With Aaron Rodgers Trade, Jets Get a Second Run at Developing Zach Wilson

With the Packers trade finally complete, New York has a chance to tap back into its young quarterback’s talent, this time behind a veteran.

Forty-eight hours to freedom …

• Jets GM Joe Douglas mentioned during his Tuesday press conference that he sees benefit for Zach Wilson in getting to learn behind Aaron Rodgers, and it certainly wasn’t the first time that topic was broached in that building.

The team has been proactive in keeping Wilson informed through the pursuit of Rodgers—even at a time, after the way Wilson played last year, when it probably wasn’t necessary to do so. And Jets coach Robert Saleh told me repeatedly in the fall, after he sat Wilson down, that he thought the young quarterback needed a bit of a reset period, which went into his thinking in making the move to Mike White in the first place.

As such, Wilson and the coaches have had a good amount of dialogue on the topic, with the staff giving the quarterback insight on what it’d be like playing behind Rodgers for a year or two. The message was that Rodgers’s nonchalant way would probably remind Wilson a little of Joe Flacco’s demeanor—offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett was able to speak from a position of authority, having seen Rodgers and Jordan Love interact for two seasons.

Wilson’s cap number for this year is $9.587 million, and for 2024 it’s $11.184 million; and he’s due $3.856 million in cash this year, and $5.453 million in ’24.

That makes it pretty workable for the team to keep both players on the roster for the next two years, and it’d put Wilson in the position Brock Osweiler was in behind Peyton Manning in Denver, and the one Kyle Trask was in behind Tom Brady the last two years. And since Wilson already has a relationship with Rodgers, it’s pretty easy for the team to bet the two will be good working together. That they have certain strengths in common is a bonus too.

And, yes, I understand people will say, Well, what choice did Wilson have? Fair, but that doesn’t change that it matters that Wilson reacted positively to all of this, and it’s good news that the Jets will get a second run at developing a guy who was gifted enough to go No. 2 in the draft in a way, they’d admit now, might’ve been the right way to develop him all along.

• A potential theme to watch for Thursday night: teams jockeying for offensive linemen between picks Nos. 10 and 19. I’d bet, at this point, that Ohio State’s Paris Johnson Jr. and Northwestern’s Peter Skoronski will be gone before then. And from there, you have the Eagles, Titans, Packers, Patriots, Jets, Commanders, Steelers and Buccaneers in a nine-pick stretch all potentially looking for linemen.

The hard truth is there won’t be enough to go around. Tennessee’s Darnell Wright and Georgia’s Broderick Jones, to me, would be near locks to go in that range. After that, a team might reach a little to grab Syracuse’s Matthew Bergeron (a high-character left tackle who might wind up at guard or right tackle in the pros) or Oklahoma’s Anton Harrison (whom a lot of teams are quietly high on).

That dynamic could also lead to some trading around in that area, with the Steelers lurking as a team that could look to make a moderate move up to go get a lineman.

Jones started at left tackle in all 15 games of the Bulldogs’ 2022 season :: Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

• Jones, in particular, is a fascinating prospect. There are some who believe he’s got a healthy sense of entitlement, as a former five-star recruit, and immaturity to grow through. There’s also the question of why it took him until his third year to win a starting job in Athens, with all the talent he has. He’s also a little raw, without a ton of starts.

But the flip side is a team could really hit a home run with him. Given his traits, people I’ve talked to believe he’s got the ceiling to become a top tackle in the NFL.

• There’s a fun old-school comp I took out for a test drive the last couple of days. NFL folks love Illnois CB Devon Witherspoon—he kept getting better over his time in college, he’s tough, he’s smart, he’s got ball skills and instincts. And he has just about everything you’d want in a corner, except for size. (Witherspoon is 5’ 11 1/2”, 181 lbs.)

So hearing scouts and coaches talk about him the past few days, it sort of struck me that it sounded like they were talking about Antoine Winfield (not Jr., the corner on the Bucs, but his dad, who played 14 NFL seasons and, full disclosure, was a senior at Ohio State when I was a freshman). I asked a few of them whether they thought that made sense, and they agreed that it did. Which is to say, if you’re trying to envision what a prospect such as Witherspoon might look like in the pros, Winfield is a comp that can help you.

• Word continues to circulate that Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is intrigued with the idea of taking Jalen Carter No. 5. Seattle has rolled the dice before. The question, for me, is how the experience of drafting Malik McDowell in the second round in 2017 might affect the way Carroll’s GM, John Schneider, sees Carter, whose visits with teams have drawn mixed reviews.

• We laid out Jalen Hurts’s deal on social media on Tuesday morning, and the details show a pretty aggressive structure to keep the cap numbers manageable for the next four years. And the disparity in the cap charges from 2023 to ’26 ($74.8 million) and the cash spend ($157.3 million) on Hurts over that time illustrates it perfectly.

The gap is $82.5 million, and Philly didn’t wave a magic wand and make it disappear. It’ll have to be accounted for in 2027, ’28 and the contract’s void year of ’29. On top of that, there’s potentially more proration coming in the deal’s final two years, and maybe a lot more depending on what the team does with the option bonuses ahead of those two seasons.

I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s certainly possible Philly will be managing a nine-figure cap debt coming out of this contract. It’ll be easier, of course, if at that point, the Eagles are doing another contract with Hurts—for a number of reasons.

• While we’re there, those who’ve looked at the contract have mentioned to me how this sort of structure, because of the payouts, and the guaranteed money going into escrow over the years, and the cash-over-cap dynamic, requires a lot, spending-wise, from ownership.

Good on Jeffrey Lurie for pouring his resources back into the public asset he owns.

• There’s been lots of buzz on Trey Lance on social media over the last few weeks. My feeling? The Niners won’t get the sort of offer it would take for them to be O.K. with moving on from him. Remember, they won’t have clarity on Brock Purdy’s status for at least another six weeks or so, and they haven’t seen Sam Darnold so much as throw a ball in practice yet.

Lance, to be sure, hasn’t lived up to their expectations. But right now, the Niners sort of need all the options they can get at the position, and that’s even to get through OTAs.

Maybe when we get to the end of the offseason program, and the Niners know more on whether Purdy will be ready for the season, that’ll change. Either way, whether the Niners spend one of their nine picks on a quarterback could be a tell.

• One more time for everyone—the betting odds on the draft are not moving because information is flowing from teams into some situation room in the basement of a casino.

Need an example? The odds on Bryce Young flipped after a few of us started saying Young was a good bet to go No. 1.

• With that established, I’d say Will Levis’s ceiling is fourth, to the Colts. And I’m not positive they’d take him over C.J. Stroud.