Culture
After a year-long wait, the Aaron Rodgers-led New York Jets are a hard watch
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — New York Jets players and coaches often talk about how they can’t resort to finger-pointing, even when things are at their worst — which they are right now.
There was a play late in the fourth quarter on Sunday, a coverage bust that fit perfectly in a season of misery and befuddlement. But that play was set up by a decision made on the other side of the ball a few minutes earlier.
It felt like a game the Jets were going to win. They stole momentum back at the start of the second half, with a takeaway on a forced fumble and then a Breece Hall touchdown a few plays later. They went up 24-16 on a Kenny Yeboah touchdown reception early in the fourth quarter. The Colts cut it to a two-point game, and then Aaron Rodgers worked the offense up the field, killing the clock and getting them to the Colts’ 25-yard-line with 3:30 left. On fourth-and-2, Rodgers went to the line of scrimmage. Jets cornerback D.J. Reed thought they were going to go for it. Instead, Rodgers tried to draw the Colts offsides. It didn’t work, so the Jets called timeout. Anders Carlson converted a 35-yard field goal. Interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich considered this a show of confidence in a Jets defense that, many times over the 2022 and ’23 seasons, did its job at the end of games.
“When we saw the field goal team go on we were all happy like: Let’s do what we do,” Reed said. “The last three years, that’s what we did.”
That’s not what they did on Sunday. This is 2024.
On the second play of the drive, Anthony Richardson aired it out for Alec Pierce down the right sideline. Cornerback Sauce Gardner passed the route off to safety Jalen Mills, who was supposed to be in position to prevent Pierce from catching the ball, possibly even intercepting it. Instead, Pierce easily caught it, a 39-yard gain.
At the end of the play, Gardner ran over and pointed at Mills. Literal finger-pointing. Twice.
What a pass by Anthony Richardson! @Colts are threatening 👀
📺: #INDvsNYJ on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/xTTdoEKmMs— NFL (@NFL) November 17, 2024
“It’s a play that shouldn’t have happened,” Gardner said.
A few plays later, Richardson ran for a 4-yard touchdown. The Colts didn’t convert their two-point conversion but it didn’t matter. The Jets offense, without any timeouts, fumbled on the first snap then killed the clock on second down. Rodgers was sacked on third down and the clock ran out. The Jets, in embarrassing fashion, lost another game they should have won. Final score: 28-27. The Jets’ record: 3-8. The Jets’ season: in the toaster.
“It’s tough to process,” Reed said. “That’s what your play for. You want to play meaningful football in November, December, January … We want to stick together. We have to stick together. The outside world is going to be pointing fingers — and understandably so — but the guys in the locker room, we have to stick together and I feel like we have the right character guys to do that.”
In what has turned into arguably the most disappointing season in Jets history, it is clear that even if the Jets have the right character guys, they don’t have the right guys.
The Jets are at the point of the season when their offense is being booed off the field at their home stadium in the first quarter. The point that, when fans do cheer, it’s typically in a mocking tone — like when, on Sunday, the Jets offense converted its first first down just as the first half was about to end, or when Gardner made an impressive tackle in the second quarter after struggling for weeks to get opponents on the ground.
They were supposed to combine a winning defense with one of the NFL’s greatest quarterbacks to become a bonafide playoff contender. Instead, since Robert Saleh was fired and replaced by Ulbrich, the defensive coordinator, the defense has looked like one of the NFL’s worst, allowing 26.2 points per game, failing in fundamentals and crumbling in key moments.
“I have noticed that,” Reed said. “The last couple games we haven’t played to our standard on defense. We’ve given up touchdowns, or given up explosive plays. I can’t really account for what it is. Coach Ulbrich does have a lot on his plate but he’s a grown man and he can handle it. I just think it comes down to executing and playing our role. I feel like we’re not executing, no matter what we’re being told to do, we’re just not executing on the field.”
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And there’s the Rodgers part of it all. Earlier in the week, he was asked if he still planned on returning in 2025, as he stumbled to the end of the worst season of his career. He responded, tepidly: “Yeah, I think so.”
Sunday’s showing did nothing to make it feel like Rodgers returning to the Jets would be a good thing, for team or player. The 40-year-old didn’t even surpass 100 passing yards until the third quarter. He’s looked unwilling (or unable) to throw the ball down the field, and his excuses for that — last week he said the offensive line needs to block for longer, Sunday he blamed his lack of deep throws on the Colts playing a two-high defense — aren’t quite up to snuff.
Over the last two weeks, Rodgers is 1 of 6 on passes thrown more than 10 yards downfield, the one completion coming on a nice sideline throw to Xavier Gipson in Sunday’s fourth quarter. Those moments have been few and far between, and the Jets offense has somehow become less explosive since trading for Davante Adams. Rodgers finished Sunday with 184 yards on 29 pass attempts.
