Just like that, The Kid is back and on the hot seat again. Remember that plan in which he would serve an apprenticeship under the master and spend a season on the sideline observing and learning? It’s gone.
It lasted four plays. Fifty seconds.
Zach Wilson, the 24-year-old from BYU and Corner Canyon High, was just getting comfortable on the headset when he got a battlefield promotion and was thrust into an unfolding drama on national TV, one that included a 9/11 ceremony, a shocking injury and a thrilling overtime finish. After months of anticipation, after he led the team onto the field holding the American flag, Aaron Rodgers made his debut as the starting quarterback of the New York Jets. He entered the game with 12:30 left in the first quarter; he left it with 11:40 left.
He is done for the season, felled by an ankle/foot injury.
Enter Wilson, whose failures have been shouted from the headlines since becoming the No. 2 overall pick of the 2021 draft. If Hollywood had written it, Wilson would have thrown the game-winning touchdown and rode off the field on the shoulders of his teammates. That didn’t happen. He wasn’t the game’s hero, but he did just enough to help his team win, and that was enough on this night, especially considering the ignominious way he left the field last season.
The hero was rookie Xavier Gipson, who, unlike Wilson, had no high expectations. He wasn’t even drafted. He played for Stephen F. Austin. In overtime, he returned a punt 65 yards for the game-winning touchdown. Score: 22-16.
The Jets played conservatively with Wilson on the field, relying on short passes and the running game. Wilson rarely threw downfield, and when he did he got himself into trouble. In the first half he threw a dart down the middle of the field without noticing that linebacker Matt Milano had dropped into the deep middle zone. Milano intercepted the pass, and, if he hadn’t, teammate Terrel Bernard would have done the same thing. The pass had no chance.
“Just a terrible read by Zach Wilson,” Troy Aikman said from the TV booth.
But Wilson, who would complete 14 of 21 passes for 140 yards (just 6.6 yards per attempt), throw one touchdown and that one interception, had his moments. He found receiver Allen Lazard for 22 yards in the first half and 23 in the second half.
He completed a big third-down strike to Garrett Wilson late in the fourth quarter for 14 yards. Two plays later, he threw a back-shoulder fade to Garrett Wilson, who made a spectacular, bobbling catch, finally securing the ball while flat on his back in the end zone.
The Jets’ offense scored only one touchdown and three field goals.
So Wilson, once booed off the field and pilloried in the press, is back as the Jets’ starting quarterback. It is Rodgers who will be on the sidelines.
After 18 years with the Packers, Rodgers signed a two-year, $75 million contract to play for the Jets. The Jets reasoned that they were one quarterback away from the Super Bowl. They have a superb defense and tremendous skill players in young receiver Garrett Wilson and running back Breece Hall.
Last year they might have gone deep into the playoffs if they had had even a mediocre quarterback. Their 10 losses were by an average of 8.1 points. Wilson played poorly. Statistically, he was the worst starting quarterback in the league. The Jets benched him at midseason, placing him No. 3 on the depth chart behind Mike White, a 2018 fifth-round draft pick, and 37-year-old Joe Flacco.
“Zach’s career here is not over,” head coach Robert Saleh said. “I know that’s going to be the narrative, and I know that’s what everybody wants to shout out, but that’s not even close to the case. … The young man needs a rest. There are some basic fundamental things that have gotten really out of whack for him. This is just an opportunity for him to sit back, focus on those things and find a way to reconnect with all the different things we fell in love with during the draft process. It’s something I feel like he’ll be able to do.”
He played in only two of the team’s final seven games in 2022 — he wasn’t even on the active roster — and then only because of injuries to his replacements.
The Jets couldn’t afford to wait. They had to win now, with so many star players on rookie contracts. In the offseason, the Jets signed Rodgers. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
This plan has been tried before — bring in an aging, future Hall of Fame quarterback at the end of his career and hope he can take his new team to the Super Bowl — but it has produced mixed results. It’s a gamble, given the quarterbacks’ age and mileage.
The Chiefs traded for 36-year-old Joe Montana after a legendary 14-year stay with the 49ers, two years after he missed an entire season with an injury and one year after losing his starting job to Steve Young. They gave him a three-year contract worth $10 million. He played two. The Chiefs improved immediately under Montana, advancing to the conference championship in his first season for the first time in 24 years, but he couldn’t take them to the Super Bowl. He made 25 starts in two seasons and won 17 games (he missed three games with an injury).
After 14 record-setting years with the Colts, Peyton Manning joined the Broncos at the age of 36 a year after missing the entire 2011 season with an injury. He had seen the writing on the wall when the Colts made it clear they were going to pick Andrew Luck with the No. 1 pick of the draft.
Manning transformed the previously mediocre Broncos and led them to 13 wins apiece in his f irst two seasons there, including a loss in the 2014 Super Bowl.
He played well his first three seasons, winning 38 of 48 starts, but by 2015 he had clearly deteriorated, and he was benched at midseason in favor of Brock Osweiler.
Manning, after recovering from injury, served as backup, but in the regular-season finale he relieved Osweiler and was renamed the starter. The Broncos returned to the Super Bowl, where Manning played poorly but the team won. He retired afterward at the end of what was easily his worst season statistically (the worst passer rating among starters).
After 16 brilliant seasons with the Packers, Brett Favre joined the Jets at the age of 39 when his team made it clear they were going to make his backup, Aaron Rodgers, the starter. Rodgers had waited three years for his turn. Under Favre, the Jets improved from 4-12 to 9-7, and then in the offseason he joined the Vikings, where he won 12 of 16 games but lost in the conference championship.
The following season, his consecutive streak of 297 consecutive regular-season starts ended when he missed three games with injuries. He won only five of his eight starts. On the final play of his 20-year career, he had to be helped off the field by a trainer.
Then there was 43-year-old Tom Brady, who joined the Buccaneers after 20 incredible seasons with the Patriots. The Bucs, who were coming off three consecutive losing seasons, won the Super Bowl in Brady’s first year with the team. They won 21 games the next two seasons with Brady but there were no more Super Bowls and Brady retired.
Like Favre, Rodgers was pushed out the door by a young quarterback who had waited three years for his turn, just as Rodgers had behind Favre. Like Favre, he signed with the Jets, a team that has never fared well with quarterbacks (they have drafted 12 quarterbacks in the last 16 years, or one every 1.4 years). Rodgers will spend the rest of the season presumably tutoring Wilson.
Wilson had accepted his new role as Rodgers’ understudy and scout team quarterback. He told the New York Post, “I’m taking that role of watching, learning, following along as much as I can and always being ready. You never know when your time is called.”
On Monday night, he found out his time is now. If Wilson fails this time, it might relegate him to the role of career backup in which he moves from team to team. The Jets are among the most talented teams in the league; the pressure is on the young quarterback, again.
