There are certain truths to quarterbacking in the NFL, and Zach Wilson is quickly becoming familiar with all of them.
There is a steep learning curve. There are games in which it seems you are making progress at warp speed … almost inevitably followed the next week by a game when it seems like the ball itself is covered in mayonnaise, and that there are 17 defenders in the secondary. Wilson had one of those games Sunday, despite throwing for 355 yards and two TDs.
There were many things that contributed to the Jets’ 13th straight loss to the Patriots, this one 22-17. The defense looked leaky in the second half, after a deflating — and game-changing — roughing the passer penalty on John Franklin-Myers at the end of the first half. The special teams were especially weak. All of that. Still, the Jets may well have survived if not for three things:
Wilson’s first interception, late in the second quarter, which was inexcusable.
Wilson’s second interception, late in third, which was indefensible.
And Wilson’s third interception, early in the fourth, which was intolerable.
“Those three critical mistakes,” Jets coach Robert Saleh said, choosing not to mince words, “were backbreaking.”
Zach Wilson reacts during the Jets’ loss to the Patriots. Charles Wenzelberg / New York PostFor this game, yes. And for the thousands of fans who streamed out of MetLife Stadium before the final gun crackled Sunday, and a few million others watching at home, who have been searching for a messiah at quarterback since a few months before “Abbey Road” was released, and now feel dubious about the present incumbent.
“I think Zach’s going to continue to get better,” Saleh insisted.
“Zach is doing his damnedest,” linebacker C.J. Mosely confirmed. “He’s an NFL player so he knows what winning football looks like and he knows what losing football looks like.”
“It’s not a one-man team, it’s a collective,” tight end C.J. Uzomah averred. “We as a unit left plays out there, not just him.”
The coach was doing his job and the players were being good teammates with those observations, but the harsh truth is the Jets need Wilson to be better — or at least smarter — if the season isn’t destined for a Week 18 look-back at the grand old days of 5-2 and 5-3. Which is why the most important thing Mosely has said may have come Friday as the team gathered after practice, not three days later.
“We can’t get bored,” Mosely said, “with being bored.”
Saleh translated for those on the outside: “Executing techniques, doing small things over and over again.”
Wilson has now said on multiple occasions how frustrating it is to simply throw the ball away when he’s being chased out of the pocket. But that restlessness simply can’t lead to the troika of Hail Marys that wound up in Patriots’ arms Sunday.
“Live to play another down,” Saleh said.
“It takes time,” he continued. “He’s a young man who wants to prove his worth. You prove your worth by executing and doing your job to the best of your ability.”
Neither Saleh nor Mosely could have known this, but they echoed the most essential piece of advice Joe Namath ever received. This was in the sacred season of 1968, at a critical point where the Jets were 3-2. They’d lost at Buffalo (which would finish 1-13) when Namath threw five picks. Two weeks later they lost at home as a 20-point favorite against Denver when Namath threw five more.
Namath wasn’t Broadway Joe after that latter game, more Broadway Woe-Is-Me: “I ain’t saying nothing except I stink, period,” he told reporters before ducking into the trainer’s room at Shea Stadium. “I know it’s your job but I just stink.”
“He did stink,” Gerry Philbin, the anchor of the defense, would tell NFL Network’s “America’s Game” years later.
A brief conservative approach helped Joe Namath turns things around early in his career.APWalt Michaels, then the Jets’ defensive coordinator, was furious, and Philbin wasn’t the only member of that corps livid at Namath’s recklessness. Michaels approached safety Jim Hudson, Namath’s best friend on the team, and asked him to relay a simple message.
“You’ve got to tell him to take the pressure off himself,” Michaels told Hudson.
And Namath listened. The Jets won their next four games and Namath didn’t throw one touchdown pass. If this sounds familiar, it should: These Jets just ended a four-game winning streak and in the final three Wilson didn’t throw a TD, either. He let others take the pressure off himself. He lived to see another down.
Wilson wants to fill Joe Willie’s white shoes some day?
He needs to go back to doing what he did all the way back nine days ago. The blueprint is there for him. Use it.
