Jets' Aaron Rodgers returns to huge cheers for 1st home game since Achilles tendon injury last year

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — No American flag this time for Aaron Rodgers. But a thunderous ovation greeted the New York Jets quarterback as he jogged onto the field at MetLife Stadium.

Rodgers was home again and ready to play. Finally.

The 40-year-old four-time MVP made his first home start Thursday night since leaving his debut with the Jets with a torn Achilles tendon just over a year ago. And he walked off a winner after he helped lead New York to a dominant 24-3 victory over the New England Patriots.

Rodgers was the last Jets player introduced to the crowd — “And, your quarterback ...,” blared the public address announcer — before the game and the fans, many wearing green and white No. 8 jerseys, went into a frenzy. Fireworks lit up the night sky and the LED wristbands given to the fans in attendance made the stands glow in a sea of green light.

And he delivered some excitement in the first half, helping the Jets to a 14-3 lead.

Rodgers' first touchdown at home with the Jets went to his former Green Bay teammate Allen Lazard, who raced from the end zone right to his quarterback to give him the ball and help Rodgers celebrate the moment.

Rodgers finished 27 of 35 for 281 yards and two touchdowns, and also was able to keep plays alive with his legs all night.

“This was kind of a first step in playing like I know I’m capable of playing,” he said after the game. “I felt like I was, you know, myself.”

The last time Rodgers jogged onto the field to play at MetLife Stadium, he emerged from the tunnel carrying an American flag on Sept. 11, 2023, the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The crowd roared while the flag fluttered behind him.

Rodgers called it one of the most special moments of his playing career.

Minutes later, the excitement and jubilation were replaced by the shocking sight of the quarterback struggling to get up and off the field. Rodgers had torn his left Achilles tendon on the fourth snap of his Jets debut.

Tests confirmed the diagnosis the next day. He had surgery on Sept. 13.

Rodgers said he had brief thoughts of doubt immediately after the injury, wondering if it was the last time he'd ever play. He turned that into motivation, aiming for an unlikely return late last season if the Jets made the playoffs. Once New York fell out of the postseason hunt, Rodgers focused on being ready for Week 1 this year.

He made it, and Rodgers was solid but unspectacular in a season-opening loss to San Francisco followed by a win at Tennessee during which he went 5 for 5 passing to lead the Jets on a winning touchdown drive. Rodgers entered the game against the Patriots with three touchdown passes, 343 yards passing and an interception.

And now he's back at MetLife Stadium, looking forward to further pushing the disappointment of his last start at home by creating a few other memorable moments. For the right reasons this time around.

“I mean, I feel good about it. It’s been a long time since I took the field at ‘JetLife,’” Rodgers said earlier this week. “So, it’ll be a lot of emotions, for sure. But we’re thankfully already into the third game of the season.

“Played two full games, body feels good, about as good as it can on a short week.”

The Jets played their third game in 11 days to start the season, a tough stretch for any player, let alone a 40-year-old quarterback still shaking off the rust from a long layoff and playing with a surgically repaired Achilles tendon.

“Testing the body, for sure,” Rodgers said. "I’ll be ready to go Thursday night and look forward to three days off.”

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New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) reacts during the third quarter of an NFL football game against the New England Patriots, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) motions to fans as he walks off the field after playing against the New England Patriots in an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) passes against the New England Patriots during the first quarter of an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) steps back to pass against the New England Patriots during the first quarter of an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) steps back to pass against the New England Patriots during the first quarter of an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) passes against the New England Patriots during the first quarter of an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) looks to pass against the New England Patriots during the first quarter of an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) passes against the New England Patriots during the first quarter of an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both pushing Tuesday to energize key constituencies that their allies worry might be slipping away. The vice president is looking to reach Black men and the former president is focusing on women.

Harris will appear at a town hall-style event in Detroit hosted by the morning radio program “The Breakfast Club,” featuring Charlamagne Tha God. Trump, meanwhile, will tape a Fox News Channel town hall featuring an all-female audience moderated by host Harris Faulkner.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz unveiled his ticket’s plan to improve the lives of rural Americans. It’s yet another sign that in a razor-tight race, each side is trying to cut into the other’s margins while shoring up traditional areas of strength.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Trump sat down for a discussion at the Economic Club of Chicago.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the latest:

Former President Barack Obama plans to join Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz in Wisconsin next week for the kickoff for in-person early voting in the battleground state.

Walz, the governor of neighboring Minnesota, and Obama have scheduled a rally in Wisconsin’s liberal capital city of Madison on Oct. 22. That is the first day that Wisconsin voters can cast ballots in person at designated polling locations ahead of Election Day. Absentee ballots started being sent to voters in late September and, as of Monday, about 240,000 had been returned.

Wisconsin is a “blue wall” state, along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, and is key to Vice President Kamala Harris’ victory strategy.

Obama is the only presidential candidate in the past six elections who has won Wisconsin by more than a percentage point.

