Pats Showdown Will Prove To Be A Major Test On Whether Wilson Has “It”

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How often have we heard from NFL experts that this Jets season is all about one thing: Finding out who Zach Wilson is.

Sunday’s showdown at AFC East rival New England will go a long way towards resolving that open question.

Selected with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, the 23-year old quarterback has been less than impressive in his first 19 professional starts. After finishing in last place in rbsdm.com’s composite expected points added per play/completion percentage over expected metric as a rookie, he has barely improved in Year 2, ranking 28th among 31 QBs with at least 200 plays this season. Many of his best games have been when he threw for fewer than 200 yards.

The Patriots in particular give Wilson fits. In two-plus games (he was injured early in the 54-13 debacle at MetLife Stadium last season), he has gone 45-for-84 (53.6%) with two touchdowns and seven interceptions. Despite a career-high 355 yards passing, he was horribly inaccurate (49%) and threw three incomprehensible picks in New England’s 22-17 victory in the teams’ first meeting on October 30, New York’s only loss in the last six games.

The Jets (6-3) are overly reliant on a running game that gained just 51 yards on 3.4 yards per rush against a Patriots defense that stacked the box in that last contest. Take out the Bears game where quarterback Justin Fields wreaked havoc in a way Wilson can’t, New England has allowed a mere 75 yards rushing per game in the other four prior games, all Patriots victories. You know Pats Head Coach Bill Belichick will devise another game plan where he dares Wilson to beat him on Sunday.

Can Wilson process the Pats defense so he isn’t holding the ball for over 3.5 seconds per dropback like he did in the first game, the longest of any Week 8 QB? Will he be accurate enough on the gimme throws that are prone to be off-target on too many occasions? And can he avoid the big negative plays that have turned winnable games into defeats?

In other words, has this quarterback learned anything?

I know, this is just one game, even if it’s a biggie—all four teams in the division, including last place New England (5-4) would qualify for the playoffs if the season ended today and the Jets can vault into first place with a victory due to tiebreakers. Still, Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh, when discussing Wilson, always talks about the process and not the result. And no matter what he said postgame, he can’t tell me that all those ghastly mistakes Wilson made in Week 8 was good process. A repeat of that type of performance would raise serious doubts about Wilson’s fitness as the franchise QB to the point where drafting another signal-caller in 2023 can’t be ruled off the table.

On the other hand, this is another opportunity for Wilson to step up and make the correct decisions while executing the throws to not just manage the game, but win the game for Gang Green. Despite multiple injuries to key players, the Jets have enough weapons to get the job done.

The ball, as they say, will be in Wilson’s hands.  

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A quick word about expectations. There will be a temptation, should Gang Green fall short on Sunday, to blurt out, “Same Old Jets.”

This season has been anything but that tired cliché. The beauty of it has been that no one expected the Jets to be anywhere near this stratosphere. Coming off a brutal 4-13 2021 campaign and with questions about the quarterback? The organization’s low bar of “playing meaningful games in December” may have been the upper echelon of possibilities, certainly not contending for the division crown. Las Vegas still doesn’t believe in the Jets, making them underdogs for a tenth consecutive game--the Pats are three-point favorites on Sunday.

Punishing doubters is what made the first half of this season so special. The Cleveland miracle driven by backup QB Joe Flacco; the triumphs in previous Houses of Horrors like Pittsburgh, Denver, and Green Bay; and, of course, the second-half shutdown of powerhouse division rival Buffalo two weeks ago that sent Gang Green soaring into their bye week. The shock made all those Sunday’s thrilling beyond anything this team has provided its fan base since 2015.

Yet this is still a “show-me” team—for all the joy they have brought, they haven’t accomplished anything. The Jets haven’t beaten the Patriots in 13 tries. As discussed above, their quarterback has yet to prove that he can decipher the disguises embedded in a Belichick-coached defense.

So manage expectations. I too would like to dive in headfirst, but I have seen too many hard falls from lofty perches over the years. I remember when New York started the 1986 season at 10-1. Super Bowl dreams danced in every Jets fan’s head. How silly were we back then?

Prediction: Patriots 16 Jets 13