Despite benching Zach Wilson in the second half against the Buffalo Bills for Tim Boyle and naming Boyle the starter for the Jets' matchup with the Miami Dolphins on Friday and potentially the rest of the season depending on the status of Aaron Rodgers, head coach Robert Saleh isn’t willing to call the former No. 2 overall pick’s tenure in New York a "failure."
“I wouldn’t look at it as a failure, I would look at it as more of a series of unfortunate events,” Saleh said. “But I stand strong on the belief that Zach’s gonna have a really good career in this league. He’s got a tremendous work ethic, he’s gotten a lot better over the course of the last year, he definitely has the arm talent, he just turned 24.
“He’s got a positive outlook and he just needs to continue to focus on his game and find ways to get better and continue to learn about fronts and coverages and how to play the game a little bit faster so I still believe he’s gonna have a good career.”
While that may turn out to be true, his career is on hold at the moment after Gang Green just didn’t see the necessary improvements on offense with Wilson at the helm, relegating him to the bench where the Jets envisioned he would be the entire season, behind Rodgers.
Though that vision didn’t come to pass, the season was never supposed to come to this. Not again.
After struggling to score points last year with a revolving door of quarterbacks, New York signed Rodgers in the offseason to get a veteran in the locker room and lead the offense to new heights.
It was also to give Wilson the chance to watch a future Hall-of-Famer at work and absorb as much information as he could in hopes that he could use it for the benefit of his continued development.
Unfortunately, neither of those came true as the Jets’ offense has looked as bad as ever with Wilson being a focal point.