You want to say the football circus is leaving town Sunday, a little past 7 o’clock or thereabouts, because after that time the Jets and Giants are no longer allowed to play any football games that count – well, ish – until next fall. But that’s not quite right. Even though the games are ending, the circus really won’t end with the Jets and Giants. And might be just getting started. It’s just the losing that ends on Sunday. The Jets have to hire a new general manager, at which point we’ll see if Woody Johnson, who must have been held back at owner school, can get something right for a change. And the Jets have to hire a new coach, one who will then have the opportunity to be the first since Rex (Please Pick Me!) Ryan to get them to the postseason. And they have to decide whether they are going to bring back Aaron Rodgers, whose presence behind center for the Jets was supposed to change everything, not just with the culture over there at the team’s headquarters at Florham Park, but in the AFC East, too. Instead, and you can check me on this, the signing of Rodgers eventually became one of the great mistakes in the history of the Jets and, well, consider the width and breadth of that statement if even the thought of it doesn’t make you dizzy. By the way? This isn’t about what we thought would happen, or all the reasons why getting Rodgers out of Green Bay and getting him to Jersey seemed to make so much sense at the time, just because of where the Jets were with Zach Wilson as their quarterback. This isn’t about how this all might have turned out differently if he hadn’t suffered that Achilles injury on Sept. 11, 2023. No. This is about what has happened with Rodgers as a Jet, and what has really happened is this: The best of it for him and for Jets fans is when he wasn’t playing football. It was the exciting, jazzed lead-up to Sept. 11 of ’23, and that Monday Night Football Opener against the Bills (which turned out to be one of 11 games the Jets have won with Rodgers as the most expensive employee they’ve ever had). It was even the rehab after he did get injured, and that fever dream he sold himself and the fan base about somehow coming back and playing again before the 2023-24 season ended. It was all that, followed by the lead-up to this season, this take two for him and for the team, as if he were once again a savior, just one year delayed. Only then he actually did start playing games. Then the four-time MVP produced one empty fourth quarter after another in a string of winnable games for a team that he was supposed to be taking back to the playoffs, all the way until last Sunday in Buffalo, when he looked like a shot fighter doing everything but quitting on his stool. Now, depending on how quickly the Jets have a new GM and a new coach, the circus of will-he-or-won’t-he? on the possibility of his return could play out into the new year. And if that won’t be as much of a circus as the season has been, it will be like a bad movie, a screwball comedy for sure, that simply won’t end. The irony of this, even though it is always a risky thing to put more irony into play around the Jets, is that if Rodgers does leave, which he should, then the Jets are in exactly the same place they were when they brought him here in the first place. And still don’t have a quarterback. And you know what that means? It puts them, almost spectacularly, in the same place as the Giants. Who also might be looking for a new general manager, or a new coach, or both. We thought the Giants were set up to get the No. 1 overall pick in this April’s draft and have to decide between Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward. Then they beat the Colts at home last Sunday, and showed you that they manage to lose even when they win. The Giants still consider themselves to be an elite franchise. But they haven’t been for a long time; really haven’t been since they won their last Super Bowl with Jerry Reese still the general manager and Tom Coughlin still the coach and Eli Manning still at quarterback. Now they have lost their way, and have just produced as bad a season as they have had in the 100 years since they opened up for business back in 1925. Even having made the playoffs twice since that second Super Bowl against the Patriots, they are back to being part of the underclass of the NFL, right there with the Jets. Like both teams have turned into the New York Browns. Over there at MetLife, the people in charge of the Giants have also convinced themselves that they’re just a quarterback away. Only they’re not, even after having Drew Lock finally give them a professional performance against the Colts, one that is as good as anything Rodgers offered Jets fans until he finally told the coach to send Tyrod