EAST RUTHERFORD – Aaron Rodgers finally got his MetLife moment. One year and eight days removed from the season-ending Achilles injury just four plays into his first season with the Jets, the 40-year-old quarterback looked every bit like his old, future Hall of Fame self on Thursday night, completing 27 of his 35 passes for 281 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions in a dominant 24-3 win over the New England Patriots in his team’s home opener. After nearly every play where it looked like he’d seemingly turned back the clock, the sellout crowd was rhythmically chanting his name, with them having waited just as long to be able to say it as he did to hear it. Was it special for him? You bet. “Oh yeah, for sure,” Rodgers said. “Yeah, it was a really special night. All those chants are really meaningful. I was kind of hoping for a stop there to be able to take a final knee on the field, but yeah, special night.” This was the way it was supposed to go last year, when things were finally supposed to change for Gang Green, when their playoff drought that still dates back to 2010 was going to end. Four plays was all anyone got before it turned into “same ol’ Jets” for yet another season. Thursday night, however, was finally the tangible evidence for a tortured fanbase that “there’s always next year” will be a thing of the past, with the Jets improving to 2-1 and now ten days between this victory and their upcoming very winnable game against the Denver Broncos on September 29. It wasn’t just that the Jets won or even that it was their long-time AFC East rival that they beat – by the largest margin since 1998 as well as for the first time at home in nine years – but that they did so in a short week, having just capped off a three games in 11 days stretch that started with their Monday Night Football loss on the road in San Francisco, and was followed by a road win in Tennessee before the much-anticipated game in the Meadowlands. “It’s great,” Rodgers said of what his team was able to do with just three days to prepare. “Now, we got the benefit of playing at home, it’s easier at home on a short week. The schedulers made it difficult for us these first three weeks, three games in 11 days and although we’d love to be 3-0, I think if you said 2-1 going into the mini-bye, we would be feeling pretty good about things. Obviously, we got a nice little long break here and then Denver and then the London game. There’s not a lot of normal, seven-day week schedules for us, but it’s good though. I’m proud of our guys. I thought we played with a lot more energy tonight.” The only thing left, it seems, is making nights like Thursday the norm instead of the exception. “It’s expectations,” Rodgers said. “If the expectation is winning, then we’re going to celebrate it, but we should expect a win. The next step is expecting to dominate.”