2023-07-21 13:23:00
AP Jul 21, 2023, 09:23 ET Read: 2 min.
The veteran quarterback highlighted the optimism around New York ahead of the 2023 NFL campaign.
Allen Lazard was confident that Aaron Rodgers would join him on the New York Jets. Receiver and quarterback, a pair of friends reunited in the Big Apple after a few years together in Green Bay.
Then came some jitters, for Lazard and Jets fans, who were waiting for the deal to be completed in April.
“There was probably a period of like eight hours where I was like, ‘What the hell is going on, bro?'” Lazard said with a smile, to laughs from the press, after he interjected a profanity into the sentence. “And he said, ‘It’s going to happen.’ And I was like, ‘Okay.'”
Aaron Rodgers is excited about the high expectations in the New York Jets season.AP Photo
After weeks of speculation and waiting, Rodgers was dealt to the Jets just before the NFL draft. Now he and Lazard, a free agent who signed with New York in March, are working together on the field again and trying to restore respectability to a franchise.
“I said I would probably come to New York,” a smiling Rodgers said when asked if he remembered the conversation with Lazard. “So I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
It all added up to a good story and more laughs at the next chapter in Rodgers’ illustrious career.
He spent his first 18 NFL seasons with the Green Bay Packers. He won a Super Bowl and earned four league MVP trophies.
He now plays for a franchise that has made it to the big game in the NFL only once, when Joe Namath led the Jets to an upset win over the then-Baltimore Colts in 1969.
Rodgers acknowledges the extra attention now being placed on a team facing the longest playoff drought in the league, at 12 years. After his first camp practice with New York, he seeks to keep his cool amid all the anticipation.
“Everything is different,” he commented. “Nineteen years means a lot of practice camps, all of them at 1265 Lombardi Avenue. Showing up at Jets Drive was a little different.”
There are a lot more reporters and cameras this summer, especially from this year’s “Hard Knocks” taping, which featured the Jets.
“Yeah, it’s spectacular,” Rodgers said. “I mean, this is what you want, to be a part of a place where there are high expectations and where there is optimism. I think this is good.”
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