Before Joe Douglas went all in on the Jets securing quarterback Aaron Rodgers to lead the franchise in the 2023 NFL season, he was once in a place seeking to cultivate third-year quarterback Zach Wilson as the team’s starter.
However, since the Jets drafted Wilson at No. 2 in the 2021 NFL draft, the former BYU standout has not thrived in New York’s offense. In two seasons, Wilson has thrown for 4,022 yards, 15 touchdowns and 18 interceptions while completing 55.2% of his passes in 22 games.
As Rodgers seeks to restore prominence to the Jets’ franchise, Wilson will now serve as the backup to the four-time NFL MVP. But in Rodgers’s emergence, Douglas believes that if Wilson would have had a veteran signal-caller to glean from in his rookie season, things might be different for the 23-year-old.
“… It would have been great to have a veteran quarterback like Joe Flacco that first season [for Wilson],” Douglas told Pro Football Talk. “But ultimately, we made the decision to jump in head first with our youth movement. We had so many first- and second-year players, new staff. But sometimes you don’t take into account the ramifications of playing a young quarterback early in his career. … If I had to do everything over again, I would have probably had that veteran presence in the room early for Zach.”
Despite the lack of a veteran signal-caller, Douglas had plans for Wilson to work with longtime passing game expert Greg Knapp. However, Wilson was unable to do so because Knapp was hit by a car and killed in a bicycle accident in the summer of his rookie season. While it will never be certain if Knapp would have been the difference maker for Wilson’s development, Wilson carried his struggles from his first season into the ’22 campaign, leading to him being benched for Mike White.
With Rodgers now in a Jets uniform, Douglas’s mindset for Wilson is to finally give him an opportunity to “shadow one of the best passers of all time” so that he can blossom into the NFL signal caller he wants to become.
“Zach has an unbelievable ceiling and Zach is wired the right way in terms of his love of the game, his work ethic, his attention to detail,” Douglas said. “I know he’s attacking this offseason like no other. His energy level is unbelievable. It’s good to see him with a huge smile on his face and really working every day to get better.”
