Great reasons why Zach can be great
ZACH Wilson was back with Brigham Young last week, still looking younger than a redshirt freshman while bragging to his old college teammates about his new NFL teammates. Wilson told the Cougars he feels a special connection with the Jets. He told them he is a big believer in Robert Saleh, his culture and in their shared vision of someday winning it all.
Kalani Sitake, BYU head coach, could tell his all-world quarterback hadn’t changed in his time away from campus and in his time around the big city.
“He’s the same guy,” Sitake said the other day by phone. “He’s as genuine as they come.”
Hey, if Wilson wasn’t exactly what he appears to be, his Jets teammates wouldn’t have voted in the 22-year-old rookie as one of their captains. The players can always spot the real deal, and the counterfeit goods, from a mile away.
Of course, it was hard to escape the fact that New York’s latest No. 2, Wilson, was announced as a captain on the day that New York’s ultimate No. 2 and ultimate upper-case Captain, Derek Jeter, delivered his Hall of Fame speech in Cooperstown. And it’s OK that Wilson’s honor was made official in a conference room in Florham Park, N.J.; Jeter’s was made official in a conference room in Cincinnati’s Great
American Ball Park, of all places, because George Steinbrenner suddenly wanted to light a fire under his 2003 team.
Nobody cares about the setting of the announcement. People do care about the leadership that follows the announcement.
On that front, Wilson has already provided compelling evidence that he might give his own Hall of Fame speech someday, and make prophets out of the experts comparing him to the likes of Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes.
“He’s a learning machine,” said Sitake, who first noticed Wilson’s arm and athleticism when the quarterback was a fifth-grader at summer camp. “He got better every day since I’ve known him. Whether he has a good or bad game, he gets better and better, and that has never slowed down since the first day he stepped on campus.”
Like everyone else in Zach’s world, Sitake spoke of all the hours the quarterback spends cutting up and studying tape. The kid has already watched more film than Steven Spielberg.
But there are a ton of film-room warriors in the NFL, and the majority don’t own championship rings. Wilson’s stated pursuit of greatness — “We’re going to be a special team. We’re going for the Super Bowl,” he said after the Jets drafted him — also takes shape on the practice field, where Sitake says Wilson pushes boundaries and shows no fear of making mistakes for the sake of better gameday results.
“He doesn’t really care about looking good all the time,” Sitake said. “When we practiced here, he created pressure for himself even though there was none. He’d move to the side to throw [offplatform] a little bit. He knows things are not always going to be perfect in games.
“He wants to accomplish the goal that everybody wants. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to achieve greatness and trying to find a way to win the Super Bowl. That’s his mindset. … When you ask about the expectations everyone has for him there as Jets fans and the New York media, those expectations aren’t close to what he expects of himself.”
Saleh has said Wilson aspires to become “one of the best this league’s ever had.” The rookie will need some serious coaching to get there, and along those lines Matt Cavanaugh was a pretty good hire.
As Baltimore’s offensive coordinator in 2000, Cavanaugh pressed his team hard to draft Michigan’s Tom Brady with the 75th-overall pick in the third round. The Ravens took Louisville’s Chris Redman instead, and Brady fell to New England at pick No. 199 eight months after Wilson was born … on Brady’s birthday (Aug. 3).
Cavanaugh said the Jets rookie has “a real good awareness of what goes on on other side of the ball, which is unusual.” Sound familiar?
Wilson said Wednesday that he cares deeply about making a “personal emotional connection” with teammates off the field, about learning their names and back stories. Bottom-of-the-roster Patriots always talked about how much it meant to them that Brady, the emerging GOAT, remembered their names and treated them as equals.
So in the end, is Wilson another Brady? Another Mahomes? Another Rodgers? Another Jeter?
This Sunday at Carolina, he just needs to be a better quarterback than the man he replaced, Sam Darnold. But there is already gathering evidence that Zach Wilson is the right Jet to reach for the stars, and to someday put this team in the Super Bowl for the first time since man stepped on the moon.