Neither rain, nor self-doubt, nor Houston defender, nor third-quarter fumble could keep Zach Wilson from completing his appointed task of keeping the Jets’ season alive Sunday in a 30-6 win over the Texans.
“The flow of just playing football today was there,” Wilson said. “And I can’t say it’s been like that a lot, unfortunately, in my career here. That’s what we’re searching for right there, is just playing ball, just moving the football, just completing passes. That’s what we’re always hunting for.”
Robert Saleh thought his QB was “outstanding” and “unbelievable.”
“He made a lot of things happen that weren’t there,” the head coach said. "... Hopefully, he can find ways to build off this one.”
For Wilson, the key was being “aggressively smart.”
“It’s taking shots when you feel like there’s an opportunity there and when there’s not how can you protect the ball and check it down and having a mixture of both,” he said after throwing for more than 300 yards for the third time in his career and notching just his seventh multi-touchdown game.
But while it never looked bad, this wasn’t a wire-to-wire performance from Wilson and the offense. Despite reaching the Houston 27 on their first drive of the game, the Jets punted on all five of their first-half possessions. Wilson looked more composed than he did before his November benching completing 9 of 15 attempts for 92 yards in the first half.
Fortunately for the Jets, Gang Green’s defense pitched a shutout themselves. And out of halftime, the stalling offense found its gear.
“The second half, I thought Zach probably played the best game of his career," Saleh said. “Just the off-schedule stuff, the timing and rhythm and getting the ball out to where it needed to get to, being aggressive but smart at the same time.
“The scramble, I know he had [the fumble on] the scramble, but just to the aggressiveness on the scramble. He was out there having a good time.”
Wilson didn’t accept the praise that it was his best game, saying, “We’ll go back and watch,” while praising his teammates and offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett for calling a great game.
The Jets scored touchdowns on three of their first drives after the break on drives of seven plays for 80 yards, eight plays for 59 yards and 10 plays for 75 yards to put the game out of reach.
“The offense, we finally got rolling a little bit today,” running back Breece Hall told SNY’s Jeane Coakley. “I’ve been disappointed with it, the whole offense has. We feel like we can always put a better product out there and today we started to click a little bit, we can still be better once we get across the 50 with penalties and stuff like that, but it was a good start.”
In the second half, Wilson completed 18 of 21 attempts for 209 yards and a pair of short TD tosses.
"Getting into the red zone and scoring and doing what we expect to do," Wilson said of the second-half performance. "It was fun to finally get that going.”
So did he have fun in the rain in MetLife Stadium?
"Always, winning is always fun and that's what we want right there,” Wilson said. “That's what we want right there. That’s what we want every game to look like."