He was running backwards for a reason. Still got sacked 8 times... the O-line should ashamed of themselves... as should you.
The haters are going to hate. They cannot find any redeeming qualities in Zach and focus only on the negative. It happens with every QB we have ever had on this team. From Kekky holds the ball is not Marino, Pennington with his noodle arm, Sanchez is inaccurate. ( remember a post where someone showed stills of a good game by Sanchez and complained the completions weren't good enough) You can't win there will always be somebody that hates the Jets QB. They want Josh Burrow out of the gate but Josh is 25 years old, Herbert was a four-year starter going to a good team. Guess what Herbert is in the same place Zach is, home watching the playoffs and he has a stacked offense. Zach plays like a rookie next year I will be the first one getting down on him. This was expected this year as he was supposed to grow with a young team. His starting Tacke 2nd year, starting guard rookie, Starting rb-Rookie, Starting WR- Rookie. Carter and Moore played better as the season progressed as did AVT and Zach. Give the kid a chance, he is not being asked to look at first read and run but he is being asked to go through his progression, this takes longer to learn in the NFL and adjust to the speed. You do not turn the ball over at the QB position you can win games. I hope he becomes more than that. Like I said we will see how he does next season. We should see dramatic growth with some young QB mistakes. The expectations should not be Aaron Rodgers.
The thing is, dramatic growth in a QB's second year after having the type of rookie year Zach had is extremely rare. I'm not saying it won't happen but it'll be pretty surprising if it does. If we want to go into the weeds for reasons to be optimistic there are a couple though. For one, our OL was a trainwreck for the first few weeks this season which played a significant role in Wilson playing poorly. Wilson also faced the toughest schedule of pass defenses of any QB in the league this year. To be honest though most rookie QB's deal with bad OL play so I'm not sure how valid of an excuse that is. Highly drafted rookie QB's almost always go to very bad teams.
I think there is a reason to be optimistic. Like you said, he played toughest defenses. OL sucked in the beginning and last game of the season when everyone was injured. Additionally, we did not have a single 500 receiver on the team this year. Not a 1000 yard receiver, I mean a 500 one - in a 17 game season. It's always rotational cast, revolving door. Guys no one ever heard of. WR core, if you factor the injuries, is easily by far the worst in NFL. Jets had the most amount of CAP of injured players, and OL and WR positions were greatly impacted by that. On top of that TE position was bad. Also we had second most drops in NFL. All of this adds up in a massive way when it comes to rookie QB development. And with all that Zach was able to improve. I am not sure how to be honest, as he was dealt a bad hand, but he did it. From the most TO prone in NFL first 6 games, to the second best in the last 6 games. INTs per attempt were drastically down. This is nothing like Josh Rosen, who got worse as the season went on. You can say Sam was better, but Sam wasn't a bad prospect. I am still not sure if Jets ruined him by not allowing him supporting cast to fix his issues. Wilson already fixed biggest issue he had, the one that Sam never fixed, and this is a great cause for optimism. And that's why JD needs to improve this offense next year to give Zach a chance that perhaps Sam got too late in Carolina.
I think the fact that his own teammates voted him a team captain as rookie speaks volumes. Teammates comment on his social media posts, retweet his videos, etc. Guys like Elijah Moore have already talked about talking to and working with Zach through the off-season. The narrative that he isn’t a leader and isn’t well liked is nonsense. We’d be hearing actual reports from sources in the building saying he isn’t well liked, especially after having a rough rookie season. Instead of sources in the building, there’s loudmouth Bart Scott making shit up because he has a vendetta against Zach since Bart wanted to keep Sam.
Just get better every single week, people gotta relax. He’s got a lot to work on and has to be better next year. There’s plenty of things to rag on him for, why make up nonsense about him being disliked in the locker room and being a selfish player.