Ulbrich was asked if Rodgers’ reticence is holding the Jets offense back. He deflected in his response.
“We’ll take a hard look at the tape,” Ulbrich said. “There’s an element to, of course, injury is going to hamper anybody in these types of situations, but it never comes down to one man. It comes down to protection, receivers, running backs, the running game, all those things. So, I know Aaron would love to be playing better, but it’s not just him, it’s all of us.”
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Rodgers simply doesn’t look like Rodgers anymore, even if no one around the Jets organization wants to admit it publicly.
“Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t my best performance,” Rodgers said. “I felt like I did a few good things, but unfortunately in this game sometimes you have to make a decision and pick a side and sometimes you pick the right side and sometimes you pick the wrong side … It’s just one of those weird things. Sometimes you pick the right side and get lucky and sometimes you don’t and you have to look at the damn tablet and see a guy was open.”
He was asked about that sort of struggle being something he hadn’t dealt with before — he pushed back at the assertion.
“It happens all the time,” Rodgers said. “It does happen all the time, but sometimes you just pick it right and you get on a roll and seem to pick it right all the time. Sometimes it’s a hunch. I’m going through progressions. Sometimes in those two situations I would’ve had to have skipped over a progression and just trust the guy as being open. Sometimes that hits, sometimes you wish you would have just stayed with the progression. It’s the beauty and the frustration of the game.”
The Jets are 3-8. Their playoff hopes, if there are any, range from one to four percent, depending on your source. There is plenty to be frustrated about. And none of it is pretty.
“It’s very hard to fathom,” Reed said. “I’m still processing it right now.”
(Top photo: Al Bello / Getty Images)
“Window seat with garden view / A perfect nook to read a book / I’m lost in my Jane Austen…” sings Kristin Chenoweth in “The Girl in 14G” — what could be more ideal? Well, perhaps showing off your literary knowledge and getting a perfect score on this week’s super-size Book Review Quiz Bowl honoring the life, work and global influence of Jane Austen, who turns 250 today. In the 12 questions below, tap or click your answers to the questions. And no matter how you do, scroll on to the end, where you’ll find links to free e-book versions of her novels — and more.
On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.
Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”
With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”
How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.
By ‘A Lady’
Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)
Where the Magic Happened
Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.
An Iconic Accessory
Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.
Austen Onscreen
Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.
Jane Goes X-Rated
The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.
A Lady Unmasked
Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”
Wearable Tributes
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.
The Austen Literary Universe
On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)
A Botanical Homage
Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.
Aunt Jane
Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.
Cultural Currency
In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.
In the Trenches
During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”
Baby Janes
You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.
The Austen Industrial Complex
Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.
Around the Globe
Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.
Playable Persuasions
In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.
#SoJaneAusten
The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.
Bonnets Fit for a Bennett
For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.
Most Ardently, Jane
Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
Stage and Sensibility
Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.
Austen 101
Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”
W.W.J.D.
When facing problems — of etiquette, romance, domestic or professional turmoil — sometimes the only thing to do is ask: What would Jane do?
A famous poet once observed that it is difficult to get the news from poems. The weather is a different story. April showers, summer sunshine and — maybe especially — the chill of winter provide an endless supply of moods and metaphors. Poets like to practice a double meteorology, looking out at the water and up at the sky for evidence of interior conditions of feeling.
The inner and outer forecasts don’t always match up. This short poem by Louise Glück starts out cold and stays that way for most of its 11 lines.
And then it bursts into flame.
“Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” comes from Glück’s debut collection, “Firstborn,” which was published in 1968. She wrote the poems in it between the ages of 18 and 23, but they bear many of the hallmarks of her mature style, including an approach to personal matters — sex, love, illness, family life — that is at once uncompromising and elusive. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t explain.
Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.
We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.
To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. The version of “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later. Glück, who died in 2023, was never shy about putting her life into her work.
But the poem we are reading now is not just the record of a passion that has long since cooled. More than 50 years after “Firstborn,” on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Glück celebrated the “intimate, seductive, often furtive or clandestine” relations between poets and their readers. Recalling her childhood discovery of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, she declared her lifelong ardor for “poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
That’s the kind of poem she wrote.
“Confidence” can have two meanings, both of which apply to “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.” Reading it, you are privy to a secret, something meant for your ears only. You are also in the presence of an assertive, self-possessed voice.
Where there is power, there’s also risk. To give voice to desire — to whisper or cry “I want you” — is to issue a challenge and admit vulnerability. It’s a declaration of conquest and a promise of surrender.
What happens next? That’s up to you.
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