Well, Joe from Beaver Falls sure caused a stir, didn’t he?
That would be long-time listener, long-time caller Joe Willie Namath, who dialed into Michael Kay’s ESPN Radio program the other day and carpet-bombed the Jets’ quarterback, the Jets’ coaching and the Jets’ front office.
In the course of 20 or so minutes Namath hearkened back to his old days on the silver screen and crafted a merging of Denzel Washington from the “Equalizer” movies and Liam Neeson from the “Taken” movies, adding a notable touch of all four “John Wick” flicks because he sounded like a man who’s dog had just died.
The money quote was probably “disgusting,” which is the way Namath summarized Zach Wilson in general, specifically one of the sacks he took when he gave himself up before any onrushing Patriots could actually tackle him.
“I wouldn’t keep him,” Broadway Joe said of Bowery Zach. “I’ve seen enough.”
That’s the easy part of the rant. Finding a Jets fan who hasn’t already washed their hands of Zach Wilson is about as hard as finding a Mets fan with a Daniel Vogelbach poster on his wall. That wasn’t just low-hanging fruit, it was low-hanging all-you-can-eat at a Ponderosa.
But it’s something Namath said later, even as the spittle flew, that’s more relevant to the Jets’ health, both today and down the road.
“These guys aren’t picking the right players,” Namath said. “They aren’t doing a good job of coaching. It’s evident. I mean, you’ve got to look and see. If you have an eye for football at all you see things are haywire. It’s too crazy. They need to fix it and that’s getting rid of a lot of people and bringing new ones in.”
Namath didn’t name names but he couldn’t have been more obvious if he’d come up with clever pseudonyms like “Sobert Raleh” and “Doe Jouglas.”
And look: we are certainly in the middle of finding out, once and for all, if Robert Saleh has the chops to be an NFL coach. Aaron Rodgers’ injury meant that the Jets’ ambitions are no longer Super Bowl-or-bust, but rather a furtive hope that the six games the Jets play after Dec. 1 have some kind of actual meaning for the them. We’ll see.
It’s Joe Douglas that has to start answering for this, and by “this” we mean the single-most abhorrent quarterback situation the NFL has seen in some time. Yes, he traded for Rodgers. But even before the still-hard-to-fathom, history-repeating-itself moment when Rodgers’ Achilles yelped at him, it was well established that the risk involved in bringing a 39-year-old man to be your messiah was … well, substantial.
Remember, if the almost surreal nature of Rodgers wearing Jets colors was the No. 1 narrative of the preseason, then 1A was the 10,000-ton spotted neon orange rhinoceros in the room: keeping him upright. It became a storyline on “Hard Knocks.” It was on the tip of every fan’s tongue, and would’ve been even if all of those fans didn’t have a permanent soul scar from what happened to Vinny Testaverde 24 years ago.
Rodgers’ participation in that exhibition finale was talked about in security terms like a Pope’s visit. Rodgers’ pretty TD pass to Garrett Wilson in that game was a secondary story to Rodgers simply emerging unscathed. There may not have been a 100 percent guarantee he would get hurt, but it was 100 percent that the idea of him getting hurt would be omnipresent.
And Douglas’ fail-safe, the whole time, was Zach Wilson.
This after a year in which Wilson had proven he wasn’t just physically incapable of handling such duties but cripplingly immature, too. By the end of last year it was obvious to everyone but Joe Douglas that Wilson had been a whiff as a No. 2 draft pick. The only reason to not give up that ghost was a stubborn unwillingness to admit a mistake.
And here’s the awful part: even as Douglas received – and deserved – blame for missing with Wilson, he also had one of the great draft-day coups ever a year later, selecting both the NFL offensive (Garrett Wilson) and defensive (Sauce Gardner) rookies of the year. He put together, in relatively short order, a team that arrived as a playoff contender at least a year ahead of time last season and – but for a gaping vacuum at QB – would’ve gotten there.
Making sure Rodgers had an able, and capable, backup other than Wilson would’ve actually been easily spun positively: 1) GM makes bad pick; 2) GM recognizes mistake; 3) GM cuts losses and moves on, defiantly.
That’s not just fanciful thinking, either: the 49ers had their own fiasco with Trey Lance, picked one spot behind Wilson in 2021. It was actually worse, for all the draft capital Lance cost. But John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan owned the gaffe, moved on, and sure look like a hell of a good bet to ride Brock Purdy, erstwhile Mr. Irrelevant, all the way to Vegas.
Douglas didn’t own it, doubled down instead. So nobody – not Joe from Beaver Falls, nor anyone else – wants to talk about the good Douglas has done. No. 2 blocks the sun that completely. That’s on Douglas. And that’s going to be a hard one to overcome.