EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Aaron Rodgers was walking out of MetLife Stadium when a tall man wearing a camouflage jacket and a backward-turned Yankees cap offered a parting word of encouragement and advice.

“Hey, young man,” Tim Thomas shouted at him, “you stay healthy. You stay healthy.”

Thomas is a former NBA lottery pick and 13-year veteran and current basketball coach at a high school just up the road, Paramus Catholic, who had just shared a hearty handshake and hug with the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback. Thomas was gone from the Milwaukee Bucks by the time the Green Bay Packers drafted Rodgers in 2005 but said the two had talked in the past over shrimp, fries and chicken about their shared experience of sitting behind veteran stars — Thomas behind Glenn Robinson, and Rodgers behind Brett Favre.

But more than anything, Thomas was among the rare fans in attendance Sunday who understood exactly what professional athletes feel when they are traded, waived, fired, told they are no longer wanted.

Told they are no longer good enough.

The New York Jets sent that message to Rodgers following a disastrous two-year term. Seven months later, after the future Hall of Famer took the Jets to school with four touchdown passes in a 34-32 Pittsburgh Steelers victory, Thomas had a good read on exactly what Rodgers was feeling.

“Oh no, this s— is big. This is big,” he said. “This is the Super Bowl, his birthday, New Year’s Eve, and having a newborn baby all put together for him. Trust me, it’s definitely deep, deep, deep inside. Aaron is the type of individual that wouldn’t put that out to the media, but this is huge for him.”

So huge that Rodgers couldn’t help but open a public window on his competitive soul. In the lead-up to this revenge match, Rodgers insisted that this was Week 1, and only Week 1.

Never mind that the Jets’ rookie coach, Aaron Glenn, had enraged him by cutting him loose. Never mind that the Jets had been a neon billboard for dysfunction for so many years, and that Rodgers had accepted the challenge of “saving” them.

Never mind that Rodgers had given the Jets everything he had — body and soul — only to be betrayed by the clownish coaching that turned a 10-7 season into a 5-12 season.

Rodgers swore his 21st NFL opener overall and 18th as a starter was no different than any preceding it. He even told ex-teammate Breece Hall before the game that this return wasn’t a big deal because he’d only played 18 games for the Jets. He even opened his post-victory news conference with more of the same messaging and tone.

And then Rodgers couldn’t help himself anymore. He was reminded that his career had been shaped by overcoming doubts and slights going back to high school, when he was offered the same amount of Division I football scholarships that were offered to the average sportswriter who covers him.

Rodgers’s longtime friends know that a mere mention of those days at Pleasant Valley High School in Chico, Calif., where the quarterback was ignored by recruiters and forced to attend the local junior college, usually summons a feeling of bitterness that remains raw at age 41.

“So it was nice to win, especially hearing some of the catcalls out there and the boo-birds,” Rodgers finally allowed. “I’m not sensitive about that. I expected that. I kinda like that.

“But there were probably people in the organization that didn’t think I could play anymore. So it was nice to remind those people that I still can.”

Aaron Rodgers (8) celebrates the first of his four touchdown passes Sunday with Ben Skowronek. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)

He was talking about Woody Johnson, the owner who had once led a delegation of Jets recruiters assigned to romance Rodgers at his Malibu estate. He was talking about his former NFC North adversary, Glenn, who left Detroit for the big job with the franchise that had drafted him and couldn’t wait to escort Rodgers to the door.

Asked if there was a significance in beating Glenn, Rodgers said, “I was happy to beat everybody associated with the Jets.”

Yes, that was the same Aaron Rodgers who was supposed to be the No. 1 overall draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers, the team he grew up adoring, only for the Niners to select Alex Smith instead. Rodgers’ plunge to pick No. 24 in 2005 was captured step-by-embarrassing-step by ESPN cameras and, on the same day that YouTube was born, became the NFL’s first draft-day reality show.

Rodgers said he felt the whole world was watching and laughing at him. Asked that day how disappointed he was that his childhood team didn’t take him at No. 1, Rodgers said, “Not as disappointed as the 49ers will be that they didn’t draft me.”

Anyone who knows Rodgers knows that he carried that same defiant attitude back into MetLife. “He has had a chip his whole life,” Craig Rigsbee, his junior college coach at Butte and longtime friend, texted The Athletic after the game. “He has continued to beat the odds.”

He beat his current coach, Mike Tomlin, in a Super Bowl and became a four-time MVP. He returned from the ruptured Achilles tendon suffered on opening night, 2023, to start 17 games for the 2024 Jets on the wrong side of his 40th birthday. And then, after getting fired by a franchise that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2010, he hit those Jets with a roundhouse right to start a season that will finish after his 42nd birthday.

As he left the field, Rodgers cupped his ear like a pro wrestling heel while looking into the same Jets crowd that welcomed him in the first quarter with thunderous boos.

The same Jets crowd that greeted him with thunderous cheers that bygone night he ran out of the tunnel carrying an outsized American flag.

It actually looked like a lovefest a couple of hours before kickoff, when Rodgers mingled with Jets players and staffers and played the role of long-lost friend. But the NFL put him in this building for a reason. League officials knew that Rodgers would be signing with the Steelers, and they knew he had contempt for Woody and all of Woody’s men.

“I didn’t have any hard feelings about it not working out,” Rodgers said. “Now, I didn’t maybe appreciate the way that it went down in the end. But that’s in the past and we’re 1-0.”

Rodgers needed a 60-yard field goal to even his score with the Jets, but at the same time, he showed in his advanced age why Tom Brady called him “the greatest passer of the football the league has ever seen.” A-Rod has lost almost all of his mobility, but he can still sling it with the best of ’em.

When his Steelers were on defense, Rodgers sat on the sideline and thought about how his new wife and friends encouraged him to take his time in the offseason to make what would be the right decision to continue playing. The Steelers didn’t play a great game, but their quarterback did.

Rodgers now needs only two touchdown passes to hurdle Favre into fourth place on the all-time list. Rigsbee texted that reminder Sunday because the people who have been around Rodgers forever see how much finishing his career ahead of Favre — in any context — means to him.

But this Sunday wasn’t about exorcising a ghost from his Packers past. This one was about stuffing the New York Jets inside the gym bag Aaron Rodgers had slung over his right shoulder on his walk out of his former place of employment.

This one was about seizing one of the sweetest victories of his legendary career … whether the old quarterback wanted to admit it or not.

(Photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)