Zach Wilson's back, but Jets aren't 'his' team

Just a few hours earlier, there would have been no question about the most important player in the Jets locker room. In the entire organization, probably.

It was Aaron Rodgers’ team.

From the moment he walked in the doors in April to the moment he trotted onto the field for his first huddle with them on Monday night, he was the central figure for the franchise. They brought him in to be the star, and he was. Everyone else was supporting cast.

Even his absence after he was injured with what we now know was a season-ending torn left Achilles overshadowed what would have been very newsworthy elements of the game on any other night: The remarkable return of Breece Hall, the ridiculous touchdown catch by Garrett Wilson, the three interceptions by Jordan Whitehead.

The three interceptions by Josh Allen!

None of it measured up to the enormity of what happened on the Jets’ fourth snap of the season.

Years from now, when we recall that night, it won’t be the electrifying 65-yard walk-off punt return for a touchdown by the undrafted rookie from Stephen F. Austin College —  Xavier Gipson in his NFL debut — that succinctly describes it.

It will be known simply and forever as the Aaron Rodgers Achilles game.

But as Allen Lazard stood in the locker room following the win over the Bills, one-seventeenth of the long regular season in the books, conversation eventually came around to the team’s current quarterback situation.

It was becoming abundantly clear, even before the Tuesday MRI made it official, that the Jets were no longer Aaron Rodgers’ team.

So, Lazard was asked, seems like this is Zach Wilson’s team now, huh?

“No,” he said adamantly. “It’s our team.”

That’s the biggest change of mentality that will have to take place in the coming days and weeks as the Jets adjust to their new post-Rodgers norm… and do so just as they were getting acquainted with the suddenly dated peri-Rodgers norm. It will be impossible for any one person to step into the vacuum his injury creates. Certainly not Zach Wilson.

Oh, he’ll be the quarterback. For a while, at least, unless and until his play necessitates another change. The Jets have already started the process of searching for a veteran to add.

“We’re rolling with Zach,” Robert Saleh said on Tuesday, piling so much praise on the third-year player and the “leap years” of growth he has made since last year that he may have come dangerously close to making Wilson’s Achilles buckle under the weight of his wordiness.

But for this to work and for the Jets to continue to have a reasonable chance at attaining at least some of the goals they had when they took the field in such magnificent fashion on Monday night, this can’t become Zach Wilson’s team.

Not because the been-there, done-that thought of having him as the quarterback is so unappetizing. Because neither he nor anyone else on the roster has the gravitas to pull it off.

So these Jets have to become C.J. Mosley’s team. They have to become Quinnen Williams’ team. They have to become Sauce Gardner’s and Garrett Wilson’s and Lazard’s and Randall Cobb’s and everyone else’s team.

Saleh did say the sentence — “This is Zach’s team” — but only in the context of not shopping for a replacement at this time.

So for now, Wilson has to be something Rodgers never could have been for the Jets.

He has to be just the quarterback.

That’s a little like going to a wedding and describing the woman in the white dress as “just the bride.” Quarterback is the most important position on most football rosters. It certainly was a day or so ago for the Jets, too.

Those times have past.

There were, perhaps surprisingly, some positive signs from Wilson that indicated Rodgers may have imparted some influence on the player who, remember, was so crummy and mentally strained a year ago that his play necessitated the acquisition of Rodgers. Two of them came on back-to-back key plays in the fourth quarter.

The Jets had just converted a third-down on a 5-yard pass from Zach Wilson to Garrett Wilson to the 9 and were hurrying to the line for a hurry-up snap, a one-word call without a huddle.

“But no one knew what to do,” Lazard said. “Like, no one knew what to do… So we just kind of went out there and Zach picked up [6] yards on the play.”

Normally such chaos isn’t welcomed, but Lazard pinned that chaotic play as a big step for the young quarterback.

“It lifted the weight off of Zach's shoulders,” he said. “It was like, you don't have to be perfect. You come out here, no matter what play we call, we just have to make it work and make it happen. I think he did a really good job of responding, staying calm cool and collected, and just letting it go."

The next play was going to be a run from the 3. Nope.

“You guys know G [Wilson], that dude pushed me all day to throw the fade, throw the fade, throw the fade,” Zach Wilson said. “And I want to, you know? We had the run play called and Coach [Nathaniel] Hackett goes, ‘Hey, let’s err on the side of handing this one off.’ And I just looked out there and saw G and I’m like, ‘I’m throwing this one up. He’s going to go up there and make a play.’”

He did, tipping the ball to himself before coming down with the game-tying touchdown.

Now, from time to time this season, the Jets may ask or even require Wilson to bring something special, something a little Rodgers-esque, as he did at times in Week One. It will have to be displayed sparingly, though. That’s when Wilson is a functioning quarterback. Too much razzle-dazzle and things tend to go south for him and the Jets very quickly. Wilson may have repaired his “rapport” with teammates since they turned on him last year, as Saleh indicated, but if the Jets start losing games because of his bad decisions and turnovers, it won’t take long for those glares and eye rolls to return.

The Jets would like to do with a lot less Zach Wilson Improv Theater, of which they have already seen plenty over the years. There’s little need for him to start straying from any scripts they feed him.

Seriously, whose team does he think this is anyway?

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.