The elephant in the room wears No. 2.
Zach Wilson is still the developmental quarterback who has not developed into an NFL starting quarterback.
The boo birds who savaged him for most of Sunday’s 15th consecutive loss to Bill Belichick would sign up today for Aaron Rodgers playing quarterback wearing a boot or Joe Namath hobbling into the huddle at age 80.
When Rodgers went down, it is painfully clear now that he took the Jets’ season with him.
The Jets, 15-10 losers to the Patriots, can talk all they want about football being a team game, but this is a quarterback-driven league.
It is why GM Joe Douglas used the second-overall pick on Zach Wilson, it is why the franchise scrambled the way it did and went all-in on Rodgers.
Because Zach Wilson is this team’s Achilles’ heel.
The Jets made the bed, gambled on placing the season in Wilson’s hands should something unforeseen happen to the first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback who turns 40 in December, and now they have to sleep in it.
The Jets put all their eggs in one basket and now they’re all scrambled.
Douglas can’t go shop at any starting quarterback store. The best he can seemingly do is upgrade from Tim Boyle at backup quarterback, and not fear the possibility of a fan uproar the next time Wilson puts 10 points on the scoreboard.
At this wobbly moment in Jets history, it is Wilson or Bust.
Sure looks like Bust.
“He gives us the best chance to win,” Robert Saleh said.
He gave them no chance to win against Belichick, a predictable mismatch of gargantuan proportions, unless the Jets defense could have scored itself.
“It starts with me,” Wilson said. “I gotta find a way to be better.”
If he hasn’t found it by now, good luck to the Jets believing that where there’s a Wilson, there’s a way.
It starts with him seeing the field better. It starts with him not holding the ball forever … and being sacked for a safety. It starts with him throwing with more accuracy [18-36, 157 yards]. It starts with him not throwing behind the sticks on third and fourth down. [Well, at least he didn’t give the ball away].
He is still the one who is holding this team back.
For Jets fans, it is Deja Boo all over again.
It’s too early in the season for a team to divide and implode, but frustrations began to boil over on the sideline with Garrett Wilson and OC Nathaniel Hackett and Michael Carter and running backs coach Taylor Embree.
Hackett is no innocent here either, no longer able to press cruise control the way he could with Rodgers. He waited too long for an All Gas, No Break attack in the fourth quarter when Zach Wilson matriculated the ball down the field to cut the deficit to 13-10.
“They do a good job mixing up the looks, and we didn’t always have the answer,” Garrett Wilson said.
“We coulda lost that game by two, three touchdowns the way we played on the offensive side of the ball. Reality.”
Zach Wilson was 7-for-10 on the 13-play, 87-yard drive.
“They were playing a little softer, and we kind of stayed on the pedal, which allowed us to predict the look that we were getting,” Garrett Wilson said. “No time to get a call in from the sideline, no time to make those checks, keeping them on their toes and it allowed us to know how to attack it.”
It sounded as if they were speaking to Hackett.
“I feel like Zach feels really comfortable when he is kind of just getting on the ball, not huddling, just getting into the flow of things. I feel like he just feels really good and comfortable doing that stuff,” Tyler Conklin said.
Zach?
“As a quarterback, when the fourth quarter comes, that’s your time to, you have to do a little more now,” he said.
Belichick was missing three members of his secondary. But Hackett didn’t exploit it early or often because he was too busy attempting to establish a rushing attack (36 yards on 21 carries from the backs) to help take the burden off his quarterback.
“I’m sure they’re feeling really good over there on the other side right now, especially the DB room, and they should, for sure,” Garrett Wilson said.
Saleh has no choice but to impress upon his players the necessity of circling the wagon and ignoring the noise and having one another’s back and all that.
“People put this s–t on Zach, but c’mon now,” Carter said. “It’s not like he’s playing bad football. But he’s the quarterback. That’s what happens when you go No. 2 overall to one of the biggest cities in the world with everyone watching you. If you don’t play picture-perfect football, they are ready to get you out of there. It’s one of those things that we have to be better as a team. There’s only so much you can put on Zach. He’s human.”
To err is human, too.
Saleh was subjected to questions such as:
Where specifically is Zach progressing?
Has Zach shown you enough to keep him as the starter?
Will Tim Boyle get first-team reps?
Is it fair to the team to continue starting him?
This one ended with an unsuccessful Hail Mary for Randall Cobb.
Which is what the end of the Jets’ 12-year playoff drought is beginning to look like now.
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