Instead of four plays and 4:04 of clock time before his season came to its painfully short end last year, Aaron Rodgers' 2024 start lasted a bit longer: 37 offensive plays and 55½ minutes before he left, this time because there wasn't a point to staying in against the 49ers' 32-13 lead and so he yielded to Tyrod Taylor for the final series.

So one of the first things the Jets' 40-year-old QB was asked about after the opening-night 32-19 loss in San Francisco was how it felt to just go out there and play a full game again.

"Yeah, it's been a while," he said, thinking back on the past year of rehab and practice and, finally, live snaps against the defending NFC champions. "I have a lot of gratitude just to be back in pads. So many people helped me get back to this spot,. so I'm really thankful for my surgeon, my loved ones, my friends, the training staff that helped me get back was really cool.

"Obviously, I wanted to take a shot, feel the physicality of it. Once I threw a couple of balls and took a shot, I felt good, I felt like I was into the game."

Unfortunately for Rodgers and the Jets, the game and the Niners weren't concerned about Rodgers' gratitude. Following an opening quarter that looked extremely promising after he engineered a 12-play, 70-yard, 7:07 drive built on four Garrett Wilson receptions and Breece Hall's TD run, the Jets offense couldn't sustain drives and their defense had trouble against the efficiency of QB Brock Purdy and the running of Jordan Mason, doing a good impersonation of Christian McCaffrey, who was deactivated for the game with calf and Achilles injuries.

"We never gave Aaron a chance to get into rhythm," head coach Robert Saleh said. "We had 49 plays on offense. You go 12 plays and from there you're just not seeing the field as much as you want. But all of it will come together. For a first game for Aaron and the offense, there's going to be some good things we can take away from it."

"We were just bad on first and second down for a lot of the game," Rodgers said. "Then we had a couple of drives where we converted third downs. I felt like we didn't have any third-and-10-plusses tonight. But we didn't convert those third-and-mediums. We had a drop, a couple of penalties, bad throw. There's a lot to correct."

In some ways it might have been unfair to expect A-Rod Green & White 2.0 to look like Rodgers the Packers kingpin, after all he'd been through with the long days and dark nights of rehabbing his Achilles tendon to the point it's at now. But Rodgers isn't one to lean on verbal crutches long after he discarded his physical ones. Didn't he think he played well, all things considered, on opening night?

"I can play better," he countered about his passing line of 13-of-21 for 167 yards, a TD, an INT, a sack and an 82.8 passer rating. "I missed a couple of throws, I missed the one to Garrett [Wilson[ on the last drive I was in. The pick, I missed just slightly inside on that one. I felt overall I was getting the ball out pretty good, but we had some opportunities that I'd like to have back."

Nor did he buy into the theory of all the new personnel pieces around him needing some time to come together.

"That's an excuse for sure," he said. "I'm not going to use that. I don't think we should. We expect greatness when we step on the field. There were moments, for sure, moments that felt really good, but they were not sustained. I felt like if we could just get a first down, we'd be rolling. Then we had those 3-and-outs, which hurt us.

"I think a lot of that stuff is correctible, which is great for coaches, but its' frustrating for players, because we know how close we were-slash-are."

Saleh expressed no doubt that his future Hall of Fame QB, his rebuilt offense and his top-five defense would springboard out of their cross-country flight bac to One Jets Drive and dive into the workweek that will take them to Game 2 at Tennessee and Game 3, their home opener, against New England on the following Thursday night.

"Aaron looked fine, his command was fine," the coach said. "We'll be better, 100 percent. I'm not worried. Like I said, give San Francisco a lot of credit. I'm not worried about the offense, I'm not worried about the defense. We'll get it fixed."

And Rodgers was in agreement, about what he, his offense and his team have to do for the Titans, Patriots and beyond.

"We're going to move on to Tennessee quickly, then we've got a game four days after that," he said. "So this is a tough opener for us, travel-wise and schedule-wise. But no excuses. we've got to play better, I've got to play better. And we'll bounce back next week."