Mike Lupica: Credit Jets owner Woody Johnson for making a run at Aaron Rodgers

Apart from Mr. Dolan, who presides over two teams at the Facial Recognition Garden, there is no less popular owner around here than Woody Johnson. A few years ago Jets fans were not only happy to see him head off to England to become Donald Trump’s ambassador to the Court of St. James, most of them were hoping it might become a lifetime appointment. You can still buy political appointments like that if you have the money, by the way. It is different trying to buy the Lombardi Trophy, as Woody well knows.

But at least Johnson is acting like a real owner, and a smart one, as he and his general manager and his coach have been trying hard to recruit Aaron Rodgers to become the No. 12 the Jets have been looking for since the Original 12, which means Joe Namath.

As much as a football decision as this is, it is also an example of a rich guy — in this case the rich guy who owns one of our football teams — getting out of debt.

Despite all the positivity of the past few days, this might still fall apart, and Johnson and his general manager and his coach and everybody in Jets Country could have their hearts broken again. Of course, there is a good reason that could happen even at the 11th hour: These are Woody’s Jets we are talking about. Bad things happen to the Jets. Go ahead and look it up.

But Johnson is taking his shot, the way Joe Tsai took his shot when he signed Kevin Durant (he’s hurt again; stop me if you’ve heard that one before) and the Notorious Kyrie. Good for him, and good for Tsai, even with the way things worked out for the Nets; and even though the Nets were still tied with the Knicks in the loss column after Friday night’s games.

Joe Tsai owns the Nets, who play in a Knicks’ city, still. The Giants, with just rare exceptions over the 50 years since Namath — primarily those two AFC championship games under Rex — have always been the big game around here in football. Tsai wanted to change that narrative, in a big way and, guess what, he very nearly did. I believe and Nets fans believe that if Durant’s toe hadn’t been on the 3-point line two years ago, Game 7 against the Bucks, Joe Tsai’s Nets were on their way to the NBA Finals that year. And if James Harden had gotten healthier and so had Irving, they might very well have won New York City its first NBA title since the ‘73 Knicks.

If you’re the Other Team, you have to take your shot. You think Steve Cohen hasn’t been doing exactly that with Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander and giving Francisco Lindor the kind of deal and kind of money he did a couple of years ago and going after Carlos Correa? He has. This is the state in which he operates, the great state of New York Sports. It is not a place for the faint of heart. Or the cheap. There is a high cost of doing business, and Cohen figured that out immediately, and that is why he has been so much of a show, particularly when scaring all the other owners half to death.

You think he won’t take a run at Shohei Ohtani if he gets the chance? Think again. Cohen could sign Ohtani for a contract worth gazillions and still be the richest owner we’ve got right now in American sports.

Now Woody is going after Rodgers for so many good reasons, starting with this one:

At this moment, he has the only losing team in town.

The Mets and Yankees are coming off a season when they combined to win 200 games in the regular season. Coach Daboll’s Giants got back up, in such a big way, and not only made it back to the playoffs, but got a game off the Vikings, making Daniel Jones around $160 million in the process. The Knicks have gotten back up, in a big way, and even with Durant and Irving now having officially changed planes and gotten out of the city, the Nets woke up on Friday morning in the No. 6 spot in the Eastern Conference, and in that loss-column tie with the Knicks.

And the Rangers have a winning record, and the Islanders have a winning record, and so do the Devils.

Then there are Woody’s Jets, who once again don’t have a quarterback and watched another roof cave in on another season. They were 6-3 and looking like a contender, and a real good one, for the playoffs on Nov. 6. Almost exactly two months later, they were 7-10 and dead last again, became a slow-motion car wreck that ended with Joe Flacco at quarterback in the regular-season closer in Miami, and the Jets looking as if they were never, ever going to score another touchdown.

So, you better believe that Johnson is going all-in on Rodgers, because he has to, for the same reasons that Tsai went all-in on Durant and Irving; for the same reasons that Steve Cohen went all-in on Buck Showalter and Lindor and then Scherzer and then Verlander and even Correa. People keep talking about the Jets getting Brett Favre at the end of his own Packers career as if that was a kind of one-year disaster with the Jets. It was not, as badly as it ended (they’re the Jets, remember? We expect things to end badly). The Jets were 7-4 the year Favre was here, and showing possibilities, before finishing at 9-7.

People thought Favre didn’t have much left at that point, the same way people are pondering just how much Rodgers has left after the way last season ended for him, and the season before that, when he couldn’t win a playoff game against the 49ers on a cold Lambeau night that was supposed to be made for the Packers and made for Aaron Rodgers. But the next season after he left the Jets, Favre nearly took the Vikings to the Super Bowl, before an interception from Tracy Porter finished them in the NFC championship game.

The Jets need a quarterback, obviously. But are they a quarterback away from being a legitimate Super Bowl contender? You don’t know that and neither do I. They’re not the 49ers, who absolutely are a star quarterback away from the Lombardi Trophy. They’re more than one player away, even if that player is a future Hall of Fame quarterback, one who at his best played the position as well as it has ever been played.

The Jets are going for it anyway. Woody is going for it, in a big way, and Jets fans ought to be appreciate that. They’re the Jets, after all. It’s more than Woody trying to buy himself out of debt. It’s like he’s trying to finally buy his way out of jail.

BIG YEAR COMING FROM LINDOR, IMAGINE IF KNICKS HAD DONOVAN TOO & GIANTS BETTER BE RIGHT ABOUT DANNY DIMES …

With the new rules in baseball, and even those new super-sized bases, Francisco Lindor is going to be even better this season than he was last season.

And that is saying plenty.

That double overtime victory the Knicks had over the Celtics last Sunday night was one of the most exciting regular-season games the Knicks have played in years.

But they’re doing nothing in the playoffs if Jalen Brunson isn’t healthy.

One more thing about the Knicks, who got as hot as they did before hitting the road for the West Coast:

Don’t you wonder, even when they’re firing on all cylinders, how this all would look if they had Donovan Mitchell, too?

I sure do.

I believe that if they could have made the money work — and teams always seem to be able to make the money work in the NBA, right? — they might be a top-three team in the Eastern Conference.

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that another big Yankee pitching acquisition like Carlos Rodon is injured already.

It’s a good thing Gerrit Cole is the horse that he is, or Yankee fans would be making a list, and checking it twice, about all the bad pitching decisions their team has made since the last time it won a World Series.

Seriously, they sure can pick ‘em, right?

I am happy that Daniel Jones got his money.

I am glad, as somebody who grew up a Giants fan, that he delivered the way he did this season with the money, literally, on the line for him.

But they better be right about him.

And by right, I mean that he can become somebody who can throw more than 15 touchdown passes in a season, which practically anybody can do.

Because if they’re wrong, they might end up having wasted nearly a whole decade on Jones.

At this point all you can say with certainty is this:

No one ever made more money off one good passing and throwing playoff victory than the guy from Duke just did.

The government ought to have found a way to let Novak Djokovic come play in Indian Wells, and Miami.

At this point, and just guessing about how many un-vaxxed athletes we’ve got in this country — starting with the Notorious Kyrie — you’ve got to wonder who the government is protecting at this point by continuing to ban the best tennis player on the planet.

I love all coaching members of the Hurley family, but Danny could think about decaf, right?

My pal Barry Stanton wonders this week if Zion might not be the second coming of the young Bill Walton, another guy whose talent was too big for his body.

I was giving a speech the other afternoon at Gallagher’s, still one of the capitals of the city, and I swear the Garden’s facial recognition picked me up on W. 52nd.

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