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https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/05/03/mmqb-matt-nagy-justin-fields-trey-lance-aaron-rodgers-daily-coverHOW THE JETS DECIDED ON ZACH WILSON
This was a different type of draft year, and everyone had to get as creative as they could. So back on March 29, at BYU’s pro day, with the Niners-Dolphins trade going down, Zach Wilson getting ready to throw and the tectonic plates of the 2021 draft shifting, Jets coach Robert Saleh ran down BYU alum Fred Warner, his former star middle linebacker from San Francisco, with a bit of a weird request.
Warner was there to support Wilson and the rest of the Cougars trying to make their case to all the NFL teams there that day. He also served as a human measuring stick.
Hey Fred, can you go give Zach a hug real quick?
The first-team All-Pro obliged his old defensive coordinator, and in doing so helped Saleh, GM Joe Douglas and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur put the final piece in place for the Jets’ decision on what to do with the second pick. The 6' 3", 230-pound Warner is roughly the same size as Patrick Mahomes, and, as he approached Wilson, who’d faced questions about his size, the Jets’ brass could actually see it.
Wilson was eye-to-eye with Warner, he had broad shoulders that measured up with a linebacker’s and confirmed what the Jets came in believing: that he had plenty of room to grow physically and could eventually show himself to be like the other big people in his family (his dad was a Utah defensive tackle, and he has one brother who’s a BYU linebacker and another who’s verbally committed to be one in 2022).
Right around that time, medical clearance came for the Jets, too, something that was important, given that Wilson had surgery on his right shoulder two years ago, and thus the final pieces were put in place for the 21-year-old to become the latest big swing that New York’s star-crossed football franchise has taken.
And obviously there’s a strong belief in Florham Park that this will be different than Mark Sanchez or Sam Darnold, or even the relatively successful Chad Pennington. They wouldn’t have done this if they didn’t feel that way. So how did they get there? A few weeks back, we detailed the Jets’ decision to deal Darnold and search for their next QB from GM Joe Douglas’s perspective. Now, we’re giving you how the coaching staff worked through this—and signed off on Wilson with the No. 2 pick.
• Saleh and his staff got going on the quarterbacks about a month ahead of starting on the rest of the draft class, a couple of weeks after arriving in Jersey in January, mostly because the Darnold situation combined with the team’s holding the second pick in a quarterback-rich year demanded that. Saleh studied the five quarterbacks who wound up going in the first round. LaFleur, QBs coach Rob Calabrese and pass-game specialist Greg Knapp did that and went deeper into the class, too, through the whole second tier.
The head coach directed his assistants not to talk to one another about the quarterback group to keep opinions on each player unaffected, and, when the staff reconvened in late February with their independent evaluations of the class, a consensus was reached that the top two were clear—Trevor Lawrence and Wilson. And that was with the offensive coaches drilling down on technical details, and Saleh clearly seeing Wilson’s fearlessness, bravado, timing, accuracy and just how smooth he looked as an athlete.
• This is going to sound bananas, but the Jets’ coaches actually discussed, at that point, how they preferred Wilson to Lawrence as a fit for their offense. Why? Wilson’s tape showed a very clean translation to the Shanahan style of offense. You can see him go through reads—1, 2, 3, out! Lawrence, conversely, played in an offense heavy on RPOs. That’s not a knock. Justin Herbert played in an RPO-heavy system in college, too, and was obviously fine.
It’s just that picturing Wilson running LaFleur’s system was easy, because BYU’s offense carries so many similar West Coast principles. And Wilson also had traits that the offense values, starting with a lightning-quick release and good balance throwing on the move.
• The next step was the Zoom meetings, and one thing in particular stuck out about Wilson in that setting. While his ADHD was at one point a story line, the quarterback showed uncanny, Rain Man–like recall. It shined through in particular during his Zoom meetings with the Jets, and as Knapp took him through the BYU tape. Or, more accurately, Wilson took Knapp through it.
If you’ve watched coaches’ tape before, you’ve seen how, before a play is shown, a shot of the scoreboard comes up to establish the point of the game the play is taken from, down-and-distance, etc. Well, at one point, in a meeting with Wilson, Knapp had the screen frozen on such a frame. Wilson immediately told him what was coming. He took him through the play call. He took him through the defense’s call. He told him how a certain corner would usually be in the coverage associated with the call. He explained his throw. Then, he told him why the coaches called the play and how it was worked into the practice week.
Suffice it to say, that impressed the coaches, and it wasn’t the only time it happened. Again, the formation presnap wasn’t even on the screen yet.
• Another part of the process was determining whether Wilson would be equipped to deal with New York. There were two reasons, primarily, the Jets eventually came to the conclusion that he’ll be fine. One, less than a year ago, he dealt with his coaches at BYU, disappointed in how 2019 played out, opening up a quarterback competition—and responded with one of the most finely quarterbacked seasons in school history. And two, Provo’s not New York. But BYU and Utah football are a big deal in that state, so he did have some “fishbowl” experience.
The Jets also got feedback on his personality and developed their own opinions as to how it would play in New York. Wilson’s throwing coach, former NFL QB John Beck, was a tremendous resource along the way, too, telling the team he’d never seen a more natural thrower at that age, or a quarterback who could throw that effortlessly off-platform, but also that he was a smart kid with enough of a cocky edge, and self-awareness, to take slings and arrows in New York.
Now, here’s one thing that really stood out to me, on how the Jets are going to handle Wilson going forward: They don’t want to put the weight of the world on his shoulders. In fact, if you watch the phone call the Jets made to Wilson after making it official, it’s right there. “All you gotta do is be yourself, nothing more, nothing less,” Douglas told Wilson, before Saleh got on the phone and added, “The biggest thing I want to tell you, just remember this, this organization is going to lift you, not the other way around.”
The point was emphasized with the Jets, soon thereafter, trading up for guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, then taking receiver Elijah Moore and tailback Michael Carter.
And the concept really does show awareness of where things went wrong with Darnold. The Jets aren’t going to ask the world of Wilson right away (though the plan is to prepare him to start Week 1, as would be the case with anyone on the roster, and the reality is he likely will start). They’ll ask him to be, to steal a phrase from my old NFL Network colleague Bucky Brooks, the trailer and not the truck as a rookie, and allow him to grow from there.
A team with that idea going in is a good place for any quarterback to start. We’ll see if that situation eventually adds up to better results at the position than the Jets have gotten of late.
