“ Even for an organization that could fill a Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum with relics of all the strange things that have transpired here over the years, Thursday night felt especially weird. It was a night worth remembering, for all the wrong reasons. Streveler’s moment was funny, and fun, but mostly served as a distraction to a hard truth: A once-promising Jets season is over, and this is an organization that must reckon with the mistake it made drafting Zach Wilson in 2021.
Fans braved the pouring rain and harsh winds to sit at MetLife, a few nights before Christmas, to watch the Jets’ season go up in flames, their playoff hopes evaporating after a 19-3 loss. They started 5-2; now they’re 7-8 with two final games still to play at Seattle and Miami.
Wilson is the face of that collapse. The moment Robert Saleh benched him for a practice squad player on Thursday night, the coach gave up on any hope that Wilson might become the quarterback the Jets need. Even if he won’t admit that’s what just happened.
Wilson completed 9 of 18 passes for 92 yards and an interception on Thursday. Over the last 15 years, only three of 39 quarterbacks drafted in the first round had a worse EPA per play in their second season as starters, per TruMedia: Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford and Dwayne Haskins.
Richard Sherman — an NFL great, now an analyst, and a close friend to Saleh — compared Wilson to JaMarcus Russell on Amazon’s postgame show, calling them “some of the biggest busts in the history of the game.” It would be hard to argue with him. Some in the Jets organization — namely Saleh, LaFleur and general manager Joe Douglas — will have to reckon with how badly their decision to draft him in 2021 has turned out.
“We haven’t seen the last of him,” Saleh said.
It’s too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
It’s over.“