Jets QB Zach Wilson has right mindset heading into home debut Sunday
By Alex Coffey
Special to FOX Sports
In Zach Wilson’s first career NFL half against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, he went 0-for-4 on third downs. He went 0-for-4 vs. the blitz. He went 0-for-7 under duress, 0-for-4 on play-action and 0-for-3 on deep passes.
Add it all up and Wilson went 6-for-16 with 84 passing yards and one interception in his first 30 minutes of pro football. His 29.2 passer rating was puny, and even punier when listed next to Sam Darnold’s 125.9.
In his highly anticipated debut for the New York Jets, the rookie quarterback made a few rookie mistakes – he held onto the ball too long and rushed some plays – but he didn’t receive much help either. The offensive line struggled to protect Wilson, who was scrambling to evade defenders left and right. Brian Burns, the Panthers’ defensive end, said the strategy was to give Wilson hell, which, with three first-half sacks, the Panthers did.
Also, a few perfectly placed passes were dropped. On third-and-10 with 1:34 left in the first quarter, Wilson threw what could have been his best pass of the day, a 50-plus-yard missile aimed right for Elijah Moore’s hands, but one that slipped through the wide receiver’s fingers. If Moore, who was struggling to fend off Panthers' safety Jeremy Chinn, had caught it, it could have changed the momentum of the game.
But Moore didn’t catch it, and Wilson’s abysmal first-half numbers remained intact.
However, that first half only set up the No. 2 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft to show off the quality that best defines him. Wilson is so used to proving people wrong that at this point, it is a comfortable place for him to be.
Fesi Sitake, BYU’s passing game coordinator, said that in high school, Wilson had "zero physical presence." Despite his athleticism and obvious arm strength, Wilson was about 6-foot-2, 170 pounds his junior year. As a result, he was overlooked by many programs that deemed him too small.
In fact, he was nearly overlooked by BYU, which committed to him late, after he’d already committed to Boise State.
Not heavily recruited by BYU, Zach Wilson ended up breaking records for Kalani Sitake's Cougars. (Photo by Loren Orr/Getty Images)
Yet in 2018, Wilson became the youngest freshman quarterback to ever start for BYU when he took the job from senior Tanner Magnum ahead of the team’s seventh game. The true freshman completed 120 of 182 passes for 1,578 yards and 12 touchdowns in his nine total games played.
It seemed like the job would be squarely his from then on. But he ran into injury problems his sophomore year – first, a shoulder surgery, and then a thumb fracture – and his backups played well in his absence.
Last year as a junior, Wilson narrowly won the job again, but some fans and media weren’t too happy about it. They voiced concerns about his health, about his decision-making, and even about his character.
Undeterred, Wilson went on to break a BYU record held by Cougars legend Steve Young, completing 73.5% of his passes. He threw for 33 touchdowns, against just three interceptions, and scored another 10 TDs rushing. He finished eighth in Heisman Trophy voting, BYU's first top-10 candidate since Ty Detmer in 1991.
And Wilson did it all while wearing a wristband that read "Prove Them Wrong."
"There were people who didn’t want him to be a starter," said Sitake. "And then he had this year that a lot of people who knew him knew he was capable of.
"Those who doubted him didn’t realize that that year didn’t happen because he was always the guy. That happened because he was fighting through adversity. We saw the results of that.
"And I think he knows that’s the mentality you have to have. He knows his journey. He knows that’s why he is where he is."
Wilson began to prove them wrong toward the end of the third quarter in his first start Sunday. He deftly avoided Carolina’s defense to fire off a 22-yard pass to Corey Davis for his first NFL touchdown, making it a one-possession game.
Then on a fourth-and-8, he gunned a 25-yard pass to Braxton Berrios, followed by a 40-yard pass to Denzel Mims to put the Jets at the 10-yard-line with 2:51 left in the fourth.
Suddenly, on the eighth play of the drive, his momentum stalled. Defensive linemen Derrick Brown and Yetur Gross-Matos demolished Wilson at the 25-yard line for the Panthers’ sixth sack of the game.
Despite being pressured often in his first NFL start at Carolina, Wilson showed a lot of promise in the second half. (Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
Carolina coach Matt Rhule later said that he wasn’t sure the rookie quarterback would get back up. Wilson himself said he felt like he got hit by a truck (a 585-pound truck, if we’re being precise).
