Even though his team has moved onto a different quarterback in Aaron Rodgers, New York Jets general manager Joe Douglas still wonders if things could have been different had the team handled the development of former No. 2 overall pick Zach Wilson differently.
“I go back and I look at a lot of things and things that can be done differently, things that were in our control, out of our control,” Douglas told Pro Football Talk. “And every situation’s different. I feel like in today’s NFL, when you take a quarterback in the first round, and you take a quarterback high, time’s against you. And you need to see what you have so you can make a decision in that four-year window, three-year window.”
The Jets ended up giving Wilson only a two-year trial before making the move for Rodgers. When pondering what went wrong, Douglas identified the lack of a veteran mentor for Wilson early in his career as one of the possibilities.
“I think going back, it would have been great to have a veteran quarterback like a Joe Flacco that first season,” Douglas said. “But ultimately, we made the decision to jump in head first with our youth movement. We had so many first- and second-year players, new staff. Let’s go in and attack this thing with youth. We know there’s going to be some growing pains, but we’re all going to grow together. I think we saw some of the benefits of that last year. But sometimes you don’t take into account the ramifications of playing a young quarterback early in his career. And so, I think if I had to do everything over again, I would have probably had that veteran presence in the room…
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