Saleh: What Zach Wilson needs to improve before Week 3

The Patriots defense wasn’t kind to Jets quarterback Zach Wison Sunday, picking the rookie off four times.

Zach Wilson didn’t exactly look like a first-round draft pick Sunday afternoon in his second career regular-season game.

The rookie quarterback and the Jets took on the division-rival Patriots in a Week 2 matchup at MetLife Stadium; it was most certainly a game Wilson would like to forget.

Zach completed 19 of his 33 throws for 210 yards, zero touchdowns, and a whopping four interceptions in a 25-6 loss.

It was a rude awakening for a young signal-caller who must get used to facing Bill Belichick, but that doesn’t mean he can’t improve following this performance.

What exactly could Wilson work on in order to not make the same mistakes?

“He’s got to quiet his feet down in the pocket. He’s got to get his eyes to where they need to be within the progression of the play, and he’s got to trust,” head coach Robert Saleh told the media Monday. “The o-line did a really nice job in protection [Sunday] and he’s got to sit in there firm and play quarterback on drop-back passes. It’s all a process. Playing quarterback in this league is already hard. A rookie playing quarterback is even harder. We talked about this from the beginning, and I’ve said it here, there’s going to be some hair-pulling moments, there’s going to be unbelievable moments. [Sunday] was a rough one, but that doesn’t mean that’s the trend. He’s going to get better from this and he’s going to have moments when it’s like, ‘Holy cow is he special?’ When we get to those moments, we take them in stride because we have to get better from all of it.”

The bottom line is Wilson is a rookie quarterback in a starting role that carries superb responsibility. Translation: it’s normal for him to try to do too much, which could lead to turnovers.

Like Saleh said following the loss, “it’s okay to play a boring game of football.”

Wilson must keep that ideology in mind when his team faces the Broncos on the road this Sunday (4:05 p.m. ET).

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