Bridgewater continues solid play, throws TD
LANDOVER, Md. — While most quarterbacks want to avoid contact, Teddy Bridgewater welcomed it Thursday night against the Redskins.
The Jets quarterback has missed most of the past two seasons after a devastating knee injury. Now that he is back on the field, he wants to get hit.
“For me, I just wanted to get hit,” Bridgewater said following a 15-13 Jets loss. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do or say as a quarterback, but for me it’s just continuing to knock down that mental block that ‘Hey, you can do this.’ Some of those plays I could have thrown the ball away or run out of bounds. But I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could take a hit. It was fun.”
Bridgewater took some hits while playing the second half. He finished 10of-15 for 127 yards with one touchdown and one interception. He was also sacked twice.
After one play when Bridgewater decided to take on a defender instead of running out of bounds to protect himself, Jets coach Todd Bowles had a funny message for him.
“I told him I have a neighborhood where he can go get hit quite a bit,” Bowles joked. “He had a smile on his face. It was good to see him from a durability standpoint.”
The biggest positive to take away for Bridgewater was that his left knee looked fine. He is moving well and made some beautiful throws, including the 17-yard touchdown to Charone Peake, the Jets’ only touchdown of the game.
Bridgewater is competing with Josh McCown and Sam Darnold for the starting job right now, but he might end up as trade bait for the Jets if they decide Darnold is the starter and a quarterback-needy team offers the Jets a good draft pick.
Bridgewater is not worried about that right now. He repeatedly said that he had fun Thursday night, even when he was asked about taking a hit to his knee.
“I keep saying it was fun because man, you just don’t know,” Bridgewater said. “The past two years just sitting on the sidelines, not knowing what’s going on. It was one of those things where it happened. I didn’t think about it. I just went to the sideline.”
Bridgewater smiled thinking about his night and said, “I felt like a kid running around in the backyard tonight.”