Aaron Rodgers admitted he could not have played any worse during the first half of the Jets’ crucial win against the Texans.
The quarterback completed just seven of 14 passes – for just 32 yards – as the Jets’ dreadful season threatened to reach a new low on Thursday night.
But the quarterback turned it around to lead his team to a vital 21-13 win that included a miraculous touchdown catch by Garrett Wilson.
Rodgers was 15 from 18 for 179 yards in the second half. He threw three touchdown passes – two to Wilson and one to Davante Adams.
It was the first time the former Packers teammates had combined for the Jets and it helped the Jets avoid a sixth straight loss.
After the game, Rodgers conceded that the Jets season would have been over had they failed to win at MetLife Stadium.
‘I was just way off – I was about as bad as I could play in the first half,’ he told Amazon Prime.
‘I realized our season is kind of on the line here, I have to figure this you-know-what out or we’ll be playing our offseason.’
Rodgers branded Wilson’s second touchdown ‘ridiculous’ after the receiver took a one-handed catch in the endzone.
After the game, Wilson was asked what was going through his mind when he caught the ball.
‘Honestly, you’re not thinking about much: how can I make a play? Give myself a chance to make a play,’ he told Prime Video.
‘Aaron believed in me. Once the ball is going up, it’s like you got no other choice but to go and try and do what you can do…. we needed it. At the end of the day, I pride myself on coming through when we needed it.’
On the Jets’ first half, he added: ‘We were struggling, and the reality of it is that stuff’s going to happen. Adversity is going to happen.
‘You gotta find a way to respond. We’ve talked about it all week, and we went out and did our job in the second half. That’s all that was.’