The spotlight has certainly shined brighter on Zach Wilson, and not necessarily in a good way, after his performance, particularly in the second half, against the New England Patriots. Wilson went 20/41 for 355 yards with two touchdowns and three interceptions in the 22-17 loss to drop the Jets to 5-3 on the year.
When asked if he is concerned at all about the former No. 2 overall pick, general manager Joe Douglas said the team loves Zach and “he’s our quarterback.”
“Look, I think if you guys talk to Zach I’m sure he would tell you there’s a few throws that he’d want back, but look, we’re 4-1 when Zach is our quarterback and Zach brought us in his first game back, he brought us back from double digit deficit in a hostile territory in Pittsburgh, so I’m sure he’d say that he wants a few of those throws back, but we also had nine explosive passes, there’s a lot of good to take away from that game. I know the focus was on the turnovers, but we love Zach, we love the way his approach is every week, love his competes, and he’s our quarterback.”
Douglas believes if the Jets can take care of the football, they are going to be tough to beat. When asked what he would like to see from Wilson for the remainder of the season, Douglas said the following:
“Look, I think when you watch us play this year, it’s tough because when you lose, the quarterback gets the blame, and it’s not always just the quarterback’s fault, but I think when you see how we played the first eight games of the season, we’re going to be tough to beat when we take care of the ball. When we take care of the ball and we don’t have self-inflicting wounds, and we talk about that every week. How games aren’t won in this League, they’re lost, so when you take care of the ball, and with our defense and special teams, we’re going to be a tough team to beat, so just focus on the turnover battle, focus on eliminating the self-inflicting wounds, and that’s not just for Zach, that’s the entire team.”
Douglas is defending Wilson now and it’s certainly still early. A few more performances like the one against New England however…we’ll see.