The Jets Can’t Have Nice Things Because They Keep Doing Dumb Things
Do you laugh or cry at this team, Jets fans?
I guess that depends on how long-suffering you are. As a diehard for over 50 years, I’ve transitioned to the former category, which is why I could joke in a recent post that the Jets told Murphy’s Law, “Hold my beer.” If you’re relatively new to this, though, this team will drive you mad.
It’s not just the constant losing—no playoff appearances in the last 11 seasons—or even the incomprehensible manner in which they have managed to snatch so many defeats from the jaws of victories. It’s how galactically dumb this franchise has been from ownership down to the players.
For example, all you want out of the preseason is to come out of it in good health. The games do not matter—they have zero correlation as to what will transpire in the regular season. So of course, Zach Wilson, in his pursuit of eight of the most meaningless extra yards you can imagine during the first quarter of New York’s 24-21 victory at Philadelphia on Friday night, appeared to become the fourth Jets starting quarterback in the last 20 years to suffer a serious injury in the preseason (though Geno Smith’s broken jaw in 2015 was from the “friendly fire” of a locker room bout with linebacker IK Enemkpali). Though there was no contact, Wilson’s right knee buckled while cutting on the newly-installed Lincoln Financial Field turf. As of this writing, the Jets have been mum on the injury’s severity, with Saturday’s MRI expected to yield a more definitive diagnosis.
Whether the result comes back as an injured PCL rather than an ACL tear, which would mean that Wilson would be out for about as many as 4-6 weeks as opposed to the entire 2022 season, is irrelevant. Like all the others, this was so unnecessary. Wilson had ample opportunity to get out of bounds or slide. Even safer, he could have just thrown the ball away when he rolled out of the pressure instead of trying to extend the play. After all, it was a first-and-ten snap, not one that could potentially knock the offense off the field.
For those who are in the camp of “Zach has to be Zach” and that, as a second-year pro, he needs to be able to play freely, please stop. There is a time and a place for that, and it’s certainly not during the first preseason game. After the sympathy one would feel for any injured player dissipated, all I could think of when Wilson was down on the ground was the exclamation from the announcer in the Adam Sandler flick “The Waterboy” after Sandler’s character Bobby Boucher gifted a touchdown to the opponent: “What an idiot!”
Wilson’s folly continues a pattern of clueless football decisions at all levels of the organization. Under the Johnson brothers’ leadership, the Jets have had a revolving door of general managers and head coaches run in-and-out of their facility. They all say that they know how to fix things, and then they make the same boneheaded mistakes as their predecessors. Feel free to direct some of your venom at Head Coach Robert Saleh and his staff, who should have made clear to their 2021 No. 2 overall draft pick, in whom they have so much invested, that preseason risks are verboten.
I’m not going to proclaim that Wilson’s injury automatically kills the Jets season before it begins—after all, I wasn’t all that high on them to begin with and backup Joe Flacco can probably coax as many wins out of this group as Wilson. However, it does seem to offer a fitting opening act for another upcoming tragedy—or comedy, depending on where you sit on the Jets fan spectrum.