It’s been a rocky rookie year for Jets quarterback Zach Wilson and Sunday’s game against the Saints featured more rough moments for the second overall pick of the 2021 draft.
Wilson avoided turnovers, but went 19-of-42 for 202 yards in a 30-9 loss that leaves the Jets with a 3-10 record on the season. Some of those incompletions were drops by Jets receivers and others were the result of bad passes by a rookie who hasn’t convinced many people that he’s got the right makeup to thrive in the NFL. Some of those bad passes came on short patterns that are often taken for granted by NFL offenses, but head coach Robert Saleh said Wilson’s struggles are not causing any second-guesses for the Jets staff.
Saleh said that he’s “not concerned about the long-term view of whether or not he can complete a short ball” and Wilson chalked the bad day up to necessary growing pains for a young quarterback.
“I’m a rookie, I just got here. I never once told myself this was going to be easy when I got here,” Wilson said, via the team’s website. “I never looked at it as being down on myself, like this is how my career is going. Everything I went through today was a learning process for the future. And I’m banking every single rep I go through. I’m comparing one that I missed to one that I hit . . . it’s correcting those mistakes, just getting more and more looks. And I just feel like I need to understand that, yeah, it hurts sometimes, but it’s all part of the process to improve.”
Jets history says that the improvement part of the process is anything but guaranteed, which would make some tangible signs of progress a nice way to end another lost season for the AFC East club.