Tag: zach wilson benched

The New York Jets have an unsolvable Zach Wilson problem

The Jets would like to think that there’s enough in Zach Wilson to save as a franchise quarterback. But time — and opportunity — is running thin.

When a quarterback loses his confidence for any reason, it’s not good.

When a quarterback who has trouble reading defenses and making basic throws loses his confidence, the results can be catastrophic for a franchise.

The latter condition appears to be what the New York Jets have in Zach Wilson. In the Jets’ 19-3 Thursday night loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, head coach Robert Saleh made the call to bench Wilson early in the third quarter after Wilson had completed nine of 18 passes for 92 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 41.9. Backup Chris Streveler came in for Wilson and managed to look competent in comparison, not that it’s a high bar at this point. Nor was it a high bar when the Jets made the call to replace Wilson with backup Mike White in late November after a disastrous loss to the Patriots.

White’s health situation — he suffered rib injuries at the hands of the Buffalo Bills’ merciless pass rush and his own sub-par offensive line in Week 14 — was the only reason Wilson was starting in the first place. Wilson looked a bit less than abjectly awful against the Detroit Lions in a Week 15 loss that was as much about Saleh’s clock management than anything Wilson did wrong, but there is absolutely no margin for error in the Jets’ offense right now, and against the Jaguars, errors were all Wilson seemed to have.

“I just felt like I didn’t have any rhythm out there,” Wilson said after the loss to the Jaguars, the Jets’ fifth defeat in their last six games — they were 6-3 before their bye. “I was just trying to find some confidence out there on the field, find something to get us going, a little spark.

“We had opportunities. I have to be able to connect on those. We’re going to go back and watch it, the coaches will detail it up for us. And I just have to put my head down and try to get better. My message to the team out there was I’ve got to put them in a better position.”

Well, at least he’s taking responsibility for his role in the debacle. And the Jaguars gave Wilson all he could handle. They dropped into coverage more than they blitzed, knowing that they could beat Gang Green’s injury-depleted offensive line. They threw different coverages at Wilson from play to play, they disguised their coverage intentions extremely well, and they plastered Wilson’s receivers across the middle.

More credible quarterbacks may have struggled, never mind a guy in his second NFL season who’s still struggling with basic reads.

Zach Wilson’s inability to read coverages could be his final, fatal flaw

As for Saleh, he knows he’s got a quarterback with a crisis of confidence.

“We got time, but confidence is a big deal. It’s confidence for coaching, confidence for players, confidence in your own individual self,” Saleh said Friday morning. “I do know that he works his tail off and I’m with you. It’s a tough thing to try to overcome, but it doesn’t take much to flip confidence. He just needs to get on a little run, just a couple things happen, go his way and felt like that was happening in the first half of the Detroit game where he had a really nice first half. There was a lot of confidence, finished the half strong with a two-minute drive with a goal ball and a back shoulder or a scout on the two-man.

“We’ve got to help him. We’re not going to quit on him. We’ve got to do our best and that’s for every player in our locker room. As long as they’re wearing a Jets logo, we’re going to pour our hearts and souls into them and do everything we can to help them.”

It’s a nice thought, but as the Jets are now 7-8 and the 10th seed in the AFC, with no postseason guarantees, you wouldn’t blame Saleh for looking as intently as possible at Mike White’s timeline.

There doesn’t seem to be any clarity there, either.

“I don’t have any of those details,” Saleh said Friday. “We’ve got time. We got today, the weekend, Monday and Tuesday. So, we’re just going to let that play out. I don’t know any times or anything like that.”

The Jets do have a bit of time — they don’t play again until they travel to Seattle to face the Seahawks on January 1. Perhaps a new year will shine a brighter spotlight on a quarterback situation that has thrown this team into the tank.

Or, and especially if the need is to rely on Wilson again, it may be more of the same old, same old. Questions regarding Wilson’s future with the team — those questions that may have already been answered internally — will have to wait until the offseason. Which could start a lot earlier than anybody in the organization would have hoped.

Zach Wilson’s inability to read coverages could be his final, fatal flaw

New York Jets quarterback Zach Wilson seems to have issues with everything on the field. Disguised coverages may be his biggest problem.

It seems as if everyone’s talking about New York Jets quarterback Zach Wilson, his awful performance against the New England Patriots on Sunday, and his refusal to take any sort of responsibility for his part in the loss.

When Wilson was asked whether he let the Jets’ defense down by completing nine of 22 passes for 77 yards, no touchdowns, and two dropped interceptions (yes, it could have been even worse), and he simply said, “No,” that was the End of All Things in Jetsland. As a quarterback, you can get away with being obnoxious if you’re great. And you can get away with being terrible if you’re s standup guy — there are scads of examples of both. But if you can’t hit water falling out of a boat, AND you’re ducking accountability like it’s an overload blitz? Your tenure in the NFL will be very short, indeed.

Zach Wilson said he didn’t let the Jets’ defense down. Here’s why he’s wrong.

The Patriots defense, which has tortured Wilson this season in two Jets losses, didn’t seem to care about his performance at the podium, or any other behavioral aberrations. In New England’s 10-3 win, they were more grateful that Wilson did what he’s done all season — go into full head-explode mode when a defense shows him a different coverage look than he expects.

