In one of the most predictable trades in the history of football, the Jets acquired Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams on Tuesday morning. New York sent Las Vegas a third-round pick that can become a second-round pick based off Adams’ individual production, which should be high, in that he is reuniting with quarterback Aaron Rodgers, with whom he played in Green Bay from 2014 to 2021. Over that time, according to ESPN Research, no QB-WR duo had more touchdowns than Rodgers to Adams (68).

The Jets are hoping the duo can pick up exactly where they left off, because this passing offense needs a shot in the arm. It ranks 24th in dropback success rate on the season, and with only 3.9 yards after the catch per reception, no offense is producing less after a completion. Built in the image of Rodgers, the Jets’ passing attack is all about pre-snap checks, route adjustments on the fly and high degrees of precision and chemistry. But Rodgers hasn’t had much time throwing to Garrett Wilson and Mike Williams, and the lack of chemistry has gunked up the whole operation. Insert Adams, and that problem should be solved.

The magic of Rodgers to Adams was spectacular to watch, but also hard-earned. A second-round pick with tons of promise, Adams was not productive in his first couple of seasons in Green Bay, fighting through ankle injuries and buried on the depth chart behind Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb and James Jones. Rodgers did not trust Adams with volume until his third season as a pro, and even then, they had to grow through some drops. Rodgers is famously tough on young receivers, both because of his high standards and intensity, as well as because of the hyper specificity in how he wants his receivers to run routes.

Listening to Rodgers and Adams talk about how their understanding grew over time is really something. It makes you romantic about football. Take this back-shoulder throw against the Vikings in 2018, freelanced on the backside of a called run play. As Rodgers recalled it: “I’d never thrown that ball before to anybody on that play, much less a back-shoulder against one of the top corners in the league, on a run solution, in a hostile environment. … t’s one of those ‘wow’ plays that goes back to a conversation we probably had in practice about it, and just trust. I never throw that ball if it’s somebody I don’t trust.”

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) October 15, 2024

Looks easy, right? It’s actually very hard. The Jets have been trying to get the back-shoulder game working with Wilson, and they’ve had some success,but nothing like that which Adams and Rodgers enjoyed.

Here’s a back-shoulder incompletion to Wilson in Week 3 against the Patriots. The Jets are flooding the frontside of the play with four routes, demanding the Patriots dedicate additional bodies to coverage, and almost ensuring Wilson will get man coverage on the backside. This simplifies the read and expectation for Wilson, who will certainly get man coverage with the cornerback shaded upfield and inside, as the corner has no safety help. Rodgers automatically wants to take this matchup and win on the back-shoulder throw, which is nearly indefensible when placed and timed correctly.

But Wilson spends too long pushing the cornerback upfield and is late to get his head to the ball — at least, late on Rodgers’ timing, as the veteran passer throws this immediately off from the pocket.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) October 15, 2024

Nobody is definitely wrong here — rather, it’s a chemistry thing. Wilson needs to know how Rodgers wants to time this up from the pocket; Rodgers needs to know how Wilson wants to run this route. There’s a lack of chemistry and connection on a timing throw, and accordingly, it falls incomplete.

Perhaps if Rodgers hadn’t suffered his Achilles’ injury to start the 2023 season, he and Wilson would be beyond these growing pains and ready to dominate as many hoped – but that’s not how the chips fell. Wilson has to get better in a matter of weeks, whileAdams and Rodgers had years to iron out the kinks. They got so in sync on those reads and throws that Rodgers was willing to abort a running play to give Adams a chance on the back-shoulder ball. As Rodgers said: He’s only throwing that to someone he trusts. The Jets can try to shoehorn the back-shoulder ball into the offense as much as they like, but if Rodgers doesn’t trust the guy catching the pass, it’s not going to work.

You can see this issue expressed in Rodgers’ numbers when targeting isolated receivers: wideouts running the only route to their side of the formation. These are the back-shoulder routes, the go balls, the third-down slants against man coverage. Rodgers is having his worst season in the past few targeting isolated receivers, despite the fact Wilson is such a devastating route runner against man coverage. The timing, the trust, the similar reads of coverage and leverage — it just isn’t there.

The effect of Adams isn’t limited to the timing and placement on certain routes, but even on how routes adjust before the ball is snapped. Adams and Rodgers buried the Seahawks in the 2019 playoffs with a third-and-3 dagger on a slot fade, but as Adams explained to ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt after the win, that wasn’t even the called route on that concept. “The way it started, it was completely different. I had a slant on the inside, so last minute, 12 (Rodgers) checked it to … like a slant-shake, mini-slant-shake on the inside. I didn’t want to get lost inside, so I kinda altered the route a little bit. But that just goes to show what sort of player 12 is to still find me.”

Here’s the play. Watch Rodgers throw a quick hand signal at Adams before the ball is snapped. He wants Adams to run a slant but then suddenly break off that slant and wheel all the way back to the corner. But Adams doesn’t even get into the slant, just faking inside to immediately get downfield to the sideline. Rodgers just accelerates his process in the pocket, throwing a flat and accurate ball that beats the safety to the catch point.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) October 15, 2024

This was on third down in the fourth quarter of the playoffs nursing a one-score lead — about as high intensity as a passing situation can get. An incompletion would be brutal, yet Rodgers and Adams are out here making up routes on audibles to hit 20-plus-yard completions.

