It was a busy day for the New York Jets on Monday.
The team unveiled its new uniform, which features a modern look on a classic logo. It is a callback to the “Sack Exchange” era uniform and logo, which was used from 1978-1997 during a successful stretch in franchise history where they had four playoff berths in six years.
"We work for the fans," Jets chairman Woody Johnson said in a statement. "They have consistently asked for us to return to our roots and we heard them. The new uniforms are explicitly designed to look and feel like the New York Jets while refreshing the club's iconic logo — viewed by fans as our most identifiable mark."
Since the Jets last changed primary uniforms in 2019 after 20 years of continuity, NFL rules prohibited the team from making further changes.
The new uniforms include double-striped sleeves and single-striped pants with nameplates, fonts and oversized numbers on the back and shoulder inspired by the 1978-89 time period. The big change from the current uniform is the contrasting colours around the neckline.
The uniform wasn't the only big news of the day, with starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers at the team's facility for the start of voluntary workouts.
Rodgers did make an appearance at practice from his Achilles tear at the end of last season. Despite his push to return from the injury, Rodgers did not get activated for a game after going down in the first game of the season.
The 40-year-old is not required to participate in the workouts as a league veteran, but his appearance makes a return to the field for 2024 more of a likelihood.
Rodgers acknowledged during a podcast appearance this week he briefly thought his playing career could be over after he tore his left Achilles tendon in the New York Jets’ season opener.
“I was really thinking, ‘This is it. You don’t come back from this injury,’” the 40-year-old quarterback said during a wide-ranging 2 1/2-hour interview on the I Can Fly podcast, which was posted Tuesday.
Rodgers, traded to the Jets last off-season after 18 years with the Green Bay Packers, was injured just four snaps into his debut with New York on Sept. 11.
“I had this incredible off-season experience in a new city, in a new town, with new teammates, a new organization, an owner for the first time, and really falling back in love with the game that I first fell in love with when I was five years old,” Rodgers said. “And it was absolutely beautiful and special and deep and rich and yummy, and just incredible.
“And then, one of the most heartbreaking nights of my life, when I played four plays. Talk about an ego death.”
Rodgers said he quickly began researching Kobe Bryant's surgery to repair a similar injury during his playing days with the Los Angeles Lakers and “the doomsday of, like, my career is over kind of started to go away.”
Rodgers had surgery the next day and went through an extensive rehabilitation process that he said was helped by prayer, diet and support from friends. He insisted his goal was to return before the end of the regular season, if the Jets remained in playoff contention — while pulling off the fastest known recovery from a torn Achilles. He was cleared by doctors for some football activities in late November and said he felt good, but aborted the comeback attempt a month later with the Jets out of the post-season hunt and him not 100 per cent recovered from the injury.
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