Wilson's Work
Edition #227
Good morning!
The team may have moved onto the Bengals on Monday, but I was still watching the All-22 last night and soaking in the sensation of success. All that’s done is wet my appetite ahead of a key game against Cincinnati, who will be heading to MetLife at 0-2 with their season in danger of unraveling just months removed from a Super Bowl appearance.
Tomorrow we’re going to focus all our attention on the Bengals, but today I wanted to go back to Sunday’s game and focus on the Jets’ latest sensation at wide receiver, Garrett Wilson.
Yes I know it’s only a game and we need to wait and see, but despite them being different players, I haven’t been this excited about a wide receiver since Braylon Edwards headed to New York in exchange for wide receiver Chansi Stuckey, linebacker Jason Trusnik and a third and fifth-round draft pick in the 2010 NFL Draft.
The Jets announced that they had signed offensive tackle Adam Pankey to the practice squad and to make room they have released offensive guard Chris Glaser. Pankey has only played 42 snaps in the NFL since signing with the Green Bay Packers as a UDFA out of West Virginia in 2017, but he does offer some depth at tackle and guard after playing both positions in college. Only 3 of his snaps in the NFL have come as an out-and-out offensive lineman with Miami often using him as an inline TE or 6th lineman for blocking purposes. Let’s hope we don’t get to a point where we have to rely on him in 2022.
A nice little note today on 2nd-year guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, through two weeks of the NFL season, he rates as the #1 run-blocking guard in the NFL according to PFF with a grade of 84.2. We knew he was an elite player last year and his run-blocking was ahead of his pass-protection, but he’s quickly becoming an all-around guard and I fully expect there to be pro-bowl nods in his future, maybe as early as 2022.
Jets punter Braden Mann was named the AFC special teams player of the week following his performance in Cleveland. At the start of the week the Jets worked out four different punters after Mann struggled in week one, and this week he’s being named the best special teams player, strange 7 days.
Nick Mangold will be entering the Jets Ring of Honor this Sunday and he was at the facility yesterday. Mangold played his entire career with Gang Green, appearing in 164 games, hopefully, the stadium will be rocking for him come Sunday.
Zach Wilson will continue to ramp up his workload this week with more individual drills and 7-on-7 action, but he won’t return to 11-on-11s until next week at the earliest. The Jets are still cautiously optimistic that the Jets starting QB will be able to return in week four against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“Expert” game picks are in and it looks as though only DJ has faith in the Jets
Breshad Perriman was the last Jets receiver to have a 100+ yard and 2+ touchdown performance for the Jets back in 2020. On that day the Jets rental caught 5 passes for 101 yards and 2 touchdowns. It was somewhat of a mirage considering he had only 3 touchdowns all season before heading to pastures new with Tom Brady and Tampa Bay.
Garrett Wilson’s performance on Sunday hit differently. Maybe it’s because he’s no rental, and instead, he’s considered the future of this Jets organization, maybe it’s because it was only his 2nd NFL game, or maybe it was just because he’s significantly better than Perriman and we’re starting to dream of discovering our very own Justin Jefferson.
I like to be positive, but sensibly so. Wilson has a long way to go before he’s considered an elite receiver, one a game a star does not make…or something along those times.
Yesterday the beat reported that Wilson was off to the side working with Jets wide receiver coach Miles Austin and I can think of few better teachers for the Jet’s young core. The two-time Pro-Bowler spent much of his career in Dallas and racked up 361 receptions for over 5,000 yards and 37 touchdowns, so Wilson is in good hands.
On my commute to work, I tend to tune into a few favored podcasts, and one of those is Move the Sticks with Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks. When recapping the action from Sunday they talked about Wilson and his unquestioned ability, they also mentioned that it could have been so much better had Joe been a little more accurate. I wanted to see how accurate that was.
After all, Wilson caught 8 passes for 102 yards and 2 touchdowns, how much better could it get? Much better it turns out.
I’m not going to sit here and say that all of these should be completed, that’s just not how it works, but what I wanted to do was give an idea of Wilson’s ceiling within the construct of a single game. I haven’t put the drop in here but I’ve put the five targets that hit the ground.
Wilson was targeted 14 times and caught 8 passes, you add these five and on a perfect day…he could have had 13 catches on 14 targets.
Let’s start with the more difficult one to begin with. This is a double-move vertical which the CB plays really well. I think Flacco would be the first to say this isn’t the best throw. The corner has no real safety help here but the ball placement doesn’t give Wilson a chance to make a play on the ball and stay in-bounds. Wilson may be 0-5 on contested catches so far this year but he was a near 50% guy at Ohio State and he has serious hops. QB’s job here is to give his receiver a chance to make a play, that doesn’t happen.
First of all, I apologize for the angle because the wider lens would give a better indication of just how open Wilson is…and he is open open. Unfortunately, that angle glitched when I tried to grab this, so I had to use the end-zone camera instead, but I think you can clearly see that this is just a miss from Joe. The Jets use a lot of crossers and high/low concepts to stress the defense and Wilson showed a real knack for getting open between zones.
Now we’re going to get into a couple of opportunities for touchdowns, giving you the visual to go with Jeremiah’s comments that Wilson could have had 3 or even 4 touchdowns on the day. I’ve gone for the end-zone angle here because this is all about ball placement. Wilson does an outstanding job in his route, he gets behind the linebacker but Joe throws the ball behind him. When you get the linebacker turned you often see QBs throw right over their heads, if Joe puts the ball there this is a TD.
Here’s one where you want to see Wilson run a slightly better route, he’s still open in the NFL and a QB with a stronger arm could have fizzed it in, but had Wilson cut a little flatter instead of curving the route it would have opened a bigger window for Joe. In an interview yesterday Wilson said there were multiple occasions when he could have gotten open quicker and I can’t help but feel this may be one of those. In the end, the ball placement is behind Wilson and Joe doesn’t really give him a chance to make a play.
The final one is just an outstanding route by Wilson, he gets in and out of his break quickly, he makes that flat 90-degree cut that shakes the corner and it’s just unfortunate that the ball is delivered a little late and a little high which gives the corner time to make the ground and carry Wilson out of bounds for the incompletion. From the end-zone angle it looks as though Joe’s first read is Corey but the corner bails and covers the vertical, which moves Joe onto Wilson.
This isn’t designed to be a criticism of Joe Flacco, after all, he threw for 300+ yards and 4 touchdowns and tossed the game-winning touchdown with seconds left on the clock, I just wanted to highlight that if you thought Wilson’s performance was outstanding…it could have been so much better.
There was also an interesting chart from Kevin Cole of PFF charting his usage, and while his yards per route run is right up there his usage is not. I think this has everything to do with that first half against Baltimore and not necessarily how they envision his use going forward. I wouldn’t worry too much about Wilson being just over 60% of routes run, if we take a look at this again in 3-4 weeks I’d expect him to be up over 80%.
Injury Report
Robert Saleh didn’t seem to be overly concerned coming out of the Browns game. George Fant is getting a rest day and Saleh confirmed he should be good to go on Sunday, it sounds as though only Uzomah is really questionable but it’s worth keeping an eye on JFM as we progress through the week.
As always thank you for reading and for your continued support of TJW. Tomorrow we’re going to be previewing the Bengals!
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Great job as always, I saw a few cut up of Elijah Moore also being open. Did you catch that to? Do we really have a potentially lethal duo?
Great read, David. I appreciate the film breakdowns. I haven't been this excited about a Jets WR duo since Wesley Walker and Al Toon, and the Jets have had some pretty good ones since then.