Jets beat Eagles but face injury concerns with Wilson
PHILADELPHIA » For as bad as the preseason opener went for the Jets in every way but on the scoreboard, it seems things could have been way, way worse.
In a game in which seemingly no one will remember or care about the result — Gang Green actually beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 24-21, at Lincoln Financial Field on Friday night — second-year quarterback Zach Wilson went down with what appeared to be a non-contact right knee injury on his second and final drive of the game.
While initial reports from sports “injury experts” on social media diagnosed a torn ACL, the initial prognosis seems to be less serious, with Jets head coach Robert Saleh, after initially being unwilling to want to provide an update until MRI results came back, eventually sharing some encouraging news.
“Until they dig, they won’t know (if it’s an ACL tear),” he said. “That part is supposed to be intact, but again, let’s wait until the MRI.”
On a seven-yard scramble where Saleh says Wilson, who was not made available to the media after the game, “100 hundred percent” should have ran out of bounds, he instead tried to make a cut back upfield and went down awkwardly without being tackled.
After initially getting up and limping for a bit, he sat back down and was tended to by the team’s medical staff, after which he got back up and was taken to the locker room, ending a night in which he completed three of five passes for 23 yards, but was intercepted on his first drive.
“run his butt out of bounds, he wanted to get more,” he said. “It’s a new sod, the turf isn’t exactly as firm as you want it. They just laid
it down I think on the 29th (of July). It hasn’t been used yet, so there’s a lot of different things there. Hopefully we’re still in good shape. Preseason it is not always going to be great, but I wasn’t concerned, it felt good. It’s just that fresh sod, it’s going to be looser, but for us it was more make sure we have the right cleats more than anything.”
Cornerback Sauce Gardner, who saw his first NFL preseason action after being taken fourth overall in the most recent draft, was disheartened seeing the team’s franchise quarterback, taken
second overall just last year, get hurt.
“It is awful seeing not even just a quarterback, but one of your brothers, in general, go down,” Gardner said. “At the end of the day, he was giving it his all, he wanted to be out there with us. We were all feeling a little down, but we knew we had to do it for him because we don’t know what the injury is.”
The early belief seems to be that, like last year in which he missed four games of his rookie season with an injury to the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), this year’s injury
is similar.
Even with that late-night news, many Jets fans clamored online for the team to acquire Jimmy Garoppolo, who has been on the trade market during the off-season with Trey Lance now having taken the reins under center for the San Francisco 49ers.
The short-term plan, however, would once again seem to be for 37-year-old Joe Flacco, who didn’t dress tonight so that fellow QB’s Mike White and Chris Streveler could get more game reps, to take over as the team’s signalcaller.
“You guys know how I feel about Joe, everyone does, the whole world does,” Saleh said. “Joe’s a phenomenal football player. He’s having a great camp, and he’s got a lot of juice left in the tank.”
Either way, it’ll be a big blow for a Jets team where expectations were as high as they’ve been in recent memory, with a lot of that largely contingent on Wilson taking a big jump up from an upand-down first season.
A best-case recovery scenario for Wilson could have him back in time for the regular season opener on Sept. 11 at home against the Baltimore Ravens, but with a large chunk of his development in such a crucial year now taken away once again, the way Jets fans may handle watching this season unfold might be similar to what Saleh says went through his mind when he watched his prized quarterback go down once again.
“A lot of swear words,” he said.
If Wilson isn’t running out of the tunnel on a healthy right knee less than a month from now at MetLife Stadium, Jets fans will have plenty more of them to add.