But then Wilson did what he so often does. He stood up, dusted himself off, took a deep breath, and with just over two minutes remaining, threw a crossing route to Davis that put New York at the eight-yard line. He then zipped a ball to Davis for his second touchdown pass of the game.
Even though the Panthers’ lead had been whittled to just five points and a New York win was suddenly in reach, the final push from the Jets was not enough – but Wilson had made his point.
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This scene – a fourth-quarter comeback that came down to the last few plays – was one his former BYU coaches had seen a number of times. The moments were memorable not because Wilson came up short, but because of how he responded to them.
In a 2018 game against Boise State, the freshman quarterback found himself at the 6-yard line with six seconds remaining. He tried to run it in up the middle but was stopped at the two. Time ran out and BYU lost.
As Boise State fans stormed the field, Sitake saw Wilson running off the sideline with his head down. He grabbed the QB's face mask, pulled it up and looked him in the eyes.
"I told him, ‘Hey man, you are going to be a great player here,’" he said. "‘Learn from this.’ I don’t know if he processed it, but the look in his eyes, I’ll never forget. It was almost like, ‘This sucks. I hurt more than anyone right now, but I’m on a mission. I’m going to get better.’"
Two years later, BYU traveled to Coastal Carolina for its penultimate regular-season game of 2020. It was another heartbreaker: a late-game rally by Wilson that ended just short of a win, this time at the 1-yard line. The Cougars fell 22-17 in their only loss of the season.
Quarterbacks coach Aaron Roderick said the red-eye flight back to Utah was as "silent as a morgue." At around 3 a.m., he woke up and went to the front of the cabin to use the bathroom. The entire plane was asleep — with the exception of Wilson, who was watching film of Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers on his iPad.
"He was still pissed off about the loss, but he wasn't going to pout about it," Roderick said. "For him, it's getting right back to learning. He's like a coach in that way."
Wilson’s film-watching borders on obsessive, according to his former coaches, who say his hobby is to watch great quarterbacks play. Among those he watches the most is Rodgers, a natural model for Wilson for more reasons than one.
Like Wilson, Rodgers wasn’t highly recruited out of high school, largely due to his size. He knew what it was like to be overlooked. The two quarterbacks have similar builds – Wilson is now 6-foot-3, 214 pounds, Rodgers is 6-foot-2, 225 pounds – so Wilson began to incorporate little details of Rodgers’ game into his own. The way Wilson stands when he receives a snap – with his right foot back, unlike most right-handed quarterbacks – and the way his feet are spaced, are the product of hours and hours of devouring Rodgers’ film.
But BYU head coach Kalani Sitake said there is a third reason why Wilson chose Rodgers as the one to emulate.
"It’s because Aaron Rodgers is great," he said. "Aaron Rodgers is the guy he wants to be like. If you care about something so much, like playing quarterback, you might as well idolize the person that is one of the best."
Wilson and Rodgers had talked a little bit this offseason, then met in person during the Jets’ preseason game against the Packers in Green Bay on Aug. 21. At halftime, Rodgers walked over to the young quarterback and they had another chat, which Wilson recalled after his Week 1 loss against Carolina.
"I think every game I am going to keep learning," he said. "You know, talking to Aaron Rodgers, he is in year 17 and he is still learning every single game. You are always going to be learning. So, it is how quickly can I keep learning? And every game there is going to be something new."
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It might be a cliché, but it is also a mindset that has worked for a quarterback who is fueled by the not-too-distant feeling of being overlooked and underestimated. For Wilson, heading into his home debut against the New England Patriots on Sunday, being overlooked and underestimated is a comfortable place for him to be.
"I remember people saying, when it was official that he was going to New York, that this guy's gonna get crucified by the media," Fesi Sitake said.
"Zach could be in the middle of Montana, or he could be in New York City. He doesn’t care. He hears all of it, but my guess is that he just laughs and says, ‘These guys have no idea.’ And then he just goes back into his own world."
Alex Coffey is a freelance writer based out of New York City. She spent two years at The Athletic, covering the Oakland A’s, the Seattle Storm and MLB at large.
