At some point, the idea gets twisted. After Tom Brady turbocharged the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Matthew Stafford saw the almost-there Los Angeles Rams become a reality, a market overcorrection ensued with devastating consequences. The Cleveland Browns joined forces with Deshaun Watson and consolidated the worst (and not for nothing the most morally reprehensible) trade in NFL history. The Denver Broncos traded Russell Wilson in what may be the funniest trade in NFL history for good reason. Those teams are currently eating, or preparing to eat, some of the largest amounts of dead money ever devised. It’s going to take a long time to clean up the mess, both literally and emotionally.

The Browns and Broncos have learned that these moves don’t work unless everything is aligned and the player due diligence is perfect. Personnel. Process. Coaching. Disaster management. Quarterbacks are crucial and essential, but they are rarely mystics who can transform an entire building into something it isn’t, or something it never was.

And so, at the end of this frenzy, we have a New York Jets team that went all-in on Aaron Rodgers. It wasn’t all that costly from a financial or draft equity perspective and shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as Watson or Wilson in terms of heft or import. But there was an ideological price and an inherent risk for a team that has historically dealt with heartbreak on the tightrope.

Rodgers gave the Jets something they’ve been missing for generations: a respectable quarterback who could potentially keep the snickering down and keep the rest of the roster in line. In return, they promised their undying support, willing to live with his age, his potential decline, his offense, some of the players he enjoys playing with the most, and that feeling of standing on a cliff in a gale-force wind, and accepting the fly-or-plummet nature of a decision like this.

Monday’s 32-19 loss to the San Francisco 49ers gave the Jets their first glimpse of what that life might be like; the first sensation of falling and the question of whether or not there’s a parachute in the bag.

It’s hard to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the task was monumental when you really think about it: Take a roster that features a 40-year-old quarterback and two 33-year-old tackles, a recovering No. 2 wide receiver and a still-absent edge rusher and send (most of) them across the country to face a team that has spent much of the past decade more efficient than a NASCAR pit crew and just a few months ago played in the Super Bowl. Their coach, Kyle Shanahan, used to employ the Jets’ coach, Robert Saleh, which we can assume is an advantage. The 49ers have a greater number of talented skill-position players and a deeper defense, though not by much.

If you take the positives out of it—that Rodgers led a great, nearly flawless touchdown drive to take an early lead and looked somewhat spry in the process—things weren’t good. The Jets had one of the worst rushing success rates in the NFL this week, dropping passes and being flat-footed under Jordan Mason, the 49ers’ stopgap plan Christian McCaffrey, who had 147 yards on 28 carries. And so began the pangs of what the Jets didn’t have to feel last year, when Rodgers was rehabbing a torn Achilles tendon and everyone was left to dream of what was possible when he finally came back to fix it, like all those other predictive quarterbacks do.

To be clear, we should never fault the Jets for trying. This was a deal they had to make. But now that it’s happening, what will it reveal about the team as it was assembled? In the dream, Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson—former offensive and defensive rookies of the year—Quinnen Williams and C.J. Mosley, Breece Hall … how could it not all come together seamlessly? How could it fail?

In reality, there was a clear difference between the teams the Jets were looking to compete against by trading for Rodgers and the team the Jets currently are. For now, the Jets can just call it a setback. They can reason that a lot of good teams lost in Week 1, which is always a highly variable event thanks to the months they have to prepare for a single opponent. They can focus on playing the Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots in back-to-back weeks—a highly likely event—and get back into the swing of things.

They can still dream that the Rodgers trade was made in the same spirit as Brady and Stafford—the final strokes of a truly great work—and not Wilson or Watson. But the dawn is coming, and soon the Jets will get an unfettered look in the mirror. What will the team find?