Up in the air

— Aaron Rodgers , the Jets ' 40-year-old quarterback, pulled a white T-shirt over his head inside the visitors' locker room at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday evening. His back was reddened: one round wound on the left side; another scratch by his waist. He favored his left leg and shook his head after a late rally came up short in a 23-17 loss to the Vikings. When he checked with a Jets employee about entering the press conference room, he paused.

"Just give me five minutes," he said.

It had been a transatlantic whirl through another turbulent stretch for the Jets. Hit 14 times in a loss to the Denver Broncos last week, Rodgers knew he had to rebound quickly. London loomed with its requisite redeye flight and logistical challenges. The NFL has been coming to England for 17 years now, and teams have studied everything from traffic patterns on stadium commutes to ways to combat jet lag with a mixture of analytics and melatonin. The current thinking is to not nap upon arrival, body clocks be damned.

But Rodgers and the Jets' offense still started slow against the Vikings, falling behind 17-0 in the second quarter and never fully recovering. Rodgers (29 of 54 passing for 244 yards with two touchdowns and three interceptions) became the ninth quarterback in NFL annals to throw for 60,000 yards, but he knew a toll was taken. He was hit 11 times, left crawling on the turf at times as he tried to reconcile pre-season Super Bowl aspirations with a 2-3 record, just one game out of first place in the AFC East.

"I'm definitely banged up," he said. "Got my foot caught on a pile there. But just seems to be a low ankle sprain. Again, they were trying to get me in the tent, and then we had a roughing the kicker. I said, 'screw it, I'm going back out there.'"

He stopped.

"There were a lot of things that made some noises on the way down."

Few NFL players have as many miles on their body as Rodgers. The graybeard is no longer the quarterback who won four Most Valuable Player trophies and a Super Bowl at the height of his powers as a Packer. Regression is ongoing in spite of his resilience, and injuries continue to accrue. On his previous trip to London with Green Bay, in 2022, he broke his thumb on the final play of a loss to the Giants. Last season, he took four snaps before going down with an Achilles injury that sidelined him for the remainder of the campaign despite his repeated insistence that he would be back in time for a final push.

Listed as "limited" on the injury report following Wednesday's practice, Rodgers kept moving amid the mid-season chaos. Trade rumors swirled as All-Pro wideout Davante Adams , who paired brilliantly with Rodgers in Green Bay, was being made available by Las Vegas, and speculation of whether Rodgers's was connecting with new teammates quickly enough circulated, as well.

Still, the Jets landed in London with one lingering concern: his availability. Once settled in the English countryside, he moved well on the natural grass practice field at Hanbury Manor, a Jacobean-style house set across 200 acres in Ware Hertfordshire. Four years ago, the hotel and country club carved out a football field amid its 18-hole golf course, and the 120 yards replete with two goalposts are only used when the NFL visits each autumn for a fortnight or so.

It was calming. The Jets prepared in the idyllic setting, where besuited security guards with earpieces stood watch with their backs to the field on all four corners. Rodgers appeared comfortable, lofting passes in the air and spinning the oblong ball on his right middle finger between segments. After riding shotgun in a golf cart, he was asked if there was anywhere else on his bucket list to play. "Spain, Mexico, France, Italy," he said.

As well traveled as he is, Rodgers knew this was new terrain for the team's tenderfeet. For several Jets, it was their first time traveling outside the U.S. Star cornerback Sauce Gardner, 24, described how dizzying the experience was when the team arrived at Heathrow Airport and boarded buses.

"I see they drive on the other side of the road," he said. "I thought we were going to get in an accident."

But it was Rodgers who eventually looked like he had been in a car wreck. The Jets' blockers could not handle what Jets head coach Robert Saleh referred to as Minnesota's "exotic pressure," with Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores blitzing and baiting Rodgers into errant throws throughout. When Vikings linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel stepped in front of a Rodgers slant pass and returned it 63 yards for a touchdown in the first quarter, Rodgers let the long-haired linebacker know it was a rarity.

"He told me, too, 'Christmas came early' for me," Van Ginkel said. "I just told him 'thank you.'"

In 20 seasons as a quarterback in the NFL, Rodgers had never thrown two interceptions in the first quarter, but there he was on the next possession, airmailing a pass that went over wideout Allen Lazard's reach and landed in Vikings safety Camryn Bynum's hands. The third and final interception came in the last minute when Rodgers was driving the Jets. Previously, he had just hurried off the field following his picks. This time, he walked 20 yards or so to the official closest to the play.

"Obviously that was below my standard," he said.

Respect for Rodgers remains in the locker room. Afterward, wideout Garrett Wilson, who hauled in 13 catches for 101 yards, leaned against a column and expressed admiration for the quarterback's ability to stay steady under siege.

"He's a tough cat," Wilson said. "He's going to stick in there; he's not going to give up on us. We've got a find a way to keep him upright, get open that much quicker to take some of those hits off him. He's a baller, man. Seeing him limp around like he was and fighting through, that's not something a lot of people at that age, at that point in their career, all that he's accomplished, would do. I don't take that for granted and I make sure he hears that from me all the time."

It has been a long road to Week 6 for the Jets. But that pathway is representative of the NFL's global ambitions to be as omnipresent as any spectacle. They flew 2,900 miles for the Monday night season opener in San Francisco. Six days later, they were in Nashville, where they won. They returned home for Thursday night to beat the Patriots. Then, things fell apart in the rain at home against the Broncos. After London, they will play the first-place Bills on Monday night back in East Rutherford. The Jets trail the Bills by a game in the AFC East.

On Sunday, the raucous crowd of 61,139 was dotted with spectators wearing Rodgers jerseys, both as a Packer and Jet. It remained clear that the NFL's international expansion was moving along as planned. Five international games are on the schedule this season, including two more in London, one at Tottenham, another at Wembley Stadium. On Nov. 10, the New York Giants face the Carolina Panthers in Munich. In the first NFL game in South America, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Green Bay Packers 34-29 in Sao Paulo, Brazil , on Sept. 6. League commissioner Roger Goodell has continued to explore opportunities abroad with a game scheduled for Madrid in 2025 and Dublin likely on the horizon as NFL officials conduct feasibility studies.

While growing the game was a top priority to the league officials in London, Rodgers trained his attention on rallying his teammates and coaches. He huddled one-on-one with offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett in a short hallway inside the locker room. By the loading dock, he spoke with Lazard, who he has played with for years and connected with for a touchdown Sunday.

"I still have a lot of confidence in this team," Rodgers said. "I think it's a team that's going to make a run, and whether that run starts next week, the following week, or whenever it might be, I'm confident in our guys and I'm confident in the leadership and confident we'll get this thing straightened out."