Zach Wilson made his return from a knee injury on Sunday, but there was one play in the second half where Jets fans held their breath after it looked like Wilson tweaked that knee again while getting sacked.
He was able to walk it off after hobbling around for a hot minute, and he returned to the game after getting checked out briefly on the sidelines…and as it turns out, he had that plan in mind knowing his knee might give a little at some point.
“That was something I knew coming in; I think it happened earlier in the game as well when I ran the keeper and threw it away, too, but it's going to do that sometimes," Wilson said. "It's not fully healed and we understand that. But I feel good to play and so that's why I'm playing. And I understand that sometimes it's going to shift and stretch it a little bit, but there's no damage that can come from that, so you just have to walk it off and move on.”
In truth, Wilson was madder that he got sacked than about any possible further damage to the knee.
“I still got to throw that ball away. I let it affect me right there and I gotta just find a way to get that ball out of my hands," he said. “I didn’t mind extending to what I did, but I tweaked the knee and my body shut down, and I forgot everything that was going on because of it.”
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The reason? According to Wilson, his knee is not 100 percent healed, or even 100 percent stable, but there’s no real chance he can do any further damage to the sprained PCL he suffered a month ago, at least not in terms of exacerbating the initial injury.
“I knew from practice it’s not fully stable ad that’s going to happen, but there’s no risk of injuring it further, so in my head, I was like, just walk it off,” he said. “It felt a little weak at the time, but I knew in a couple minutes of walking it off it would be fine. So I just have to deal with it, and I don’t even think about it.”
The one thing the Jets have to think about, though, is that in the midst of a 3-7 campaign, is whether or not Wilson’s health is more important than further development.
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