Jets Will Get Reminder Of “What Could Have Been” With Jacksonville In Town
Not that anyone wants to revisit the dreadful 2020 Jets season, but the consequences reaped from Gang Green pulling out two wins in the last three weeks that year will be on display on Thursday night when Jacksonville invades MetLife Stadium. Remember the euphoria over the club avoiding the ignominy of a winless season? Well, all the good those victories did in jumpstarting their subsequent campaign, huh? The 2021 Jets started out 2-8.
Meanwhile, the two triumphs, specifically holding off AFC member Cleveland, 23-16, in Week 16, cemented the Jets into the No. 2 slot in the 2021 NFL Draft behind the one-win Jaguars, who went on to select Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence with the top pick. New York then grabbed BYU product Zach Wilson, and while the rest isn’t entirely history, storylines seem to have been established.
Not that this is destined to be another Peyton Manning/Ryan Leaf character arc, but Lawrence has figured it out in Year 2 while Wilson would have to engineer the most dramatic turnaround ever to develop into a high-quality QB and avoid being forever tarnished with the Leaf-like “bust” label.
In the big picture, the Jets (7-7) are crashing back to Earth and would need a miracle to end a 12-season playoff drought while the Jaguars (6-8) have won three of their last four games to inch within a game of Tennessee for first place in the awful AFC South. Lawrence’s growth has been behind much of their surge, as he ranks fifth in the league in rbsdm.com’s expected points per play plus completion percentage over expected composite since Week 9. In that stretch, ProFootballFocus.com has him graded as the NFL’s top quarterback and he is ranked third in the league in what they deem “big-time throws.”
As for Wilson, for those who thought he took a big step forward in New York’s 20-17 loss to the visiting Lions on Sunday, the aggregate stats are misleading. While Wilson did hit on a good number of explosive plays to produce 315 passing yards, just the second time in 21 starts he eclipsed the 300-yard barrier, ESPN had him off target on 35.3% of his throws, worse than his horrific performance in Week 11’s 10-3 stinker in New England that got him benched for Mike White. Only eight of 442 individual QB outings this season have had a higher misfire rate in any single game.
Take out his monstrous second quarter where Wilson torched the woeful Lions secondary for 164 yards passing and he ranked 27th out of the 32 QBs that week in EPA/CPOE—even including it placed him no better than 17th. On the season, only the much-travelled Baker Mayfield has registered a worse rbsdm.com composite among the 33 qualifying QBs while only Washington’s Taylor Heinicke has posted a higher percentage of turnover-worthy throws as graded by PFF.
The bottom line is that Lawrence, with the help from Jacksonville’s coaching staff (remember that Head Coach Doug Pederson once had the much-maligned Carson Wentz playing at an MVP level in Philadelphia) has been elevating his team of late while the Jets have been in the business of minimizing the damage Wilson is apt to do every week.
Lawrence, who is listed as questionable with a toe injury but is on track to play on Thursday, lost his first mano-a-mano battle with Wilson in Week 16 last season, 26-21, in as meaningless a professional football game as one can find outside of preseason action. In truth, neither QB shined, with the Jets held to just 100 net passing yards and Lawrence failing to get the Jags into the end zone on four plays from inside the Jets 5-yard line in the final 30 seconds.
There is a greater likelihood that Thursday’s showcase will highlight a more distinctive difference between the two QBs who will be forever linked by in another reminder to Jets fans that, in some cases, the “no good deed goes unpunished” axiom can be applicable to NFL franchises’ futures.
Prediction: Jaguars 26 Jets 17