Overall stats of 2334 9/11 TD/INT are obviously very underwhelming. Pretty much unacceptable honestly in today's NFL. Stats are not even close to whole story in football though. The eye test suggests that he has the ability to be better than those numbers in the future and potentially a hell of a lot better if we get lucky. We're married to him now though so we just have to hope he studies up and improves over the offseason. I also hope and expect (just has I have for the last 3 Darnold years with basically no luck) that the Jets go as far out of their way as possible to get him some serious and effective support and help. No excuses this time. Armed with 4 top 40 draft picks or whatever it is plus free agency maybe. My biggest quarrel with Zach Wilson is now, and always has been from a resource management perspective. I always felt that instead of chasing magic fantasy quarterback rainbows the Jets would have been better off trading the #1 (or as it turned out #2) overall pick last year and let somebody else chase the rainbows. What this team needs, and has needed for years now are some good solid players. As I posted a year ago, passing up either a hall of fame level player like Sewell or Kyle Pitts, or a package of picks like the 49'ers traded for a guy that maybe had a chance to be a little bit better than Darnold seemed like a good bet to come up empty. And the evidence so far suggests that it absolutely came up empty. Now armed with 20/20 hindsight Darnold and/or Mike White would have provided as good or better QB play this season before you even factor in the extra help Pitts or Sewell would have provided. That is what is known as pissing away precious resources. And the Jets are most certainly not in a position do do that. My personal opinion now as a Jet fan? I think that right now the plan should be to double down. Maybe drafting Wilson was somewhere on the spectrum between inefficient and an outright screw up but thats water under the bridge. He's obviously got some skills and ability so your job as an organization is to totally support him, get him as much help as reasonably possible and give him every possible chance to develop into a middle of the road NFL QB. If he can just do that, just develop into a Cousins/Tannehill/Dalton/Wentz type level guy then if the Jets can just start drafting well consistently they will be on the path back to respectability and then we can go from there. This winning 2 or 4 games a year is the pits.... and I don't mean Kyle Pitts
Hey now... you've made a compelling case... and I hope it's true. btw... I'm not a Zach hater... search my posts for proof.
Doesn’t really matter if you’re a Zach hater or not. You did make a good point about the linemen. It made me think about the time Dalton got crushed last season and all the Cowboys linemen just stood there; I don’t think Dalton was disliked in that locker room at all, defending him just wasn’t something they did. I’m just of the belief that if Zach was actually a terrible leader and a selfish jerkoff, we would’ve heard about it by now.
Yeah... I watched McDermott give up an awful sack where Zach got slammed down... he just stood there... made a childish arm shrug like he was angry at himself and then walked away from Zach still on the turf. I hope McDermott is gone next year... he sucks.
Who are the credible reporters that have sources in the building that said this? Bart Scott? Leger Douzable? C’mon. They said Zach was selfish because he made a mistake reading a formation. Oh wow, really selfish.
2 things I'll say. I think when it comes to locker room grievances respected former players like Bart Scott & Leger Douzable are probably more likely to get that intel as they still have friends in the building. What do you think - Is a player more likely to go running to the 60 year old nerd in Cimini or their guy Bart Scott? And the 2nd thing is that I believe no matter who reported it you would say he is not credible after the fact so your question at its core is impossible to answer
Lets look at the eye test and improvement. The Tampa game gets me excited and his lack of INT. This offense has a history sucking in year 1 and great in year2. It is a lot different than a traditional offense. Looking at Zach's numbers in a vacuum does not tell the entire story.
Bart Scott has had a vendetta against Zach Wilson from the moment he was drafted #2 overall. He wanted the Jets to trade down and keep Sam Darnold. He wants to be right and wants Zach to fail. He’s not a credible source when it comes to negative Zach news, especially because he is one of the only two people saying it. If it was truly an issue, there would be more reports about it from our beat, and there isn’t. In fact, after Bart Scott went on an asinine rant about Zach being selfish, the Jets beat came out and went after Bart Scott for being a prick.
I'm not a Zack hater but I gave him a C- due to the rookie performance. If he was a veteran free agent and performed the same, I would have given him an F. I do not like the team doing the youth movement. I am a win now type of Jet Fan.
