The Jets lost to the Chargers Monday night, 27-6, and for Zach Wilson, it was business as usual. (Bad.)
In Zach Wilson’s young NFL career, great moments have been few and far between. His best game was against the Kansas City Chiefs in September, but that game seems like centuries ago. Last Monday, Wilson played his 30th NFL game against the Los Angeles Chargers, and his performance was inept, as it often is.
Against the Chargers, Wilson was sacked eight times and fumbled for the eighth time this season. The Jets went 3-for-17 on third downs and 0-for-2 in the Red Zone under his watch. Those are cringe-worthy stats, mainly because the offense squandered another superb defensive performance by the Jets. All the offense could do was muster two Greg Zuerlein field goals.
By now, a team figures out if a particular player is improving or not. Well, we’ve seen a large enough body of work to know Wilson isn’t an NFL quarterback. That’s because he continues to make the same mistakes, such as holding on to the ball too long and getting sacked instead of throwing the ball away. He sustains no worthwhile drives whatsoever, and his ineptness helps explain why the Jets have scored the lowest offensive touchdown total in the league in 2023 (N=8).
If the performance vs. LAC wasn’t bad enough, there’s evidence that Wilson was outplayed the week before by Tommy DeVito in the Jets’ 13-10 overtime victory against the Giants. If Graham Gano had converted on a fourth-quarter field goal, the Giants would have won the game, and DeVito would have been the winning quarterback. DeVito!
So, isn’t it time to give somebody else a chance at quarterback? Can Tim Boyle or Trevor Siemian be any worse?
It bothers me that Jets’ GM Joe Douglas can sit there and do next to nothing to address this sorry state of affairs. I don’t get how Wilson inspires trust from Douglas, especially when we all saw how quickly the Vikings moved when Kirk Cousins was lost for the season. Minnesota picked up Josh Dobbs, and he rewarded the franchise by engineering a comeback victory against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday.
For the Jets to think they could succeed with Wilson calling signals is not only downright foolish; one might even call it malpractice. Even casual NFL observers know that the NFL is an offensive-oriented league, and you can’t win just by having a great defense. We can make excuses about a porous offensive line and incompetent receivers, but neither claim gets Wilson off the hook. Sure, the players are saying the right things, but they are not stupid; they see what’s happening, and so do the fans.
Earlier this year, I wondered if Wilson would be competent enough to win the final game in Foxborough so that the Jets would make the playoffs. But now, we may not need the last game to find out. If Wilson is inept again this Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders, there’s a good chance that the Jets will lose and be on a two-game losing streak going into tough contests against the Bills and Dolphins. That means there’s a high probability that a two-game losing streak will turn into a four-game losing streak, and (if that happens) it will be lights out for Gang Green because the Jets will likely need ten games to make the playoffs.
I know it may seem lazy of me to put so much blame on the quarterback, especially when the coaching does the Jets no favors. Besides, the team didn’t seem prepared for last Sunday’s game, giving up an 87-yard punt return in the first quarter. Then there were penalties–eight against LAC. But let’s face it: one function of a good quarterback is to mask team deficiencies, and Wilson isn’t good enough to do that.
I know the drill: We can be encouraging, say all the right things, and try to protect Wilson. But there’s no escaping reality, is there?
