Jets quarterback Zach Wilson will face the Packers for the first time in a regular season game on Sunday, but it won’t be his first visit to Green Bay.
The Jets had joint practices with the Packers in Wisconsin before the 2021 season and that gave Wilson a chance to meet a player he admired from a distance for many years. Wilson grew up as a big fan of Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and called him “the quarterback I tried to replicate and steal things from” as he was growing up in Utah.
“A little bit of everything,” Wilson said, via Mark Cannizzaro of the New York Post. “He’s extremely accurate underneath. The way he’s able to place the ball, and you see his completion percentage, how he takes care of the ball, and then he’s able to be that athletic, scramble-type quarterback a little bit, off-schedule, being able to create plays out of nothing while protecting himself. I like the way he plays in the offense and outside of the offense.”
Wilson hasn’t been able to replicate Rodgers’ production thus far in his career, but he finished strong in a Week Four win over the Steelers and played well in last Sunday’s win over the Dolphins. Piloting the Jets to another win this weekend would be another big step toward the kind of consistent success that the Jets were hoping to get when they drafted Wilson second overall last year.