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The New York Jets need to be 100% certain that they are making the right call in moving on from Zach Wilson, Mike Florio believes.
The New York Jets have long had problems when it comes to the quarterback position. You could make the argument that they haven’t really had any form of good, consistent play there since the days of Chad Pennington in the mid to late 2000s. Since then they have tried multiple options at the position, both through the draft and through free agency but to no avail.
Their latest choice was Zach Wilson who they took with the second pick of the 2021 NFL Draft, ahead of the likes of Justin Fields, Trey Lance and Mac Jones and the decision certainly seems to have backfired once again, as during his first two years in the league, Wilson is looking more and more like a bust.
After two years, and starting 22 of the Jets’ 34 games, he has so far averaged a 55.2% pass completion rate, a quarterback rating of 32.4 (for perspective, an ‘average’ QB rating score will be 50), and has thrown 15 touchdown against 18 interceptions.
New York Jets looking to jettison Zach Wilson?
By all accounts, it seems as though the Jets are ready to move away from Wilson this summer, with the team being pretty open in their courting of free agent Derek Carr and further reports hinting that they have been showing an interest in Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers if he decides he doesn’t want to play there anymore.
But Mike Florio thinks that the Jets need to be super careful before they decide what to do with Wilson as a result (beit cut him, or just sit him for a while behind the veteran), as he is concerned that cutting him could come back to bite them further down the line. He gave his thoughts on Pro Football Talk (starting at 2:51):
I just hope the truth isn’t that they don’t want to cut Zack Wilson, give him the ultimate wake up call for his own good and then he goes somewhere else and he becomes the guy somewhere else that he wasn’t what the Jets, the old Chris Carter thing. He needed a wake up call, the Eagles cut him, he becomes a Hall of Famer somewhere else.
I hope they’re not squatting on Zach Wilson, simply because they don’t want him to figure it out somewhere else. If he’s ever gonna figure out anywhere, it’s going to be here. And we’re just going to sit on him while he maybe figures it out. But it’s going to take that indignity of being dumped by the Jets to really wake him up. But they don’t want to do it because they don’t want to look bad.
They don’t want another Geno Smith situation. I hope that’s not the explanation, because future rookie quarterbacks who may get drafted by the Jets may be paying attention to how they treat Zach Wilson on the way out.
What should the New York Jets do?
It certainly is a risky decision for them to make, if you look at the history of the organisation, you can make the argument that it might not necessarily be Wilson’s fault he’s struggled, he might just be in the wrong environment that doesn’t develop quarterbacks well.
But so long as they can improve on what they’ve got right now, be it with Carr, Rodgers, or someone else, then that’s all they need to concern themselves with, they can’t really control what happens elsewhere so they shouldn’t be worried about what might happen.
All in all though, it probably might be best for him to sit and develop behind the veteran, just to be on the safe side that he doesn’t begin to light it up elsewhere.