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There have been many requests in my Utah radio station inbox to talk about Zach Wilson since April, when it became clear the Jets were drafting the BYU quarterback with the No.2 pick.
I try to do most of them and they are always very nice people. On Tuesday, I was talking to two hosts at The Zone when one of them asked this doozy, “If you had to bet, will Wilson work long term with the Jets?”
I wanted to say, “First off, let me tell you what the stock market will look like in five years, who wins the 2024 presidential election and when Jacob deGrom runs for the Mets again.
It is better if some mysteries in life are unpredictable. But that doesn’t stop everyone from trying to predict the future.
This was the case this week with Wilson. There has been growing angst among a fan base who has scars from the former Savior quarterbacks. They have closets with Chad Pennington, Mark Sanchez, and Sam Darnold shirts hanging in them. They hear reports that Wilson threw interceptions during training at Florham Park. They see missives from Chicago about Justin Fields tearing up the training ground.
Jets fans aren’t panicking… yet, but the tension can be felt.
I’m here to do my best Aaron Rodgers impersonation: RELAX.
Wilson has had 10 training camp practices. That’s it. Predicting your future in the NFL now would be like predicting a newborn’s career choice. He’s an NFL baby. Let it grow.
Patience has become a dirty word in a sports universe that features talk shows and Twitter. Everyone wants to be the first to say the best… or the worst.
Here’s the truth: you probably won’t know if Wilson is a good quarterback for a long time. Between 2015-20, 20 quarterbacks were drafted in the first round. How many of them have been good since the day they started and have had very few hiccups? Patrick Mahomes does the trick. Deshaun Watson has been that on the pitch but now has problems off the pitch.
The rest? It is difficult to make a definitive statement. Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, and Justin Herbert are all very promising players, but are we 100% positive about these guys? I do not think so.
There are also many examples of players who we thought we knew what they were, and then things changed. Players like Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota, Carson Wentz, Jared Goff, and Mitch Trubisky have all had times or seasons that made you think they were The Guy. None of them are yet with the team that wrote them.
Jets fans should know this better than anyone. Sanchez looked like the right fit after two trips to the AFC championship game. Then things fell apart. Darnold’s future is still up for debate.
Let’s also talk about the “statistics” of the practice, because some of this angst stems from that. Being one of the great statisticians of Florham Park myself, let me share a dirty little secret with you: Workout stats are stupid. We don’t know the pieces they play. We don’t know if the receivers took the wrong routes. We don’t know if the coach told the quarterback to be too aggressive. We have no context.
“We don’t compete to win a game or anything in training because there are all the different situations that we anticipate,” Wilson said Wednesday. “They throw us into more difficult situations, they throw us into bases where we have a lot of space where it might be more difficult for defense, so we practice repeating all these different situations. You can’t really write down the stats or the touchdowns or the yards because every play is really what we write down. “
Wilson’s first pass in team drills on Wednesday was one example. Wilson admittedly tried to fit one into Elijah Moore when he wouldn’t have done so in a game. Linebacker CJ Mosley got his hands on it. As he walked back to the group, he told his coaches that next time he would throw him to the test receiver.
“I can’t be afraid of making mistakes, especially in training,” Wilson said. “It’s not a game; this is where I learn what I can do and what I cannot.
Another thing to consider is that Wilson’s stock skyrocketed at BYU due to his ability to make ‘off-schedule’ games or when things fell apart around him. He is able to scramble, roll to his right and throw crazy to his left. This is not training camp. Boot Camp is the ultimate “on time” experience. The pieces are supposed to look like those in the playbook.
So let’s give Wilson time to grow, learn, fail and succeed before declaring that we know how his career will go.
Now if someone could tell me when deGrom will launch again …
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