Why I'd start Mike White against Buffalo
Starting Mike isn't waving the White flag on Wilson
🗽Good morning Jets fans and welcome to another week of talking New York Jets Football. Having played on Thursday there is no regular Monday Recap here, Sundays without the Jets are both more relaxing and less fulfilling.
Today I’m going to take the chance to talk about Zach Wilson and Mike White, and what led me to post the below. Let me preface this entire newsletter by saying I like Zach, I still believe in Zach, and in no way am I saying he’s a bust or not the QB of the future.
That led to a lot of good discussion and a few unsavory comments, but that was to be expected. The Jets have invested a lot in Zach Wilson, and by default, that means a lot of Jets fans have invested a lot in Zach Wilson. Starting White doesn’t mean you’re waving the white flag on Wilson, and here’s why.
The Perfect Scenario 🖼️
Next Sunday the Buffalo Bills come to town, a 5-3 team with one of the premier defenses in the league. Not only that but they’re coming in after an embarrassing loss to the Jaguars.
They allow the fewest yards per game at 262.6, the fewest passing yards per game at 177, and the fewest points per game at 14.8. They’re also tied for the most interceptions in the league with 11 and they’ve forced the 3rd most fumbles with 7. In short, they’re the best defensive team in the NFL.
In his last 5 quarters of football, Mike White has completed 78.5% of his passes for 500 yards and 4 touchdowns. In my very humble opinion, those stats warrant another start for White, game time should be based on production and White has produced. When it stops being based on production and starts being based on where you were drafted, you start to get into some pretty murky territory.
But here’s why it’s the perfect scenario for the Jets. Mike White has earned a chance to start if healthy, I don’t think anyone can question that logic. Providing him the start against Buffalo can lead to several scenarios:
1) He plays well, completes 65% of his passes, throws multiple touchdowns, protects the ball against the best ball-hawking defense in the NFL and keeps the Jets competitive. If that’s the case then a 26-year-old is proving that he’s an NFL starter, exactly what the Jets have been looking for. You can roll with him and then potentially flip him in a trade if you think it was a flash in the pan, or you can tender him and have an open QB competition in camp.
2) He doesn’t play well, which is far more likely against a talented Buffalo team. He turns the ball over, the game gets out of hand and the choice to move back to the more talented QB and the QB you’ve invested in is a very easy one. The QB you want to see perform comes in against a slate of more manageable opponents and he’s had another week to rest his PCL sprained knee.
Either of these two scenarios are positive outcomes for the Jets. In an ideal world Zach would have performed to the standard where this isn’t even a question, he hasn’t done that.
The Fear Factor 😱
As Jets fans, we’re all a bit scarred. We’ve been through a lot over the years. And that quest to find a starting caliber QB who can move an NFL offense up and down the field has been a quest that J. R. R. Tolkien would have been proud to pen. So I feel the fear like everyone else, I see it in the responses to posts on Twitter.
There are two scary scenarios here:
1) Zach Wilson plays and struggles. Showing that all the talk of the offensive play-calling being different is just that, talk. And, the biggest issue holding the Jets back in 2021 was actually the QB after all. With Wilson struggling again, the calls for Mike White become louder, after all, Coach Saleh has outlined the importance that winning games does to team morale and team development.
2) Mike White plays and shines. Showing that White has the talent to start and stay competitive with one of the top NFL defenses. It makes it extremely hard to go back to the rookie after that and there’s a wasted year of development for Zach. I personally think you can develop as a QB in this league sitting and learning, watching and listening, but I’m in the minority on that one.
The too far less scary scenarios are Wilson plays and shines or White plays and struggles. That leads to a very easy decision.
Myth-Busting 🤯
Over the last few days, I’ve seen a lot of things said on Twitter. While I’m not going to call out the individuals who said it, here are a few things I’ve seen and why I disagree with them.
1) If Mike White performs well the rest of the season we’d have to commit starting QB money to him, only to find out next year that he’s an average to below-average QB.
First of all, if Mike White performs to the level where his agent is commanding he get $25-$30 million as someone said to me, then he’s had one hell of a season and the Jets have likely run the table and found their QB of the future, so that’s pretty positive.
Second of all, this is categorically untrue.
Mike White may have been in the league since 2018, but he doesn’t have 4 accrued seasons of NFL action which would make him an unrestricted free agent. To accrue one season of service in the NFL, a player has to be on a team’s roster for a minimum of 6 games a season, being on the practice squad does not count.
So Mike White will be a restricted free agent this year, meaning the Jets can tender him and keep him around for the price of the tender. Let’s just say for argument’s sake he performs very well the rest of the way. The Jets could place a 1st round tender on him agreeing to pay him around $4-$5 million. If a team wanted to offer him a big contract then the Jets would either have the right to match it, or they’d receive a first-round pick in compensation, win-win.
2) The offensive position groups have been playing better for Mike White than they did for Wilson.
This is a really strange one that came up several times on Saturday. The premise was that because the Jets have been playing better, it has everything to do with the offensive line and the wide receivers and nothing to do with the quarterback.
Considering the popular opinion is that quarterback is the most important position in football, I find this argument confusing.