Taylor into the game in Buffalo. And guess what? Jets fans have a right to wonder how differently things might have gone, especially in the middle of the season, if that had happened sooner. “I need a break mentally,” Rodgers said the other day. Jan. 2, 2025: Glad you had fun!New York Daily NewsBack page for Jan. 2, 2025: Former Super Bowl champ and 4-time MVP Rodgers calls time with Jets the “best two years of my life.” Aaron Rodgers won the Super Bowl in 2011 and has four MVP trophies, but he still calls the past two loss-filled seasons with the Jets the “best” of his life. Goes double for all the Jets fans who desperately need a break with him. Fans of loser teams always want to at least come away from a season like the one we’ve just witnessed thinking — hoping — that next season will be better. But how much better can Giants fans and Jets fans expect next season to be, especially without knowing who their quarterbacks are going to be in a quarterback league? Can they things turn around? They can. Jets fans remember what it was like when the great Bill Parcells got to town after the Jets had fallen into a 1-15 ditch under Rich Kotite. Long before Tom Thibodeau got to the Garden, you know what happened with the Knicks when Dave Checketts convinced Pat Riley to come back to coaching. George Young became general manager of the Giants and began the process of changing Giants history, before he got with Parcells for as formidable a combination as any New York football team has ever had. Now Leon Rose and Thibodeau have combined and we see a Knicks team that is balling as well as we had around here back in the 1990s, when the Knicks ended up in the NBA Finals twice. The Giants, and their fans, want that feeling back. The Jets want them in the worst way, just because they so often have chased it in the worst way. For now, the pro football season mercifully ends, and not nearly soon enough. You even feel a little badly comparing the Jets and Giants to the circus because, really, what did the circus ever do to deserve that? HEAT IS ON THE TEAM DOWN IN MIAMI, SADLY THE NBA IS 3-POINT CRAZY & WHAT A TALENT NABERS IS … Who does Karl-Anthony Towns think he is — Juan Soto? Thinking that Notre Dame, and Notre Dame fans, aren’t missing Brian Kelly so much. Wait, none of this with the Rangers is on Chris Drury? How does that work? I’m frankly starting to worry about that vaunted Heat Culture down there in Miami. One more thing about the Heat: My pal Frankie Isola is right about Jimmy Butler: To be “Playoff Jimmy” shouldn’t you have to win something? So, losing to Michigan wasn’t the end of everything at Ohio State? So many star Mets have left them, all the way back to George Thomas Seaver. Some got traded and some left on their own. But they left. I don’t want to add Pete Alonso’s name to the list. Let’s just say that a little bit of the shine has come off the SEC this season. The Knicks might not be 3-point crazy, which is one of the reasons why they’re so much fun to watch. But way too much of the league is 3-point crazy. And isn’t fun to watch. Not the only reason why ratings are down. But please don’t try to tell me it isn’t one of them. I’m all for college athletes getting paid, but does that mean they all get to sign one-year NIL deals forever, and pack up and leave after a couple of semesters if the wind changes? Somebody has to explain to me how Oregon had to play Ohio State in the second round of the tournament and Penn State got to play Boise State. Put me down as being somebody who wanted Saquon to break the record. The playoffs would be a lot more fun with Joe Burrow and the Bengals in them. Not sure, having watched both games, that the Packers getting behind the Vikings 28-0 in one and 27-10 in another was a blueprint for success. The Jets bringing back Rodgers would feel like that “Murphy Brown” reboot a few years ago. Wow, it sure was lucky the Jets were able to get Haason Reddick signed when they did. All Malik Nabers did last Sunday was remind everybody how talented he is. And now much of a baller he is. There were a few throws that Michael Penix Jr. made against the Commanders last Monday night when he looked, at least a little bit, like a left-handed Jayden Daniels. Who could have ever known that Nick Saban would get on television and say any damn thing that came into his head. There must be baseball players, and famous ones, who wish they could have gotten the pass on PEDs that star tennis players seem to get. If you haven’t yet purchased “A Town Without Time,” a collection from Gay Talese about New York that extends all the way back to the 1950s, do yourself a favor, because this is another treasure worth having from the great Mr. Talese. Optimum vs. Dolan. No way to root.