Marquand Manuel played for six teams over eight NFL seasons as a defensive back, including one as the teammate of a second-year backup quarterback named Aaron Rodgers with the Packers in 2006.
The Jets’ current safeties coach was “as devastated as everybody else” when Rodgers tore his left Achilles four offensive plays into his first season with the team in Week 1 against the Bills.
But Manuel lauded Rodgers’ maturation earlier this week, and he believes the four-time league MVP continues to greatly impact the Jets as they play on without him and with Zach Wilson as the starting quarterback.
“I thank Aaron — and I told him this, and he knows this — every day for what he’s done for us,” Manuel said Thursday. “Me as a player, and now as a coach … you see the maturation process of who Aaron is now, everybody understands that. … It’s the value of him with everything he’s learned in all his years and pouring it back into everybody on this team.
“He’s doing a million things that you guys have no idea, that he planted seeds and he added something, a different dimension, that we couldn’t just bring. Everyone fed off exactly what he was, and they still are, and that in itself is what’s helping us.
“So just to watch his maturation process, it makes me smile.”
As the Jets prepared for their game Sunday against the Patriots, the 39-year-old Rodgers remained away from the team while recuperating from surgery last week to repair his Achilles.
Rodgers said during an appearance Friday on “The Pat McAfee Show” that he won’t return to the Jets’ facility in Florham Park until he’s able to walk.
But Manuel said the veteran quarterback’s presence is still felt at One Jets Drive.
“I wouldn’t say he’s not here,” Manuel said. “The fact of what he put in and poured into everybody — whether it’d be a joke on the side, or what play you could have made, or the little small things that Aaron does — that has helped us all. And that same creed, we still work with that every single day.
“I can’t say enough about him, man, as a teammate, as a man, and seeing the maturation process from when I played with him and against him, he’s done a phenomenal job and 10 times more than we could have ever anticipated. For not just the durability of our team, but for the mentality which we bring and we take out there to the practice field every day.
“I can’t say enough positive words about a man that I appreciate, what he’s done for us and what he’s continuing to do for us.”
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