Mike Francesa is still king.
The WFAN legend delivered one of his greatest rants Sunday in a BetRivers reaction podcast following the Jets’ 15-10 loss to the Patriots. It was vintage Francesa — angry, fearless, funny, informative, insightful, everything that makes him the greatest sports talker of all-time. Just 25 minutes of the big guy rearing back and throwing 100 MPH gas on the black, skewering Joe Douglas, Nathaniel Hackett, Robert Saleh, Zach Wilson and “Jets apologists” in a no-holds-barred blasting.
The non-exhaustive highlights:
On Saleh standing by Wilson: “Saleh just keeps lying to everybody. He tells you, OK, that he has confidence in the quarterback and then the game plan does nothing but dump the ball off on every play when they decide to throw it. They show no confidence.”
More on Saleh: “This head coach acts like he has years to get this done. He’s 12-25! He brought in another clueless offensive coordinator. … He’s going to lose the locker room. The players are already getting ticked off, they were getting ticked off on the sideline and rightfully so.”
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Even more on Saleh: “Saleh is going to lose the team and he’s going to lose his job. And I’m not sure that Saleh’s not just a con man to begin with. His career resume is nothing special. … You know what 12-25 in the NFL gets you? Two-thirds of the way out the door!”
On Hackett: “Hackett is awful. The only reason he was tolerable was because he was going to carry Aaron Rodgers’ luggage. No Aaron Rodgers, you don’t want Hackett anywhere near the building!”
On Wilson: “You cannot play this quarterback. If you continue to play this quarterback, the season will be over before Week 9! Mathematically!”
More on Wilson: “He can’t play! Get it? He can’t play! I’m sorry. He might be a nice kid, OK. He’s a good-looking kid. He can throw the ball. But hey, the unemployment line is full of guys who can throw the ball. There is a lot more to playing quarterback than just throwing the ball. His footwork is abysmal. He doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He takes way too much time to get the ball off. And he doesn’t even have a clue of what he’s doing.”
Even more on Wilson: “This is just reality. Zach Wilson can’t win right now. I don’t know if he’s ever going to be able to win. He is a terrible — he’s not bad, he is a terrible quarterback! He is past bad. He leaves bad behind. I can think of a lot of bad quarterbacks who I would take in a second over him! He doesn’t have a clue!”
Even more! “They are not playing around the quarterback. They are playing without a quarterback! … He is not a detriment, he is a complete zero!”
On the second-to-last Jets drive: “Just look at those four downs! All you need, forget every other bit of evidence in the game. Forget for me to tell you all of the things [Wilson] did wrong at quarterback today. Just take those four downs. And let anyone who knows anything about football explain to you what went on on those four downs.
“He threw the ball out of bounds on first down. He caused the pressure on second down because his pocket presence was ridiculously bad. On third down, he had [Garrett] Wilson wide open and missed him. He didn’t even throw to him. And then on fourth down, he threw underneath on fourth-and-10 with the game on the line! What was he doing? Trying to improve his statistics? He dumped the ball to the tight end on fourth-and-10! What good could that possibly do?”
On the Jets being 1-2: “The only reason they have a win is because in Week 1, Josh Allen just lost his mind in the second half and turned the ball over ridiculously. Otherwise they are 0-3.”
On Douglas: “If you are the general manager and you do not have a veteran quarterback in this building by Tuesday, you should be leaving. If I owned the team, you would be gone. The fact you don’t have one here already is a joke. The fact they can’t take [Wilson] out and put a veteran quarterback in is an absolute joke. If they had put a veteran quarterback in on the 45-yard line with 1:43 left and two timeouts, they would have won the game!”
On the schedule: “They play the Chiefs next week! And you’ll probably have Taylor Swift in the building!”
On the offensive line: “They have a lousy offensive line, which they should have improved this season. They are bad on the offensive line. But nobody can block when you basically have nine people on the line of scrimmage.”
In closing: “They better have a veteran quarterback inside that building by Tuesday. If they don’t, they are letting the fans down, they are letting the entire organization down and they are letting the rest of this team down. And they’ll get paid for doing that. This team will come apart at the seams. … Only a complete fool would go back to Wilson. Or try to buy into Wilson.”
James Kratch can be reached at james.kratch@xlmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @jameskratch.