On the day before the 2012 election, Obama held a rally in Madison that attracted about 18,000 people. Another Obama rally in October of that year drew about 30,000 people.

Donald Trump is once again claiming that there was a peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election, despite the fact that his supporters violently stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6 after he refused to accept his loss.

And he is claiming that there was “love and peace” in the crowd, even as those who descended on the Capitol smashed windows, rammed through doors and clashed violently with police, leaving more than 100 injured.

“It was a peaceful transition of power,” Trump said at a Chicago Economic Club event.

The friendly audience responded with boos when his interviewer tried to dispute him.

Trump also repeated several other falsehoods in his response.

He claimed that “not one of those people had a gun” and that “Nobody was killed,” except Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was shot and killed by police.

In fact, five people died in the riot and its immediate aftermath, including Brian Sicknick, a police officer. Four additional officers who responded to the riot killed themselves in the following weeks and months.

A slew of rioters were carrying weapons, including firearms, knives, brass knuckle gloves, a pitchfork, a hatchet, a sledgehammer and a bow. They also used makeshift weapons, including flagpoles, a table leg, hockey stick and crutch, to attack officers. One rioter has been charged with climbing scaffolding and firing a gun in the air during the melee.

Trump also claimed that “a lot of strange things happened” and that rioters were waved into the building.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said in a memo that the allegation that “our officers helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides’” is “outrageous and false.” Manger said police were completely overwhelmed and outnumbered, and in many cases resorted to de-escalation tactics to try to persuade rioters to leave the building.

While there were cases where police retreated or stepped aside, there is no evidence that any rioter was “ushered” into the building.

Donald Trump won’t say whether he’s spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin since he left office.

But he says doing so would be good for the country.

“I don’t comment on that,” he said at an event before the Chicago Economic Club. “But I will tell you that if I did it’s a smart thing. If I’m friendly with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country.”

Journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War,” that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic.”

Trump spokesperson Steve Cheung called the reporting false. Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that Woodward is “a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles.”

Donald Trump is defending his support for high tariffs as an economic cure-all as he speaks before members of the Economic Club of Chicago.

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff,’” Trump tells Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, who is interviewing him at the event. Micklethwait has repeatedly pressed Trump on warnings from economists that the costs of high tariffs will be passed along to American consumers, raising prices.

But Trump isn’t budging.

“It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you’re totally wrong,” he says, to laughs.

The Economic Club of Chicago describes its membership as “a curated composition of business and civic leaders.”

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday will unveil his ticket’s plans to improve the lives of rural voters, as Vice President Kamala Harris looks to cut into former President Donald Trump’s support.

The Harris-Walz plan includes a focus on improving rural health care, such as plans to recruit 10,000 new health care professionals in rural and tribal areas through scholarships, loan forgiveness and new grant programs, as well as economic and agricultural policy priorities. The plan was detailed to The Associated Press by a senior campaign official on the condition of anonymity ahead of its official release on Tuesday.

It marks a concerted effort by the Democratic campaign to make a dent in the historically Trump-leaning voting bloc in the closing three weeks before Election Day. Trump carried rural voters by a nearly two-to-one margin in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. In the closely contested race, both Democrats and Republicans are reaching out beyond their historic bases in hopes of winning over a sliver of voters that could ultimately prove decisive.

Walz is set to announce the plan during a stop in rural Lawrence County in western Pennsylvania, one of the marquee battlegrounds of the 2024 contest. He is also starring in a new radio ad for the campaign highlighting his roots in a small town of 400 people and his time coaching football, while attacking Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has sued CNN over its recent report that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board. He made the announcement Tuesday and calls the reporting reckless and defamatory.

The lawsuit comes less than four weeks after a report that led many of his fellow GOP elected officials and candidates to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. That includes GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

CNN declined to comment on the lawsuit. Robinson is also suing a man who alleges Robinson frequented a porn shop decades ago.

A Georgia judge has ruled county election officials must certify election results by the deadline set in law and cannot exclude any group of votes from certification even if they suspect error or fraud.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” While they have the right to inspect the conduct of an election and to review related documents, he wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”

Georgia law says county election superintendents, which are multimember boards in most counties, “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election — or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year.

The ruling comes as early voting began Tuesday in Georgia.

Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County election board, had asked the judge to declare that her duties as an election board member were discretionary and that she’s entitled to “full access” to “election materials.”

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump reads a note that Justin Caporale brought onto the stage at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves to supporters at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks along the southern border with Mexico, on Aug. 22, 2024, in Sierra Vista, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris departs Erie International Airport, in Erie, Pa., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, after a campaign rally. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Erie Insurance Arena, in Erie, Pa., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris talks with local staff before she departs Erie International Airport, in Erie, Pa., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, after a campaign rally. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a campaign town hall at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center & Fairgrounds, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024, in Oaks, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris claps on stage during a campaign rally at Erie Insurance Arena, in Erie, Pa., Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)