After Darnold Flameout, Will Jets Fans Have The Required Patience For Wilson?
The Hot Take Industrial Complex has no room for nuance and, thanks to social media, the ensuing emotional responses are amplified without allowing them time to marinate. Meanwhile, rookie quarterbacks rarely come out of the gate firing on all cylinders.
Add in the Jets and their abhorrent history of getting everything wrong and that’s how you get some folks pining for the not-so-glorious days of Sam Darnold, a 2018 third overall pick who flamed out rather quickly and was traded to Carolina this offseason to make room for the New Hope.
That would be Zach Wilson, the Jets’ second overall pick out of BYU in April’s NFL Draft who is now going through the process of his first professional football training camp. According to the media reports of practices and Saturday’s Green/White scrimmage, Wilson’s performances have been uneven at best.
So what.
Do you know what’s more meaningless than preseason stats? Practice stats. I’m growing tired of hearing that “Wilson went 5-for-12 in 11-on-11 team drills.” The guy is dealing with learning an entire new offensive system while simultaneously getting acclimated to the speed of the game, including the timing with his receivers.
Everything is new in New York, not just to Wilson, but to all his teammates, since the organization turned over the coaching staff in the offseason. Robert Saleh is a first-time head coach and offensive coordinator Mike
Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post
LaFleur has never been in charge of play-calling at the NFL level. There was always going to be bumps in the road.
In addition, the Jets opted not to bring a veteran backup into the quarterback room (Josh Johnson, who has seemingly lapped the league on his road to journeyman status and is currently on his second stint with the Jets, will be cut in a few weeks) to serve as Wilson’s mentor the way Josh McCown reportedly helped Darnold in his rookie season.
So if there’s a time and place for Wilson to make mistakes, it’s now.
At his press conference on Wednesday, Wilson talked about how there are reps where he’s “learning what I can get away with and what I can’t.” Maybe a throw he made into coverage in August is one he checks down on in October.
More likely, and I hate to break it to the naysayers, some of those mistakes will continue into the regular season. The fact remains that the QBs who have success starting in Year 1, like Ben Roethlisberger and Russell Wilson, are outliers. More common is the Peyton Manning experience (28 interceptions).
Just three years ago, Darnold and Buffalo’s Josh Allen were selected four slots apart in the Draft and started as rookies. Allen proceeded to complete only 52.8% of his passes, with a 10 touchdown-to-12 interception ratio. Analytically speaking, Allen received the fourth-lowest passing grade from ProFootballFocus.com among the 33 QBs with at least 250 dropbacks, one place worse than Darnold. In his sophomore season, Allen vaulted exactly two places on the PFF scale, which still had him lower-rated than the Jets’ struggling QB.
Of course, abetted by a premium supporting cast, Allen put it all together last season and led the Bills to the AFC Championship Game, thereby earning a six-year contract extension that can max out at $258 million, with $150 million guaranteed.
The question isn’t whether Jets fans would sign up for a similar timeline for Wilson, it’s whether they have the patience to weather the lows of the maturation process.
I have doubts. The fan base, and I include myself here, is so shell-shocked from over 50 years of gloom-and-doom that it will take a Herculean effort by the entire Jets organization to rid it of its woe-is-me attitude.
But can we all at least wait until we see what happens this season before worrying that the Jets made another grave QB mistake?