Getting their Manning?
In Wilson, Jets better hope they found their Eli
We always talk about the Jets and their endless quest to find the new Namath, who won the Jets their only Super Bowl over a halfcentury ago. But what they are really looking for is the new Eli. That is what both they and the Giants aspire to right now, trying to find the guy who can do for them what Eli did for his Giants. In the time of Brady, Eli won twice. His brother Peyton did that, too, but he needed two teams, and was little
than a sideman with the Broncos by the time he won his second one.
The Giants got Eli Manning on another Draft Day, the one on which general manager Ernie Accorsi made one of the greatest trades in the history of New York sports. Then his team beat Brady’s in two Super Bowls, and he became the best quarterback in New York Giants history.
The Giants want Daniel Jones to be that kind of Giants legend someday. And that is exactly what the Jets now hope for from Zach Wilson, whom they now draft higher than any quarterback since Namore math.
The Jets take Wilson, who looks like a singer in boy band, No. 2. And hope he is the one.
This isn’t about all the times when they were wrong. This isn’t about taking Ken O’Brien instead of Dan Marino, and moving on up to take Mark Sanchez with the fifth pick in the draft. This isn’t about taking Sam Darnold No. 3 what feels like about twenty minutes ago. Sanchez, who is in television now, is still just 34 years old, by the
way, and you know what that means? It means he is three years younger than Aaron Rodgers.
Mark Sanchez is nearly a full 10 years younger than Touchdown Tom Brady.
He wasn’t the one and Darnold, through very little fault of his own, wasn’t. Now the Jets try it again with Zach Wilson of BYU, who made the representatives of the current Jets front-office regime fall head over heels in love with him the way Mike Tannenbaum and Rex Ryan once fell head over heels in love with Sanchez. The kid’s pro day now has to be considered the most meaningful in Jets history.
“I can’t wait to represent the city,” that was one of the things Wilson said after the Jets had made it official on Thursday night.
It means he wants to represent the part of the city and the part of football New York that reps the Jets. And if he is as good as the Jets think he is, he will be right where he belongs. If he comes here and is great, if he comes here and get them even one Lombardi Trophy and not the two that Eli won for the Giants, it will make him a Jets immortal. It will make him legendary. If he is the one to get the Jets back to the Super Bowl and win it, Jets fans will feel like Cubs fans did in baseball five years ago when the Cubs finally ending a lot longer wait for a championship on the north side of Chicago.
Jets fans who didn’t want Wilson want to be wrong, as they hope Joe Douglas, their general manager, is right. Douglas hopes he is right with far more intensity because if he is wrong about
Wilson, if Wilson turns out to be the kind of bust Darnold was (even if it really wasn’t all his fault, because it sure wasn’t), then Joe Douglas will be out of a job, and may never again get a GM job in the NFL. The same thing will happen to Dave Gettleman if Daniel Jones doesn’t turn out to have the right stuff for the Giants.
Douglas doesn’t know. Gettleman doesn’t know. George Young is the man who drafted Phil Simms. He is also the man who drafted Dave Brown. There is no more inexact science in all of professional sports than the science — or lack thereof — that goes into the drafting of hotshot college quarterbacks. Ryan Leaf was once drafted No. 2, right after Peyton Manning. JaMarcus Russell went No. 1. Akili Smith once went No. 3. Jared Goff and Carson Wentz went 1 and 2 once and now are playing for different teams than the ones who drafted them.
Last year the Dolphins passed on Justin Herbert, who is going to be one of the best quarterbacks on the planet for the Chargers, and took Tua Tagovailoa right before Herbert. Tua may turn out to be the real deal in Miami. They don’t know for sure about that the way no Giants fan being honest is sure about Daniel Jones, two years into this at MetLife Stadium for Jones.
Even people in outer space know that Brady, the heavyweight champion of quarterbacks for all time, went in the sixth round, which means the whole world passed on him until the Patriots finally took him.
Why did Justin Fields go from being the hot kid to being the fourth quarterback taken on Thursday night, after Trevor Lawrence
and Wilson and Trey Lance? Who knows? The 49ers were going to take Mac Jones with the third pick, or so we were told, and then he ended falling to the Patriots. Lawrence was going to be the No. 1 pick from the time he started winning games for Clemson as a freshman. The pick by the Jaguars was a no-brainer. But now the Jags are like everybody else:
They need to be right and for Lawrence, for all of his obvious talent, not to be a different kind of “Jag,” which means what the great Bill Parcells used to call “Just Another Guy.”
Once again, it was all about quarterbacks on Thursday night, at the 2021 draft. But once the games start? It is never just about the quarterbacks. You know who was the biggest name on Thursday night in so many ways? Aaron Rodgers was. He has become a legend in Green Bay, a legendary capital of pro football. He has played the position as well as anybody has ever played it, and that includes Brady. And he was a story on Thursday night because he has done everything except hire a skywriter to tell us he might want to play somewhere else next season.
He turned out to be an immortal in Green Bay, after replacing Brett Favre. And you know how many Super Bowls each of them won? One apiece.
There is only one way to root with Zach Wilson, and that is for the Jets to finally be a right about a quarterback, for him to come here and be a star, and become a Jets immortal. None of the other guys who came before him matter. He matters. Forget about Namath. Jets fans are just looking for their own Eli. For the guy taken 2 to be the one.