ORCHARD PARK — With all due respect to Aaron Rodgers, your miracle comeback attempt is gallant and inspiring, but think long and hard about this:
Wait ’Til Next Year.
Because the team you desperately want to return to now has “Wait ‘Til Next Year” written all over it.
Robert Saleh, the sorry 32-6 loser, finally benched Zach Wilson and summoned Tim Boyle down 29-6 with 2:17 left in the third quarter.
Wilson (7-for-15, 81 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT) left without completing a single pass to a wide receiver. Guilty as charged!
“We didn’t complete much passes to anybody,” he said.
Will Boyle (7-for-14, 33 yards, 1 INT) get the nod on Black Friday against the Dolphins?
“We’re gonna have to look at the tape, and we’ll make a decision,” Saleh said.
He might want to burn it instead.
Boyle quickly got Garrett Wilson on the board with a 4-yarder on his second attempt on third-and-5. He completed his third attempt to a pressing Wilson, who apparently was so shocked at receiving another ball that he had it stripped from him.
Saleh, understandably, was looking for a spark when he made the move to Boyle and he has nothing to lose keeping Zach Wilson on the bench, other than his team if he instead sticks with him.
“My heart goes out to him, obviously not a comfortable situation, but he’s been wonderful,” Boyle said.
Just not behind center.
He has been the quarterback of a JV offense in a league where only the varsity prevails.
“We need to take accountability and that starts with me and I’m not getting it done,” Zach Wilson said.
It isn’t only Zach Wilson but an awful lot of it is Zach Wilson.
“It essentially comes down to you gotta score points,” Wilson said. “It felt like one of those games we just couldn’t do anything. It felt like one of those games everything felt really hard.”
Wilson’s second-quarter interception made it 40 drives without a TD before the drought ended with a 9-yard TD pass to Breece Hall. Even a squirrel …
Saleh is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
“That’s Coach Saleh’s job,” Garrett Wilson said in a very soft voice.
Joe Douglas, of course, made this quarterback bed.
You watch Zach Wilson play quarterback behind a debilitated offensive line and Nathaniel Hackett attempt to find a solution and fix this thing and you have no other conclusion to reach:
Dead Team Walking.
Dead Offense Crawling.
The Jets are pretenders.
Crappy Thanksgiving.
From the team that has carved up its season and yours.
You can tell yourself there is still a chance for them to end the 12-year playoff drought, and in the forgiving AFC, there remains a sliver of hope. But only a sliver.
You are what your record says you are, and the Jets are 4-6 and spiraling in the wrong direction at the worst possible time.
Black Monday before Black Friday.
Wilson was already down 9-0 when he telegraphed a pass near the left sideline for Garrett Wilson (2-9 on eight targets) and was intercepted by Rasul Douglas at the Jets’ 23. Soon it was 16-0.
“We’re getting pressured, I gotta get open faster,” Garrett Wilson said. “When the ball does come my way I gotta catch it. Period.”
The Jets’ defense can bend but not break and it makes no difference once it bends even a little bit.
It broke for good in the second half, never mind scoring a TD itself.
Hackett was situated in the booth for the first time this season.
Would it have helped if Hackett played quarterback and Wilson was up in the booth, maybe?
You can beat Zach Wilson kicking FGs.
They can’t run and Wilson cannot hide.
The second-half began with an unnecessary roughness against Sauce Gardner on Stefon Diggs and Josh Allen’s 28-yard TD on fourth-and-1 to Ty Johnson to make it Bills 22, Jets 6. An 81-yard TD pass to Khalil Shakir through a matador Jets’ defense followed.
Zach Wilson may or may not give the Jets the best chance to win considering the alternatives. He does have enough mobility to escape the pocket that constantly collapses around him (five sacks).
Except he gave them no chance to win again on Sunday.
Boyle at the very least showed a decisiveness getting the ball out of his hand. Give him first-team reps and see what happens. What do the Jets have to lose? Wilson had thrown two TDs in his last six games. If benching him means there is no path for him to return as starter barring injury — and with this battered makeshift offensive line it is a possibility — so be it.
“That game was ugly, it’s not the standard it’s not the expectation,” he said.
Unfortunately for the Jets, it has been the standard.
Wait Til Next Year, Aaron. Think about it.
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