• It seems like Zach Wilson’s benching in New York was a long time coming, but that didn’t make it any easier for Jets coaches to go through with it. And that’s because, deep down, the sense I’ve gotten from those guys is there’s a level of guilt they felt in doing it.
There are three reasons.
The first is the easy one—the third-year quarterback did everything he could, and was the right kind of teammate and worker over the two-plus months he started.
The second and third are more complicated. There was the part of the quarterback plan that never got to play out, with the Jets believing, going into the year, that sitting for two years (which was how they drew it up with Aaron Rodgers coming in) would do Wilson a world of good like it once did for ex-Jet Geno Smith. That blew up the minute Rodgers’s Achilles blew out on the MetLife turf. Then, there was the battle to give Wilson a real chance, one sabotaged by perhaps the worst offensive line in the league.
By the staff’s count, fourteen different offensive linemen have taken significant snaps, and seven different line combinations have started games. The team’s 37-year-old starting left tackle, Duane Brown, has been limited to two starts due to injury, and the unit’s best player, Alijah Vera-Tucker, was lost for the year after playing in three games. Center Connor McGovern and right tackle Mekhi Becton were lost more recently. Which is how a group that had big questions coming into the year has evolved into a trainwreck.
So why bench Wilson now? Mostly, because the staff had tried just about everything to give the offense a spark—spackling together that offensive line while shuffling seats in the tight end, receiver and running back rooms, and even moving coordinator Nathaniel Hackett up to the box—and this is pulling the one lever they’ve resisted.
Whether 29-year-old Tim Boyle, a veteran of six years and four teams, can give them a spark is an open question. At the very least, the Jets think they’re getting a quarterback that plays faster, makes quicker decisions, and gets the ball out more efficiently than Wilson. Plus, Boyle brings two years of experience in Hackett’s offense in Green Bay.
So for all the noise about Aaron Rodgers’s return over the weekend, it sounds like that’s the last thing on the staff’s mind right now.
