Entering his third year with the New York Jets, Garrett Wilson’s improvement has not escaped Robert Saleh’s notice. During his pre-practice media availability on Thursday, the head coach spoke about Wilson’s overall strides as a player.
“He’s always been an ultimate competitor, but he’s really been working on the fine details of his route running, getting to where the quarterback needs him to be. He understands that sometimes you don’t always have to just absolutely destroy your guy at the line of scrimmage,” said Saleh.
“Sometimes it’s just running around as fast as possible to get into a spot as quickly as possible to the quarterback and deliver a ball. And he’s starting to understand all of that. Because of it, I think he’s realizing that his game is so darn good and so twitchy and so fast that he doesn’t have to do a lot to gain the separation he needs to get open.”
This echoes what Aaron Rodgers previously said about Wilson’s route-running. As dynamic as the receiver is, he occasionally wastes some movement in his routes. This has been an area of focus for him during training camp.
Additionally, Saleh spoke about how Sauce Gardner has helped Wilson improve as a player.
“You hear it a lot: iron sharpens iron. But I think we’ve got a pretty damn good secondary. D.J. [Reed], Michael Carter. I know he hasn’t been practicing. Our safety group, the secondary across the board, is pretty darn good. They’re they’re tacticians. They play with great technique and fundamentals, and they make it hard on everybody,” Saleh remarked.
“And for a guy like Garrett to go against what I will argue is one of the top secondaries in all the football, I think it only makes everybody better.”
The combination of facing top-tier secondary players and year-to-year improvements has the chance to allow Wilson to take a giant leap forward in 2024. He will rarely face players better than Gardner and Reed, while working with Rodgers will force him to perform at his best consistently.
Wilson has already seen the fruits of his labor during the training camp. If he continues to work in the same fashion he has up to this point, there is no reason the star wide receiver cannot elevate his game to a whole different level this season.