“We definitely know those pre-snap disguises are huge,” safety Kyle Dugger said. “We know that he’s going to take what he sees and have an idea what he’s going to do already in his head. So, we definitely made sure that we were disguising heavy so that post-snap, he would have to think a little more, take a little longer and our D-line can do what they do. So, definitely pre-snap disguise was big for us.”

It was in this game, and it has been all season, Per Pro Football Focus’ tracking, Wilson has seen some sort of safety disguise on 151 of his dropbacks this season. And under those circumstances, he’s completed 21 of 35 passes for 200 yards, one completion of 20 or more air yards, no touchdowns, and two interceptions. He’s run 11 times, which is when he’s most confused by coverage switches, and he’s just trying to get through the play. He’s also taken six sacks, which tells you the same thing in a different way, and confirms Dugger’s scouting report.

Here’s the thing — when a divisional opponent you face at least two times a season, and might face again in the postseason, comes right out and says how they can make you vulnerable — and then they go right ahead and do it — that is an embarrassment for you as a player. Or, at least, it should be an embarrassment.

And in an NFL where quarterbacks are seeing more disguised coverages than ever before, Wilson’s issues with them this far into his career serve as yet another red flag. Not exactly optimal, but nothing about the Jets’ quarterback situation is these days.

Zach Wilson said he didn’t let the Jets’ defense down. Here’s why he’s wrong.

New York Jets quarterback Zach Wilson is the rogue factor that could keep him team out of the playoffs. Whether he thinks so or not.

In the 2021 season, the New York Jets had, by Football Outsiders’ DVOA metrics, the NFL’s worst defense. Through an outstanding draft and series of free agent moves, not to mention a dynamic coaching staff led by head coach Robert Saleh, that same Jets franchise came into Sunday’s game against the New England Patriots ranked sixth in Defensive DVOA this year.

That ranking will probably go up after what happened in the Patriots game. The Jets’ defense limited New England to three offensive points. The Patriots had five three-and-out drives, and quarterback Mac Jones was sacked six times, with eight quarterback hits.

But with all that, the Jets lost the game, 10-3. Why? Because the offense, led by quarterback Zach Wilson, was historically awful. The Jets punted 10 times in this game, and Wilson had just nine completions on 22 attempts for 77 yards. Anytime you punt more times than your quarterback has completions, that is a very bad sign. On the tenth punt, with five seconds left in the game, rookie cornerback Marcus Jones returned it 84 yards for the game’s only touchdown.

After the game, Wilson was asked if he had let his defense down.

The defense may see things differently, though they might not come right out and say it.

“It was really a do-our-job type of mentality,” linebacker Quincy Williams said after the game. “For the defense, it was the coverage and the rush working together. We came out with a lot of sacks, we were playing violent and everybody was rushing to the ball.”

Saleh wanted to make sure everybody knew where the problems weren’t.

“I thought the defense was outstanding,” he said. “I thought our D-line got after it. We had some missed tackles in the first half, but the sequence where we had the penalty, then the sack to make it a hard field goal at the end of the half, I thought that was really, really good by the defense. But then we just couldn’t capitalize on their good play.”

Wilson’s issues were not limited to this game. Not by a long shot. Through the first 10 weeks of the 2022 season, per Pro Football Focus, only Pittsburgh Steelers rookie Kenny Pickett had a lower passer rating (68.8) than Wilson’s 75.5. Wilson’s passer rating under pressure coming into Sunday’s game was 6.6 — by far the NFL’s worst, as Mac Jones ranked second at 27.2. When pressured this season, Wilson had completed 11 of 52 passes for 158 yards, one touchdown, and five interceptions. Wilson’s completion rate under pressure of 21.2% under pressure is also by far the NFL’s worst — Steelers backup Mitch Trubisky ranks second at 34.4. Wilson’s yards per attempt of 3.0 under pressure? Also the NFL’s worst by far; Trubisky ranks second at 3.6.

Want more? Wilson is one of the NFL’s worst deep passers. Coming into this game, he had completed four of 16 passes of 20 or more air yards for 195 yards, no touchdowns, and three interceptions. Only Pickett (19.9) and Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals (24.9) had a worse passer rating on deep balls than Wilson’s 38.3.

There is nothing that Wilson does at even a league-average level, and that’s quite an indictment for a quarterback selected second overall in the 2021 draft, and who has started 20 career games.

“We’re all hurting,” linebacker and defensive captain C.J. Mosley said after the Patriots game. “We felt like we played a hell of a game. It’s tough to take a loss like that. But we’ve got seven games to go, there’s still a lot of football left and a lot of ways to get better as a team. We’ve just got to keep moving forward.”

When it came to the offense, Saleh didn’t mince any words.

Saleh hasn’t fully committed to pulling Wilson in favor of somebody else; that may have more to do with who’s defined as “anybody else” on the current roster (Hello, Joe Flacco and Mike White) than any true belief in Wilson’s ultimate potential.

That said, the oxygen is running thin. With this loss, the Jets are at the bottom of the AFC West at 6-4, looking up at the 6-4 Patriots, the 7-3 Buffalo Bills, and the 7-3 Miami Dolphins. No matter how great that defense is, it simply can’t transcend an offense that can’t function.

And right now, the Jets’ second-year quarterback is the problem that could keep this team out of the playoffs. Whether he thinks so or not.