Jets head coach Robert Saleh said after Sunday’s 28-24 loss to the Buccaneers that blame for running a quarterback sneak on fourth-and-two late in the game fell on the coaches for not doing a good enough job communicating to quarterback Zach Wilson that he should hand the ball off to Braxton Berrios regardless of any read he might make about the defensive front.
Some outside the organization, including former Jets players appearing on Sunday postgame shows, took a different stance and suggested Wilson called his own number in order to be the hero for the team. Saleh rejected that notion while again putting the blame on coaches for making a call that a rookie wasn’t going to reject at this point in his career.
“I don’t know about that one,” Saleh said. “He’s a rookie, his head’s barely above water with regards to the scheme, he’s still in a pleasing motive of his career, in terms of just doing things the way it’s drawn up. If you’re talking year three, year four and he does something like that, then I guess you can start, maybe. But as a rookie who’s still trying to figure this league out and trying to figure what he can and can’t get away with and how to take control over things and all that. He’s nowhere close to that in terms of a selfish player. He wants to get better, he’ll learn from this.”
Saleh said he thinks Wilson will get to a point where “he’s just going to look to the sideline and just flip the bird” to offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur when he doesn’t like a play call, but that he isn’t close to making “a decision from a selfish standpoint because his neck’s barely over water with regards to schemes.”