Jets 32, Jaguars 25
Q. Did that feel like old times with you and Davante?
AARON RODGERS: Yeah, yeah, it did, except he dropped one. And I missed him on the next play, or the next big third down. But, yeah, Tay's a fantastic player.
He dropped the one, said he got his dreads pulled. Whether that's true or not, seemed like an excuse. And then we had third down. I threw it to G. And big arms was kind of rushing. I couldn't see where either of them were. G was definitely open. I threw it too far inside. Tay, I guess, was wide open and came back and said, what, you don't trust me anymore with, like, a wry smile. So I was using that line against him a bunch of times in the second half.
Q. Aaron, you've seen him make a lot of really good of catches. The over-the-shoulder catch on the sidelines, did you see that?
AARON RODGERS: Yeah. We had a different route called. I kind of checked. I was really thinking that maybe Allen on the in-breaker there, but the safety stayed inside. And when I let it go, I felt like it was a little too far outside and not down the field, but he made a ridiculous catch. It was so good that it wasn't even like a question, oh, they might review that. It was like no, no. He caught it. We're good.
Q. What flipped in the second half?
AARON RODGERS: I don't think anything especially flipped. I think the line was outstanding. I mean, I had so much time all day long. And when I didn't, I was moving around pretty good. But, yeah, I think the line just really played well.
We just, we had the ball for only a short amount of time in the first half. I think we had three possessions. We had a touchdown. We drew them offsides. They called a phantom false start, and then we -- Tay dropped the ball. I missed him on the third down. That was our three possessions.
The second half, we were pretty efficient throwing the football, and we ended up having a couple drives in the fourth that made it happen.
Q. Can you walk us through the 71-yard touchdown?
AARON RODGERS: I thought it was a great call by Todd. It's a play we've run for a long time in this style of offense where it's just four vertical from a kind of different alignment where we're in our 21H personnel. Davis is back side in the slot. He comes in motion and becomes the guy in the flat. And then we have Tay on a read route. I believe it was Kenny was running down the sideline. It was it was Braelon who was running the seam from the backfield and then G back side on the out.
So, basically, that's kind of a pre-snap, if you have pressure, you might throw it over there. We have a line pull, left guard pull action, try and hold the Mike. A lot of coverages were two-mannish. They played a lot more Tampa in some of the breakdowns. That play happened to be Tampa where the Mike has the middle third.
Just the protection was so good. I was able to kind of hold it just a little tick longer and peek outside to Kenny on the red line to be able to throw it to Tay, and Tay made a great catch.
Q. On the third down, the way you guys won, what do you think it means to you, what do you think it means to the team?
AARON RODGERS: They're all special. That's why you play. You play for the love of the game and to have moments like this with your boys. To be able to come up big. We haven't had a lot of success. We put together a nice drive, went down the field, scored a touchdown, got two points. Came back, got a field goal. It's on us to come down. Tay made a couple big plays. There's a lot of pride in that for sure.
Listen, if you love this game, there's nothing like dominating. If you're a hyper-competitive person, whether you're growing up playing in the back yard, playing in the playground at school or playing AU or playing flag football or making it up as you go and playing capture the flag, whatever you're doing, if you're supremely competitive, you love dominating. That's what it's all about. Today was one of those good feelings.
Q. Aaron, with some of the disappointments you've had this year, so many close calls, is there a human nature element wondering where that was, what you had today? Where was that?
AARON RODGERS: Yeah, for sure. Too little, too late, but it's still special. Doesn't taint it at all. Doesn't steal any of the joy of it. Doesn't take away any of the fun that's going to be on the bus just now and then on the plane. Then we have another bus to get back to the facility. But it's still going to be special. They're always special.
But this was a year of things that we were close, but we kind of let it get away from us in the middle of the season.
Q. Are you going to lobby for some design runs? You led the team in rushing today.
AARON RODGERS: You guys probably know better, but it's been a long time since I've led the team in rushing. I take a lot of pride in my minimal athleticism. But this is what I trained so hard for during those nine months, the three to try to get back early and the six to get all the way back was to be able to move around. You guys know it. You've seen it the last few weeks.
Q. You're nine yards short of what Lamar had today against the Giants.
AARON RODGERS: Yeah. Well, he makes it look a lot more graceful.
Q. The 41-yard pass to Davante that set up Breece's touchdown, were you surprised to see him that open?
AARON RODGERS: It was a good call. We brought Allen down. They were playing a lot of match man in certain situations. I'd said it kind of jokingly to Tay, but there actually might be a little bit of validity to when I went off schedule, kind of moved up in the pocket. I'm glad I kept my eyes downfield. I think whoever was matching him just took their eyes back at me and saw me, started to scramble and left him. And whoever was guarding Breece down the sidelines was still guarding him 50 yards down the field. Breece did a nice job blocking.
That was a big play for sure. The biggest play was the over-the-shoulder catch. That converted that third and ten, I believe. And then we had a couple other important ones, including we called a screen pass on second and 10 when I ran to the sidelines, got the positive gain. Obviously, if you throw it there, you got linemen downfield. But I was trying to throw it to Isaiah, and he got absolutely drilled by the three technique so that was good to get positive yardage there. And then, obviously, Tay did the rest.
Q. I know you like to be aggressive. Did you think Jeff was going to kneel a couple times and then just kick the field goal at the end?
AARON RODGERS: I was hoping not. You guys know what the magic number is. If we had kneeled it twice and kicked the field goal at the 28, you know, there's always the what-if game.
I was just -- T-Mo brought the same thing up on the sidelines. He's, like, tell me why we didn't. So I just saw him after I got out of shower. I said, if we'd kneeled it, Sauce wouldn't have got his pick. So shut up.
Q. Defensively, you guys have had trouble holding leads in the fourth quarter. Just talk through the events today and what they did on that last series there to shut this thing down because it had been a while.
AARON RODGERS: Listen, if we were 10-3, we'd probably take two knees, kick a field goal. We're 3-10. We were. So I'm glad we went for it, put it back on the defense. Proud of them getting the stop there. They came up big at certain times, especially end of the first half, holding them to a field goal instead of going in 17-7.
Even though they gave them a field goal to tie the game, it's 25-22, and they held up there, didn't get the chance for them to take the lead. Proud of our defense. I'm really proud. I want to say one more time, the offensive line had an outstanding game, and I had all day to throw. Big shout out to the boys. I'm going to love them up on the bus.
Q. Davante's first touchdown, he almost got in on the previous play. It was a close one on the pylon. Was it almost like he had such a great effort, you wanted to give him the touchdown afterwards. It turned out to be his 100th career touchdown.
AARON RODGERS: Oh, that was his 100th?
Q. Yeah.
AARON RODGERS: We all knew it was his 100th.
(Laughter)
Q. Did you try the next play to get him the touchdown?
AARON RODGERS: Oh, yeah, of course. And I'm going to apologize and get something nice for Braelon. That probably would have been a walk-in touchdown there. Braelon didn't say anything about it because he wouldn't. He's a great kid. We all knew that was the 100th for Tay.
Appreciate it.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports