Jets, Buses And Home Games

The Jets just can't have nice things, can they? 

Tom Brady's second act included a Super Bowl title in Tampa Bay. The Jets figured they were headed to that same storybook ending when they acquired 39-year-old Aaron Rodgers after his Hall-of-Fame career in Green Bay. 

Brady threw for 15,000 yards and 107 touchdowns in three seasons in Tampa Bay. With numbers like that swirling through the heads of Jets fans everywhere, Rodgers made his debut Monday night against the Bills and, well, you know what happened. 

It's not easy to come back from an Achilles injury when you're almost 40. If he never makes it back, then Rodgers will have thrown 7,762 passes for her career, of which 7,761 would have come for the Packers and one for the Jets. He played all of four plays with his new team before getting hurt.

TigerBlog wasn't watching the game Monday night, but he did go to check the stats to see how Rodgers was doing. What the heck? One pass? No way. 

If you're a Jets fan, well, you're used to these quarterbacking disappointments. There are way more football fans who remember the endless parade of Jets QB's, some of whom were pretty good but none of whom were great, than who saw Joe Namath play. TigerBlog saw Namath play. He was different. 

TB adopted the Jets after being a lifelong Giants fan when the Giants did their anti-Princeton thing by firing Marc Ross and Jason Garrett. How many Super Bowl rings do those two have (five)? How many do the guys running the Giants now have (zero)?

Speaking of football and Jets, the Princeton football team will be getting on one today to head to the West Coast for its 2023 season opener. 

Princeton will be taking on San Diego in Torero Stadium, which looks like a pretty nice place to see a game. If you're in San Diego, expect the weather to be perfect, since it always is. The

If you're watching on ESPN+, it kicks off at 1 local time and 4 Eastern time. TB will have more on the football game tomorrow. 

For the rest of today, there are some other big events to discuss.

The field hockey team is at No. 5 Maryland today at 4 in another matchup against a top 10 team, which is the norm for the Tigers this time of year. Princeton is 1-3, and with the new NFHCA rule that says teams must be at least .500 to be in the top 20, the Tigers are unranked.

Their three losses, though, are all by one goal, to No. 2 North Carolina, No. 5 Louisville and No. 10 Rutgers. Don't count out the Tigers against anyone. 

Here are a few other fun TFH facts: 1) all four of Princeton's games so far this season have been 2-1 scores; 2) Princeton's last three games have all been overtime games; 3) Princeton and Maryland have gone to overtime in each of their last five meetings and 4) the last seven Princeton-Maryland games have been one-goal games.

Princeton hosts UConn Sunday at noon.

The women's soccer team has a Thursday-Sunday week as well, only with the home game first. Princeton welcomes 10th-ranked Georgetown to Myslik Field at Roberts Stadium tonight at 7 and then heads up to Connecticut to take on Quinnipiac Sunday at noon.

Georgetown comes into the game with a record of 4-0-3. In those seven games, the Hoyas have allowed only two goals, including five straight games without allowing any. Georgetown had a 0-0 tie against James Madison in that run, which included a 2-0 win over Rutgers, a team Princeton had its own 0-0 tie against.

In its last game, Georgetown finally gave up a goal but ended up tying No. 2 Stanford 1-1. Georgetown scored its goal seven minutes into the game; Stanford tied it with five minutes left.

The men's soccer team has as long a bus ride as the football team has a plane ride this weekend, as Jim Barlow's team heads to take on the University of New Hampshire. Both trips are around six hours. 

When Princeton gets to UNH, the team waiting for the Tigers will be coming in after a week off since a 2-1 win at No. 8 Florida International, which followed a 1-0 loss at home against Cornell. UNH and Princeton have never met in men's soccer, something TB finds hard to believe.

He'd also find it hard to believe if UNH's Director of Athletics wasn't at the game. That would be Allison Rich, who is in Year 2 in Durham after spending nearly a decade at Princeton.

The women's rugby team, make that the greatly improved women's rugby team, hosts Dartmouth Saturday at noon. A week ago, against Mt. St. Mary's, Princeton lost 27-26 in the final heartbreaking seconds, and while that stung, it did come against a team who beat Princeton 77-10 a year ago in the Tigers' inaugural varsity season.

There is also a home women's golf invitational this weekend at Springdale.

The full schedule is HERE.