The 2023 New York Jets have officially graduated from disaster to dumpster fire (train wreck is the next step, and they’re on pace to reach it).
“Gang Green” had so much hype riding into the season, mostly because they were hitching a ride on the back of their new quarterback Aaron Rodgers. That plan was quickly derailed four snaps into the season, and since then, the Jets have just tried to keep their head above water.
They briefly looked like they were going to during their three game winning streak in October, but they’ve since followed that triumph up with an impressive, brutal, hard-to-watch five game losing streak. With Rodgers trying to come back this season, the hope was that the Jets could stay in the playoff hunt until he was able to miraculously return, but now that they sit at 4-8, that looks like unlikely.
One of the sadder parts of the five game losing streak has been the carousel of terribly mediocre quarterbacks taking the reigns of the New York Jets. Head coach Robert Saleh first benched their backup QB Zach Wilson to play an abysmal Tim Boyle, and he was so bad, he got cut from the team after two starts.
They even tried their backup, backup veteran quarterback Trevor Siemian (who they signed weeks after Rodger got hurt), and it became pretty clear, very quickly why Siemian was available for a mid-season signing in the first place. That brought the Jets crawling back to the guy they benched initially: Zach Wilson.
The report that New York was exploring a return to Wilson definitely turned some heads:
Many have speculated on the accuracy of that report, and I hope that it is true, just because it’s hilarious. Imagine Wilson getting benched, watching the team somehow get even worse, and then the team circling back and asking if he could take over again.
I think Wilson has every right to say “yeah, I don’t know boss” in that situation, even though we now know that report might not be entirely true. What Aaron Rodgers said about it today on The Pat McAfee Show certainly made it sound like the “sources” weren’t all that reliable.
McAfee asked Rodgers how he felt about the news that Wilson was reluctant to return to QB for the New York Jets, and Aaron went on a long, winding answer defending his teammate:
“When you use sources and whether intentional or unintentional try to assassinate someone’s character like that report does for Zach, I have a real hard time with that. You’re basically saying that this kid is quitting on the team and doesn’t want to play and is giving the middle finger to the organization.”
After pointing out that Wilson is a very young man (still in his early 20’s), and that he’ll have a chance to speak for himself, Rodgers took a moment to personally attack the anonymous person leaking information from the Jets locker room to the media:
“What is your impetus, what is your motivation to try and bury someone like that? That’s a problem with the organization. We need to get to the bottom of whatever this is coming from and put a stop to it privately, because there’s no place in a winning culture where…this is not the only time. There’s been a bunch of other leaks.
Is that really what you want to be about? You want to be about using someone in the media to leak stuff to, in order for what? I think it’s chicken sh*t at its core, and I think it has no place in a winning organization.’’
You can view the clip of the interview from The Pat McAfee Show below:
