Maybe one day someone will make a movie about Chris Streveler’s journey from South Dakota to Winnipeg, to playing quarterback for the Jets, in a December game against the Jaguars, in the pouring rain, with playoff implications, on “Thursday Night Football.”
The fans chanted his name all game. The cheers got so loud at one point, Streveler had to motion to the crowd at MetLife Stadium to quiet down. He completed a 30-yard pass to C.J. Uzomah that would’ve been a touchdown if Streveler hadn’t underthrown it, but the crowd cheered anyway, as if the Jets had just won the Super Bowl. He led the Jets in rushing yards, too.
Even for an organization that could fill a Ripley’s Believe it or Not! museum with relics of all the strange things that have transpired here over the years, Thursday night felt especially weird. It was a night worth remembering, for all the wrong reasons. Streveler’s moment was funny, and fun, but mostly served as a distraction to a hard truth: A once-promising Jets season is over, and this is an organization that must reckon with the mistake it made drafting Zach Wilson in 2021.
Fans braved the pouring rain and harsh winds to sit at MetLife, a few nights before Christmas, to watch the Jets’ season go up in flames, their playoff hopes evaporating after a 19-3 loss. They started 5-2; now they’re 7-8 with two final games still to play at Seattle and Miami.
Wilson is the face of that collapse. The moment Robert Saleh benched him for a practice squad player on Thursday night, the coach gave up on any hope that Wilson might become the quarterback the Jets need. Even if he won’t admit that’s what just happened.
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