Jets don't miss, however, is Zach Wilson bombs into double coverage or fumbles in the red zone.