FEAR & NOW
• DARNOLD DOMINATING IS JETS FANS’ ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO • GANG GREEN STAND BY SAM’S SUCCESSOR AFTER 4-PICK FLOP
The Jets are putting up a united front, protecting their future like an offensive line full of All-Pros.
“I think he’s going to bounce back,” linebacker C.J. Mosley said Monday before correcting himself. “No, I know he will bounce back.”
Even when Zach Wilson’s interceptions started piling up, “He’s the same guy,” said tackle George Fant. “He doesn’t really get flustered too bad.”
The Jets say that a day after what probably was the worst football game of his life, Wilson is the same, steady future of their franchise, and that he will be better for a four-pick disaster in Sunday’s 25-6 loss to the Patriots.
Robert Saleh said Wilson is in “a good place,” a place that is no longer MetLife Stadium, where he heard boos in his home introduction as the Jets’ offense never got going.
There are not big changes on the horizon and no talks of simplifying the playbook, but rather allowing the No. 2 pick to learn from his mistakes of over-aggressiveness in his second NFL game.
Saleh said offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur did “a really nice job” with play-calling during a game in which Wilson was picked off on his first two attempts. There were few straight drop-backs and a lot of first-half rushing attempts, with the Jets finishing with 152 yards on the ground.
Yet drives kept finishing with a poor decision from the quarterback that wound up in a Patriots defender’s hands.
If the playbook won’t change, the Jets believe the results will because Wilson will make fewer plays like his second interception of the first half, when he ignored Elijah Moore, unguarded in front of him during a roll-out to his right, and forced a longer throw downfield, which went off Corey Davis and into the arms of New England safety Adrian Phillips.
After watching tape of the game, Saleh confirmed that Wilson just needs to make the easy play sometimes.
“It’s not about being electric and making the plays, and you trust that if you stay ahead of the chains and you stay within yourself and you play the game of football and keep the team in an advantageous situation, other teams will panic, other teams will force the issue,” Saleh said as preparation began for Week 3 in Denver. “And that’s where you can take advantage of your shots and your explosive plays.”
The explosive plays against Bill Belichick were backfires. But if there is a bright spot from a day of clouds, the issues were more with decision-making — which should be fixable — than his physical game — which might not have been fixable.
The worst-looking throw — Wilson’s third-quarter pass and fourth interception that Devin McCourty caught near the sideline in a sea of Patriots players without a clear Jets target — was the result of a route-running mistake, Saleh said.
Not that the ill-advised bomb down the sideline was smart.
“That’s one where you just take your medicine,” Saleh said of the ostensible punt, which came on a second-and-28. “Get as many yards as you can, see if you get yourself to a third-andmanageable at best, but don’t make a bad situation worse.”
Wilson is in a bad situation and now will see a Broncos defense that just sliced up Trevor Lawrence, the only player selected in front of Wilson in the draft. The former Clemson star went 14-for-33 for 118 yards and a pair of interceptions while facing plenty of pressure from a defensive line that includes Von Miller.
For reasons physical and mental, though, the Jets believe Wilson has one direction to go.
“Nobody said it was going to click the first game, the second game,” said Mosley, a defensive leader. “But when it does click, he’s going to show why he was picked second.”
Saleh called Wilson “resilient.” Among the many tests that will be thrown at the 22year-old this year, how well he bounces back will be next.
“We’ve talked about this from the beginning,” Saleh said. “I’ve said here that there’s going to be some hair-pulling moments. There’s going to be some exciting moments. There’s going to be unbelievable moments.”
The most recent — a young Jets quarterback getting eaten alive by a Patriots defense — was a believable one.