Zach Wilson’s response to a question after the Jets’ 10-3 loss to the Patriots in Week 11 has drawn a lot of negative attention in recent days.
Wilson was asked whether he felt like he let his defense down after the Jets failed to score a touchdown in the team’s defeat. The second-year quarterback didn’t seem too concerned by it.
“No,” he said.
MORE: Patriots return punt 84 yards with seconds left to defeat Jets
Many believe that Wilson should have taken responsibility for the team’s shortcomings on offense, and ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky is among them. He went off on Wilson’s lacking response during ESPN’s “NFL Live” on Monday.
“I think it’s pathetic, and I think it reeks of insecurity,” Orlovsky said.
From NFL LIVE pic.twitter.com/K3tLCJzWlu
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) November 22, 2022
Orlovsky also thought that Wilson’s response could potentially damage his relationship with his teammates.
MORE: Will Zach Wilson start for Jets vs. Bears in Week 12?
Why? As he explained, it’s all about the reality of the treatment one gets when playing quarterback at the NFL level.
“One of the hardest things to do as a quarterback is get to that point where your teammates truly believe that you feel like you’re not better than them,” Orlovsky said. “Quarterbacks always get treated better. You get special treatment because you’re the quarterback and you have to work so hard to get your teammates to believe that you don’t believe that you’re better than them.
And one of the ways you do that is you take every single bullet. You make sure that no matter whether it’s your fault or not, that when you go into a press conference, you say, ‘It’s on me.’ I don’t care if the receiver runs the wrong route, if the interception’s not your fault — [it’s] I have to be better. When you lose it’s I and me, when you win it’s us and we.
Certainly, Wilson failed to absorb the blame for the loss despite his poor performance. He completed just nine of 22 passes for 77 yards while the Jets punted a total of 10 times during the contest. The Jets failed to cross their own 35-yard line and averaged just 2.7 inches per play during the second half.
MORE: It sounds like Zach Wilson is losing the Jets’ locker room
Thus, it’s easy to understand Orlovsky’s point. As he put it, Wilson is simply lacking some of the intangibles needed to guide the team after a tough loss. And his response may lead to some tension with his defense, which performed admirably against the Patriots.
“I think it’s very hard right now for Zach Wilson to walk into that locker room and for his defense not to sit there and think, ‘You think you’re better than us. And you think that you don’t need us,'” Orlovsky said. “Because for you to say, ‘No,’ is so disrespectful for their performance that they’ve had not only yesterday, but all season.”
What Orlovsky has described is already playing out a bit, as reports indicate that Wilson is losing the Jets’ locker room. Defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers even liked a tweet that highlighted the differences between Wilson’s response and that of Josh Allen after losing to the Jets, though he later walked it back.
Could this dynamic also be part of the reason that Robert Saleh won’t commit to Wilson as his Week 12 starter? It’s certainly possible.
Hits: 0
