Is there a problem between Aaron Rodgers and New York Jets coach Robert Saleh?

Sunday’s game between the Jets and Broncos was more akin to a war of attrition than it was to what one would expect from an NFL contest. With that as context, it wasn’t entirely surprising that the Jets’ coach was not exactly flattering when it came to a review of his team, something his star quarterback took issue with.

Aaron Rodgers didn’t like Robert Saleh calling out the Jets’ offense

Whether a fan or neutral, most will agree that the Week 4 game between the New York Jets and Denver Broncos on Sunday was an awful showcase of football. With the Jets losing by a score of 10-9, it was not an example of offensive football and that’s being kind. Where details are concerned, Aaron Rodgers was sacked on five occasions which one has to believe played a role in the Jets mustering just 248 in total. Believe it or not, the Broncos were actually worse, notching a paltry 186 total yards.

Yet, somehow, despite all of that the Jets were still unable to get the better of their opponents in a game that most will want to forget. This is where we come to the issue at hand, which was clearly the Jets offensive line. Consider for a moment that Rodgers was hit a total of 14 times, which is to say the four-time league MVP had very little time to pick his passes in the pocket. Then, there were the five occasions on which the offensive line was flagged for false starts, a fact that only serves to highlight the idea that it was not a good night for the OL.

Understandably, Jets head coach Robert Saleh was less than pleased following the loss, stating that the team would have to evaluate whether the offense was good enough. As you can probably guess, Rodgers who is never one to hold his tongue, pushed back on that notion while speaking post-game. “That’s one way to do it,” Rodgers said when asked about reducing cadence to avoid penalties. “The other way is to hold them accountable. We haven’t had an issue. We’ve had one false start, Morgan (Moses) had one false start until this. It’s been a weapon. We use it every day in practice. We rarely have a false start, and we had, I don’t know, five today, it seemed like? Four or five? It seems like an outlier. I don’t know if we need to make mass changes based on kind of an outlier game.”

Now, here’s the thing: Anybody who has followed Rodgers’ career will know that the signal-caller has long used the hard count and cadence to draw defenders offside in an attempt to secure a free play. While it’s true that most QBs do the same, Rodgers has established himself as perhaps the premier playmaker who does so. Indeed, we saw this frequently during his time with the Green Bay Packers. This is all to say that one has to imagine it would be to the Jets’ detriment were they to dial that back. That said, it’s clear that something went wrong on Sunday and by the sounds of it, Saleh intends to fix that. Speaking on Monday, the coach said cadence is “part of what makes us who we are” and that the team will continue to “push the envelope” which seems to suggest that everything is OK in the Big Apple. Whatever the case, it’ll start with a trip to London for next Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings.