After the New York Jets drafted Zach Wilson second overall in April, some wondered why the team didn’t add a veteran quarterback instead of entering the season with only the inexperienced Mike White backing up the rookie out of BYU.
The move potentially gives the Jets a steadier hand than White while they wait for Wilson to return. However, it also invites further second-guessing of Jets General Manager Joe Douglas, who is already facing criticism of his handling of a roster that has sputtered to a 1-5 start after going 2-14 last season.
The team hit what it can only hope is rock bottom Sunday, when it emerged from a Week 6 bye to get crushed by the archrival New England Patriots, 54-13. Wilson was injured on a hit by New England linebacker Matthew Judon in the second quarter, and Jets Coach Robert Saleh told reporters Monday that Wilson was initially diagnosed with a strained posterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, with a tentative recovery timetable of two to four weeks.
White took the first regular snaps of an NFL career that began when the Dallas Cowboys drafted him in the fifth round out of Western Kentucky in 2018. White threw a touchdown on his first pass against the Patriots but was later picked off twice as the Jets bumbled their way to one of the most lopsided losses in franchise history.
The trade for Flacco signals that the Jets are not completely comfortable trusting their offense, such as it is, to White. That in turn raises the question — not for the first time — of why the team didn’t already have a veteran quarterback on its roster. The Jets certainly had plenty of salary cap space to spend on an experienced signal caller, who then could have helped show Wilson the ropes. Instead, the Jets appeared set on clearing away any impediments to Wilson immediately claiming the starting job, but his injury has compelled them to part with a draft pick midseason rather than merely a modest amount of cash months before games got underway.
Saleh said in June that New York had some interest in bringing in Nick Mullens, who had made 16 starts over three seasons with Saleh’s and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur’s former team, the San Francisco 49ers. The Jets decided against that move, Saleh said then, because they felt their young quarterbacks, including White and 2020 fourth-round pick James Morgan, “deserved an opportunity to showcase who they are.”
Morgan did not show enough, apparently, for the Jets to keep him after training camp, which served as something of a bad look for Douglas. They did sign a veteran, Josh Johnson, in August but released him later in the month as team rosters began to get pared down. Johnson was added to the Jets’ practice squad but doesn’t have Flacco’s ties to Douglas, who was working in the Ravens’ personnel department when Baltimore made Flacco the 18th pick in the 2008 draft.
Flacco, who started eight games with the Denver Broncos in 2019, signed with the Jets in May 2020 to eventually be the backup to Sam Darnold. Flacco ended up appearing in five games and making five starts, and while his numbers weren’t stellar, they were better than Darnold’s in most respects and stood out as a rare instance of competent play on a team that looked like one of the NFL’s worst under former coach Adam Gase.
Gase is now gone and Darnold was traded to the Carolina Panthers, but to the enormous frustration of Jets fans, their team scarcely looks improved this season. Part of that can be laid at the feet of Wilson, who has missed easy throws and only sporadically displayed the playmaking ability that shot him up draft boards. It can’t have helped that, apart from a few weeks when Johnson was around, Wilson never had someone in the quarterbacks room who could play a mentoring role. He also never faced any credible competition for the starting job, unlike every other quarterback selected in the first round. That includes Trevor Lawrence, the highly touted Clemson star who was selected first by the Jacksonville Jaguars but was made to vie for the starting role with Gardner Minshew II.
White is expected to start this week against the Cincinnati Bengals while Flacco gets acclimated to a different offense than the one he learned last year.
It didn’t have to be Flacco, but the Jets would have been well-advised for a number of reasons to pair Wilson right away with one of the many quarterbacks on the market much more experienced than White.