With Aaron Rodgers in New York, the Jets and these other teams should improve

Let’s start in one of the most obvious places of all. The New York Jets weren’t a bad team in 2022. In fact, they were a good team for large stretches of the season. The defense finished fifth in defense DVOA, per Football Outsiders, and the offense housed some excellent young playmakers in Offensive Rookie of the Year Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall. Heck, the Jets were even 6-3 heading into the bye week after beating the Buffalo Bills. The good times, they were a-rolling. For a while. Until quarterback play started to hold them back and they finished with a 7-10 record.

Understanding that, and also realizing that the Jets’ young roster was good enough to compete for a championship now, the front office made the move of the offseason by trading for quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and reuniting him with offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett. By doing so, the Jets went from one of the worst quarterback situations to one of the best in a blink of an eye.

That’s a move that immediately makes the Jets contenders. Despite Rodgers being 39 years old, he’s still an elite quarterback, and now he’s being dropped onto one of the strongest rosters in the entire league. An improvement in New York seems inevitable.

The Chicago Bears were the proprietors of the worst record in the league last year, finishing a tough season with a 3-14 record. They were able to find the silver lining through the pain, though. Justin Fields emerged as one of the most electric players in the league and a potential franchise quarterback with some fine-tuning, and of course, the Bears secured the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. That gave them direct access to drafting a high-impact player with the first pick of the draft, or to trading that pick for a king’s ransom.

Ultimately, the Bears took the latter — and arguably smarter — option and traded the pick to the Carolina Panthers for the No. 9 pick, No. 61, a 2024 first, a 2024 second, and wide receiver D.J. Moore. They then traded back one pick to No. 10 and drafted Darnell Wright to boost the offensive line. Wright wasn’t the flashiest pick on the board, but the Bears’ offensive line needed some extra talent on it. They missed out on the big-name free-agent tackles, so landing Wright — who will likely start at right tackle — is a nice safety net to land in.

The path to improvement isn’t at all farfetched for the Bears. And not only because they won three games in 2022. There just wasn’t enough around Fields to get the best out of him. Now, they have an elite No. 1 receiver in Moore to pair with Chase Claypool and Darnell Mooney and the offensive line will be better with the additions of Wright and Nate Davis. That will aid the growth of Fields exponentially meaning the offense will be better.

The Bears would have felt comfortable leaving the draft too. Beyond the first round, they drafted Tyrique Stevenson, Gervon Dexter Sr., and Zacch Pickens, adding more potential starters to a defense that allowed the most points per game in the NFL last season. Will the defense still be a bottom-10 unit? Maybe, but it’s an incremental improvement. The real improvement comes on the offense. After all, the NFL is an offense-first league nowadays, and the potential of the Bears’ offense could skyrocket them to a potential playoff team in the NFC North.

The New Orleans Saints were a middle-of-the-road team in 2022. The first season without Sean Payton as head coach was always going to feel like an adjustment period, but things just struggled to click in the Big Easy. The defense, as it has been for the last half-decade, was consistently one of the best in the NFL, allowing just 20.3 points per game and finishing eighth in DVOA. But the Saints still finished with a 7-10 record.

They were bullies; that didn’t change. But the offense let them down. You knew exactly what you were going to get from Andy Dalton in 2022. Serviceable until pressured and then things collapse unto themselves. Overall, the Saints’ offense just wasn’t watchable, good, or efficient. They just existed on the back of Chris Olave having an excellent rookie year.

One might have thought that the Saints were going to eventually relent from kicking the can down the road for another year, but rebuilding doesn’t seem to be in Mickey Loomis’ DNA — and you have to applaud them for it. The NFC South feels firmly in the Saints’ grasp after they went out and signed Derek Carr at the start of free agency. That was the upgrade at quarterback they needed. Carr isn’t flashy and exists as a cog of a teams success as opposed to the one turning the gears. He can manage an offense that just needs to stay out of its own way.

They have enough playmakers to make it work, and the defense will still perform as it always does. The Saints have enough in the locker to win the NFC South once again. Improvement feels on the horizon.

It’s hard not to feel bullish about the Cleveland Browns based on what they’ve done this offseason. Andrew Berry has knocked it out of the park again considering the resources afforded to him. The Browns’ first-round pick belonged to the Texans after the Deshaun Watson trade last summer, so they didn’t pick until No. 74 in the draft, selecting the big-bodied Cedric Tillman out of Tennessee. The Browns picked Dawand Jones, Siaka Ika, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, Cameron Mitchell, and Luke Wypler with the rest of their picks, solidifying the trenches while tending to other needs at the same time.

Recently trading for Za’Darius Smith for, essentially, a fifth-round pick is good business too. The defense needed some extra pass rush beside Myles Garrett, and Smith had 78 total pressures with the Vikings in the 2022 regular season, per PFF, the third-most among all defensive players. No one on the Browns, other than Garrett, had more than 30 pressures.

The impetus for improvement lands squarely on Watson, though. He struggled upon returning from an 11-game suspension after he faced more than 20 civil lawsuits for alleged sexual misconduct, and assault. Despite that, the Browns gave him a $230 million, fully guaranteed, five-year contract and traded three first-round picks to get him. There are some legitimate questions regarding Watson and whether or not he can get back to his best, and every snap matters in a tough AFC North, but the Browns have down enough this offseason to show that they’re committed to improving upon their 2022 season. It’s likely they will.

The hope in Carolina is that the Panthers are finally out of the quarterback wilderness. The Panthers traded up for the No. 1 pick to select quarterback Bryce Young out of Alabama. Young doesn’t come without his warts — he’s 5-foot-10 with a playing weight of around 190 lbs, an unprecedented size profile for a quarterback in the NFL. But Young’s creativity and ability to get a bucket will serve him well. He should hit the ground running.

The roster had the benefit of an already impressive offensive line, as well as a defense full of young and talented dogs, and that translated to seven wins in 2022. But there’s more here for the Panthers. Like the Saints, they reside in the incredibly open NFC South but with the added bonus of a roster that is in it for the long haul. Guys like Brian Burns, Jaycee Horn, Jeremy Chinn, and Frankie Luvu on defense are the foundations of what could be one of the best units in the NFL.

Most of the offseason was dedicated to putting Young in a position to succeed. They added Miles Sanders to lead the backfield, while signing D.J. Chark, Adam Thielen, and Jonathan Mingo to the receiving corps. There’s not a true No. 1 receiver on the team, but there are enough players who are capable of handling decent workloads. Pair an improved offense with a hungry defense and there’s a recipe for success. Young could help lead the Panthers to the postseason for the first time since 2017 in his rookie season.