I’m not here to rip Zach Wilson. I didn’t rip Sam Darnold and he’s starting to put it together. Normally, the New York Jets have a horrible track record in developing quarterbacks and that’s not solved. Enter Mike White, who has shown leadership, he’s played hurt, and the players are fully behind him. The players chose White before the coaches did.
White seems like a born leader who may be injury prone. We can’t lose sight of that but for this season, Jets fans will cross their fingers that he can get through the season and possibly a postseason.
His numbers aren’t stellar. And it’s possible he could get better. His quarterback rating isn’t worth putting here. He has a 62% completion rate, that’s ok, and three touchdowns versus two interceptions. The bar is low here but he has gotten some results and some results are better than nothing.
Nobody is ready to give White a big contract. That’s where careful evaluation has to take place in the offseason between the coach, scouts, and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur who has had ups and downs this season. He isn’t blameless when they lose and he deserves some credit for getting the Jets into the playoff hunt. One thing for sure is Jets fans can’t treat this time like a 4-5 win team anymore. The standard has been raised.
Jets head coach, Robert Saleh has done a nice job of juggling his opinion about the quarterbacks in his post-game press conferences. He hasn’t killed off Wilson and he hasn’t elevated Flacco, and rightly so. With White, he’s been very down the middle about him knowing that there’s still a chance that he’s not the guy in the long run.
The Jets’ running game has gone south. That’s on LaFleur and on Zonovan Knight getting keyed on. His yards per carry have been dropping. The positive this his away yards per carry average is 5.0. Maybe that holds against the Seahawks. I would activate James Robinson but I doubt we see that.
The Seahawks will bum-rush White to get to him and get him out of the game. That fit Pete Carroll’s playbook. They will play desperate and the hope is that the Jets can at least match that but hopefully exceed that at a tough road venue facing former quarterback Geno Smith. This will be a weird one.
