06/21/2022
From Albert Breer: I’m really interested to see where 2022 takes Zach Wilson. Nationally, there hasn’t been much talk about where the Jets quarterback is headed after a tumultuous rookie year. But having asked about Wilson, if I were a fan, I’d feel pretty good about the spot he’s in, mostly because of how far he’s come after, in midseason of last year, incurring what might best be described as a case of the yips. It’s why the team brought in his personal throwing coach, John Beck. The fact was Wilson had too much going through his head, and that was apparent almost right away. Coming out of Week 1, I’m told, he actually had a conversation with Aaron Rodgers that illustrated it. That Friday night of Week 2, he and Rodgers were catching up over the phone, and Rodgers asked what he was doing. Wilson responded that he was at the facility looking at tape. Rodgers's response? Roughly, Dude, what are you doing? Wilson’s work was admirable of course, but trying to do too much too fast wound up becoming a problem. And so coming out of last year, the Jets offensive staff worked to make things easier on him. Here’s how it happened …• Right after the season, coordinator Mike LaFleur and QBs coach Rob Calabrese went through the scheme and play calling from 2021, and found too much volume, and a bunch of plays that statistically weren’t producing. So they resolved to clean up the offense.
• The system that they’d run, mostly under Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco, really had not been operated by a player that young before (unless you count Robert Griffin III, who was running something very different, a hybrid of his college offense, in 2012). Which told the staff that making it work for Wilson meant “cleaning up the offense” had to equate reducing volume.
• And part of that would mean really showing Wilson how simple the system could be, and how, if there were 60 concepts, really, those concepts probably fit into six buckets, with 10 calls in each being very similar to the next (with variations in formations, personnel grouping, etc. to throw the defense off).
• From there, the coaches made it so, if in a single practice, Wilson ran, say, 12 plays, the 12 included two from each of the six buckets, to reinforce that he’s really running a total of six plays, with the next practice including two different plays from each of the six buckets.
So far? So good. On the second day of OTAs, Wilson had a good practice, then a shaky walkthrough, which made the staff a little nervous. Turns out, he was sick, and had to miss the team’s third OTA as a result. He came back for the fourth OTA, and by the fifth session, he was ascending again, and kept taking steps forward from there through the team’s minicamp. It’s also worth mentioning that backup Joe Flacco has helped him, telling him to be more focused on what he’s doing, and less on the defense, to further simplify the process. The Shanahan system, the coaches have emphasized to Wilson, has answers for him that don’t require him to worry as much about the other team, and Flacco has reminded him that very few quarterbacks (e.g. Peyton Manning, Tom Brady) have full command of everything happening out there. And none of those quarterbacks, Flacco’s advice goes, had it in their second year. Which, really, cuts to the heart of all of this for the Jets—all they’re trying to do now is have him be the best 22-year-old quarterback he can be. “Last year, he worked his ass off,” one staffer said. “But he tried to learn so much so fast, and that’s probably where we failed him.”
And, regardless of where this takes Wilson in 2022, that won’t happen again.
-Albert Breer