Rodgers doesn’t have that sort of connection with anyone on the Jets’ roster, and nobody can recover when routes are a little off. On the game-losing interception against the Bills on Monday night, Williams — now potentially on the trade block following the Adams acquisition — was too far inside on his vertical route. Rodgers wanted Williams on the “red line” which is an imaginary line halfway between the numbers and the sideline. Here are Rodgers’ comment on it from Monday night:

“It’s two vertical (routes). Allen (Lazard) is down the seam and Mike (Williams) is down the red line. I’m looking at Allen, he puts his hand up and three guys go with him. So I’m throwing a no-look to the red line. And when I peek my eyes back there, (Williams) is running an in-breaker. He’s got to be on the red line. It’s the little things every single time.”

Williams wasn’t really running an in-breaker, he’d just leaked too far inside. Rodgers threw Williams back toward the red line, where he’s supposed to be — totally understandable. But Williams is a catch-point artist, not a change-of-direction maven. By throwing him back to the sideline, Rodgers forces Williams to adjust on the fly. Williams falls as he’s getting back to the ball, and it’s picked.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) October 15, 2024

Rodgers is right that Williams is in the wrong spot, so he casts blame on Williams. But it’s also a perfectly valid quarterbacking choice to throw to Williams where he is, and let him win the 50-50 ball, instead of trying to throw Williams back where he belongs. Other quarterbacks find a lot of success adjusting to imperfect routes from their receivers — Rodgers never has, and it has been particularly deleterious to this version of the Jets, who already have some imperfect route runners and are lacking in chemistry with Rodgers.

Watch Wilson take this vertical route from the slot upfield and outside against the Patriots in Week 3, as he tries to run a traditional slot fade against single-high coverage. Rodgers wanted Wilson to bend this route and settle it in front of the safety, and he throws Wilson into the dirt accordingly.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) October 15, 2024

And here, against the Broncos in Week 5, Wilson is meant to run a clearout route through the deep middle safety, to pull him downfield and away from Lazard’s dig route. The safeties spin at the snap, and now Rodgers wants Wilson to run a bender through those safeties. It’s still a clearout route, yet Rodgers throws it to Wilson anyway, and Wilson isn’t even looking — nor is he in the anticipated spot — when the throw arrives.

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— Good Clips (@MeshSitWheel) October 15, 2024

Again, if Rodgers were reading this piece, he’d bristle at the suggestion that he was wrong — and I totally get it. He’s a future Hall of Famer and a four-time MVP. But it is precisely these constraints that he puts on the offense — his demand for constantly precise, but also fluid routes — that has put the Jets in a position where the only viable receiver room features Lazard and Adams, the only two receivers left in the league who have earned a Rodgersian stamp of approval.

I have no doubt Adams is the same player who starred with Rodgers in mind — but is he in body? The last time we saw Adams catching passes from Rodgers was in 2021, when he was 29 years old. It’s worth asking if he can have the same impact at 32 that he did in Green Bay, even if the chemistry and timing picks up exactly where it left off.

From NFL Next Gen Stats tracking, we can see Adams is moving a little slower than he was back then. The amount of yardage he picks up in the first second of his route — his “burst,” as NGS calls it — has declined for a few seasons; so too has his average miles per hour in his routes.

Of course, we can add context here. Adams’ yards after catch are way down from his Green Bay days, but it was bound to decrease as the Raiders asked him to run fewer screens and more deep-breaking routes. Those quick screens were a huge part of Adams’ value to Rodgers during his MVP campaigns under Matt LaFleur in 2020 and 2021, integral to the Packers’ RPO package. Is this Adams as scary on a screen as 29-year-old Adams was? I think less so — and if it’s dramatically less, then all of a sudden those layups won’t work in this offense and must be excised.

The Jets’ answer to their offensive problems is reuniting Rodgers and Adams, and it’s the best possible answer available to them. But whenever a solution in the NFL is presented as “Well, we’ll just do it the way we did it three years ago,” we should view that solution with great suspicion. The NFL moves fast. The same gags rarely work for long, especially as players get older. Rodgers can’t create the way he did in 2021; Adams doesn’t have the same juice he did then either. It is possible they rekindle 2021 production, but it will be much harder now than it was then.

While Adams won’t have the same problems with Rodgers that Wilson and the rest of the Jets’ pass catchers do, his presence won’t change the fact that Wilson and the rest of their pass catchers have those issues. Even if they are less frequent, there will still be plays where Rodgers expects Wilson to read coverage and adjust a route a certain way. There will still be checks Rodgers makes at the line of scrimmage that are misunderstood or suboptimal. Adams is a Band-Aid, not an antibiotic. He’s going to cover up the issues, not cure them.

The only cure is time and work. Rodgers must continue to allow more motion and fewer audibles to seep into his ideal offense; Wilson must continue to learn how to play to Rodgers’ standards; Todd Downing, Nathaniel Hackett and whoever else is running the offense in New York must now figure out how to integrate Adams and Wilson together. If the existing issues on the Jets’ offense can be reconciled, it can achieve the heights that were long promised. But the clock is ticking on the 2-4 Jets season. Let’s hope they figure it out fast.