For example, the Jets’ offensive line has allowed fewer sacks and pressures with Mike White as the QB. But the biggest stat here is the average time to throw, Zach Wilson’s is 2.96 (the 2nd slowest in the league on QB’s who have taken at least 20 dropbacks), whereas Mike White’s is 2.35 (the 4th quickest in the league on QB’s who have taken at least 20 dropbacks).
The running game has been better, but is that just a coincidence, or is the running game better because Mike White is hitting the throws needed to keep them honest? Is the passing game better because White is getting the ball into his playmakers hands? It’s too simplistic to simply say that the other position groups are performing and that’s the reason for Whites’ impressive displays. He’s as much responsible for their improvement as they are for his.
3) The offensive system has been different for Mike White
As good as Mike LaFleur may be one day, I doubt he will ever have a completely different offensive system for each and every QB on the roster.
I think he’s been calling a better game from the booth, but football comes down to execution. You can only introduce the wrinkles when the basics are being executed.
In 2021 so far the Jets have averaged 63.4 offensive plays per game, which is good for 17th in the league. Over the last 3 games, we have averaged 71.3 offensive plays per game which is good for 3rd best in the league.
White has been executing the exact same offensive system that was in place for Wilson. All the times Saleh spoke about having to play boring football was hinting at this fact. You keep the offense on the field for longer, you’ll see more wrinkles. You take the boring checkdowns, that open up things over the middle.
4) Mike Whites 3.7 air yards against Bengals was historically very low he relied on his receivers for YAC. That proves he’s bad.
This is a perfect example of how stats without context are largely pointless numbers.
The kind of offense that MLF is running is predicated on getting the ball into your playmakers hands in space and letting them go to work. It’s a horizontal passing attack that asks the QB to make the right decision, not the flashy decision.
There's a reason why it was called QB-friendly in the off-season.
Those stats prove that White is playing within the structure of the offense and actually doing exactly what is asked of him. Why would you push it 20 yards down the field to a contested-catch low probability completion when you have Elijah Moore in the middle of the field with 5 yards of space in every direction?
Playing Mike does not mean giving up on Zach
This is probably the most important paragraph of the entire newsletter.
By campaigning for Mike White to start, it does not mean that I think the Jets should give up on Wilson. It does not mean that I think Mike White is the more talented QB. It does not mean that I think Mike White is the QB of the future and it does not mean that I think Zach Wilson is a bust.
Chances are if Mike White starts he’ll likely struggle. There’s probably a reason why he hasn’t started an NFL game before this year despite being in the league since 2018. It all goes back to my perfect scenario above, he’s earned the right to start, and chances are, come a week today it’ll be an easy decision to start Zach the rest of the way.
I expect Zach to come back and play at a higher level when he returns. I think sitting on the sideline watching would have helped him to no end. If I had to guess, I’d still say he was the future and the player who’s most likely to break the Jets QB drought, saying that I don’t think the Jets have anything to lose by starting White against a very tricky Buffalo Bills defense.
Oh, Sam 🙈
I think the jury is in for Sam Darnold with Carolina. As the clock ticked down and Robby Anderson got into his face, you quickly realized that Sam Darnold with the Panthers is very similar to Sam Darnold with the Jets.
When the Jets traded Sam, I genuinely wished him the very best. He was dealt a tough hand here and he does seem like a genuinely good guy, but his time in Carolina has shown that he was part of the problem and not merely the victim of circumstance.
After a 3-0 start, the Panthers are now 1-5 since. Darnold has regressed badly, finishing yesterday's game with 3 interceptions and a rating of 26.3. That gives him 11 interceptions on the season against 7 touchdowns. I feel bad for Sam, but the more the Panthers lose, the higher the Jets draft pick.
If the season were to end today, the Jets would have 4 selections in the top 50:
Jets 1st round pick: Currently 4th overall
Seahawks 1st round pick: Currently 9th overall
Jets 2nd round pick: Currently 38th overall
Panthers 2nd round pick: Currently 46th overall.
In my piece from Saturday I mentioned that only four Jets quarterbacks--all taken in the first round--have led the Jets in passing for five or more seasons: Joe Namath, Richard Todd, Ken O'Brien, and Chad Pennington. Of those four, only Namath was thrust into the starting job immediately and expected to play every game; Todd and O'Brien didn't start near-complete seasons until their second year, and Pennington didn't until his third year.
Additionally, the last two quarterbacks we've drafted in the first round and did immediately expect to start, Darnold and Sanchez, had developmental problems that became painfully evident immediately, in the case of the former, or eventually, in the case of the latter.
My point being, maybe not putting the onus of decades of expectations on a 22 year old won't completely and totally mess him up. If White plays against Buffalo, which he should, and shines, that's not a bad thing at all. It's not a lost year of development. If anything, aging Wilson a year might be what he actually needs--his rawness was well-documented coming out of the draft, and making him play every game even if he doesn't show improvement will actually hurt him more than anything else; see Darnold. People saying he should start ASAP for the rest of the season fundamentally misunderstand the sport. One game and a fraction are not enough for Wilson to glean anything super meaningful from White's performance. The more film of White that Wilson has to study, which he's a notorious glutton for, the better for his development.
I should probably write my own piece on this at some point, because boy howdy I have more thoughts on it than I thought I would, but this is just my immediate reactions to this piece.