Inside Zach Wilson’s Heroics—Without Aaron Rodgers’s Influence

The Jets’ quarterback was basically on his own against the Giants but made the plays when they counted most to keep his team alive in the AFC playoff race.

It’s fun to talk about how Aaron Rodgers’s presence has helped Zach Wilson, or how Wilson has learned from offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, and how maybe, just maybe, Wilson can turn his career with the Jets around with the silver-lining opportunity Rodgers’s injury has created for him.

But all those story lines didn’t amount to much as Wilson picked himself up off the turf, having taken a sack from Kayvon Thibodeaux that gave the Giants possession in field goal range, up 10–7 with 1:26 left Sunday. At the moment, a lot needed to happen for the Jets to have any shot at winning—the defense would need a stop, the special teams might need some luck on the field goal try and then the offense would need to drive the field.

Which is why, as the Jets sent their defense out on the field, the quarterback and his coaches’ first instinct was to reach into their bag of tricks.

Wilson on Rodgers: “It’s great to have him at practice and stuff. But we’re not able to get a lot from him because he’s going through his own battles right now, working through injury.” :: Vincent Carchietta/USA TODAY Sports

“We’re looking for those,” Wilson told me over the phone an hour or so later after the game. “We have a plan, with some trick plays for just last-play-of-the-game kind of things to get to. We were showing cards of what those situations were like …”

And then things started happening.

On third-and-3 with 1:14 left and the Jets having just spent their final timeout, a host of their players corralled Saquon Barkley in the hole, with safety Tony Adams coming in at the end to stone him a yard short of the line to gain. On fourth-and-1, Graham Gano pushed a 35-yard field goal left. Suddenly, the Jets had life.

There were 24 seconds left, and they had the ball at their own 25. All they needed was a field goal to force overtime. Out the window went all the tricks Wilson and his coaches discussed.

“Fortunately, with 24 seconds left, we didn’t need to use them,” Wilson says. “We just went straight into two-minute mode. We had a chance.”

That chance was, again, all Wilson needed.

This one followed a script similar to the one the Jets wrote in similarly frantic wins over the Broncos and Eagles earlier in the month. That is to say, no, Wilson didn’t play great end to end, but what he did do in Sunday’s overtime win over the Giants was make the throws that the Jets needed him to—and maybe most important this time around, he made them when his team needed them most.

All within the final 24 seconds of regulation and overtime. And after it was over, Wilson gave us a few minutes to go through how, through his eyes, it all went down, and went down with just about zero room for error.

• The first throw, over the middle on the next play, was an absolute dart 29 yards down the field to Garrett Wilson. It wasn’t initially meant to go to the Jets’ best offensive player—and that it did is a nice sign of the young quarterback’s growth and ability to get to something that’ll work in an adverse situation.

“The deep one—the first play of those 24 seconds—was not supposed to go to Garrett,” Wilson says. “We actually had a keeper, like a rollout to the right, called. But they put their defensive end in a super wide-nine technique. So I changed the protection to just stay in the pocket. We want to work the front side, but we obviously have Garrett on the backside, just so that we can have that option. And I knew it looked good presnap, so I changed the [protection] so that I could try to work him on the backside in-cut. …

“I feel like I’ve grown a lot and I don’t know if I would have been able to point that out in the past. I don’t know—I can’t say because I haven’t been in that situation.”

Safe to say, it worked O.K. this time around. And as Garrett Wilson caught the ball, flags hit the ground and a stroke of luck was delivered. The officials called Thibodeaux offside. The Jets declined the penalty, of course, but the fact that it stopped the clock at 17 seconds loomed large.

• Wilson’s next throw was also for 29 yards—but it couldn’t have been much different. At the snap, the rush flushed him out, and he had to scramble right and look to his left for a target, which turned out to be Allen Lazard.

“It was a scramble drill,” Wilson says. “I mean, honestly, they’re in a tough coverage. They’re playing man with what looked like two safeties playing over the top of everyone. Not a good coverage for really anything there in that situation. So, really, I just told the guys in the huddle, ‘Be ready to scramble here, because we gotta find something.’ And Allen did a great job. He was on a corner route, saw me scrambling where I was able to cut back across the middle and hit him.”

With eight seconds showing, Adoree’ Jackson was still laying on Lazard after the catch. The rest of the Jets were sprinting up the field to try to get a clock-killing spike off. By their own rules, it shouldn’t have worked.

“It’s obviously a tough situation because our cutoff is roughly 12 seconds of being able to get a clock off,” Wilson says. “So me scrambling there is not really something we want to do. But I think in those situations, you kind of have to, and we were able to pick up a chunk there and I think the clock was at 11 seconds by the time the ball was completed down the field. So great hustle by the guys getting going and getting down there and clocking it.”

As Wilson went under center, he looked up and saw four seconds were left. “We were good,” he says. And he spiked the ball with a second left, allowing for Greg Zuerlein to trot on to kick a 35-yarder to tie the game and force overtime.

• After the Jets’ defense came up big in forcing a three-and-out and a punt, Garrett Wilson made a play on third-and-10 to move the sticks, and New York found itself in another game-defining—and maybe season-defining—spot. The Jets were in third-and-5 from the Giants’ 45 with 6:17 left. Given the weather and pace of the game, there was no guarantee they’d get another shot. So, in Wilson’s mind, the time was right to take a shot.

Downfield, he saw practice-squad call-up Malik Taylor with a step on Jackson. He didn’t want to underthrow him. But with the rush bearing down, he figured even if he could get enough on the ball, that might give the Jets two shots at the yardage.

“Of course, I’m throwing it, hopefully giving him a chance,” Wilson says. “Obviously, I don’t want to underthrow it. But I felt the pressure coming. Safety was cheating to Garrett’s side. I mean, he kind of went inside on his route. So I didn’t think I had a great shot. But like I said, guy’s back is turned, one-on-one coverage, a lot of the times you’re gonna get that PI [pass interference] call. I’m not gonna sit there and take a sack.

“So putting that thing up, giving him a chance to try and go back and get it—it’s either his or it’s probably going to be a PI.”

The flag came out. The Jets got 30 yards on the penalty. Zuerlein nailed a 33-yarder. And improbably, the Jets got above .500 at 4–3.

Rodgers attended Sunday's game against the Giants, and has been rehabbing from his torn Achilles at his home in California :: Vincent Carchietta/USA TODAY Sports

After the matchup ended, I asked Wilson about Rodgers’s influence at the end of the game. In a moment of honesty, he said he didn’t know. “He’s more with the coaches on the headsets,” Wilson says. It also wasn’t a week when Rodgers was around a ton. He’s been back and forth with his aggressive rehab plan being carried out in California.

“I think he came in this week, the day before the game,” Wilson says. “It’s great to have him at practice and stuff. But we’re not able to get a lot from him because he’s going through his own battles right now, working through injury.”

With the way this one played out, it’s kind of fitting that it was that way, because after going through all the trick plays and scenarios with the clock ticking down, it really was Wilson out there on his account, with his teammates, to win the game for the Jets.

And make no mistake, getting that done was plenty satisfying for the third-year pro.

“Yeah, no doubt,” he says. “Winning is all that matters, and, as ugly as it was and we didn’t play well offensively, being able to remain calm and find a way to get it done, especially in those circumstances, is really hard to do. I’m very proud of the offense. And I’m happy for my growth in those situations, too.”

That it keeps showing up when it matters most, of course, counts for something, too. If you look at the standings, in fact, it’s counted for a lot already.