Garrett Wilson shares striking similarities to another Jets star

Ask any New York Jets fans who their two biggest young stars are, and they will almost undoubtedly point to Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson. The two were top-10 picks in the 2022 draft, won their respective Rookies of the Year, and recently signed lucrative four-year extensions to keep them in New York for the foreseeable future.

But these are actually not the two most similar young stars on the roster.

Gardner has already shown the ability to match his talent to his results. While his 2022-23 seasons may not have been the absolute peak of his abilities, it doesn’t get much better than back-to-back first-team All-Pro appearances. Despite a dip in 2024, Gardner has lived up to the hype.

But in back-to-back seasons, the Jets drafted players in the first round with sky-high ceilings: Wilson in 2022, and Will McDonald in 2023. Those two have incredible similarities when you look at their profiles and career trajectories. Take a look under the hood.

Freak athletes

Shockingly, Garrett Wilson posted only a 7.7 Relative Athletic Score in the 2022 NFL Combine. McDonald fared significantly better, posting a 9.66 RAS in the 2023 version.

Regardless of what Wilson’s numbers show, though, his performance on the field showcases his incredible athleticism. The “Jordan logo” catch against the Texans in 2024 speaks for itself. His unorthodox method of lunging into breaks and still turning on a dime completely belies his poor agility metrics in the Combine.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s numbers aptly describe his athleticism. He jumped over a car shortly after the Jets drafted him with the 15th overall pick in 2023. McDonald explodes off the line at offensive linemen so quickly that they don’t know what hit them. His ankle flexion is at a Micah Parsons level.

Incredible promise in first full season

Wilson started the 2022 season as the fourth receiver on the Jets’ depth chart. It took precisely one game for offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur to realize the error of his ways. In his second NFL game, Wilson posted eight catches for 102 yards and two scores, including the game-winner, while receiving passes from Joe Flacco.

Wilson finished his rookie season with 83 receptions, 1,103 yards, and four touchdowns while playing in the league’s 27th-ranked passing offense by DVOA. He won the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year award and seemed primed to ascend to the ranks of the league’s elite in Year 2.

McDonald found his path to playing time almost completely blocked in 2023. He was drafted for a role that Bryce Huff filled at an elite level. Jermaine Johnson and John Franklin-Myers were entrenched with starter-level snaps, and Micheal Clemons was also (inexplicably) ahead of him on the depth chart. That led to just 183 defensive snaps for McDonald in 2023, including just 99 as a pass rusher.

By the start of the 2024 season, though, Huff and Franklin-Myers were gone, and Haason Reddick was holding out. That already cleared a path for McDonald to receive a significant bump in snaps.

Then, when Johnson tore his Achilles in Week 2, McDonald became entrenched as a starter. He finished the 2024 season having played 66% of the Jets’ defensive snaps, matching Johnson’s total from the prior season.

And McDonald took full advantage of his opportunity. Flying mostly under the radar, he posted 10.5 sacks, tied for the 11th-most among edge rushers, and a 13.2% pressure rate, which ranked in the 78th percentile among 86 qualified edge rushers (min. 225 pass rush snaps). McDonald also set the stage for an incredible leap in his second full season.

Technique flaws preventing greatness

Even with a terrific start, both Wilson and McDonald showcased flaws in their game that would need to be improved for them to truly become among the league’s best.

For Wilson, it started with getting off the line against press coverage. Often, he did not eat up enough ground off the snap to threaten the cornerback, allowing them to sit on his route and jam him. He also did not have his hands ready for contact, causing him to be thrown off his route way too often. Further flaws in Wilson’s game included an inability to stack defensive backs and contested catch struggles, also stemming from technique.

Unfortunately, Wilson did not fix those issues in Years 2 and 3. If anything, they became more prominent in his game. His contested catch numbers improved in 2024, but he still has many of the same issues with contact, giving the quarterback a window to throw deep, and attacking the ball.

Meanwhile, there are two primary holes in McDonald’s game: play recognition against the run and playing high with improper hand placement. He developed a diverse array of pass rush moves in Year 2, winning with a bull-jerk, ghost move, and straight bull rush in addition to his signature elite spin move.

With McDonald’s pass rush arsenal and incredible athleticism, the only reason he is not yet one of the league’s best pass rushers is his hands.

Whether it’s hand placement (often on the shoulders instead of in the chest or elbow area, depending on the move) or head and hand angle (ducking with the hands straight ahead and wide), he often gets caught up simply because his hands didn’t land where they should have.

Furthermore, McDonald still lets himself get contacted too often during a move rather than throwing a preparatory club, chop, or swipe to defeat any potential contact.

This primary issue in McDonald’s game is more easily fixable. What is harder to account for is his run defense, which may be the worst in the NFL among all edge rushers. In large part, that is because of incredibly poor play recognition, combined with those same hand placement problems.

McDonald is often too late to recognize a run play. When he does recognize it, he frequently does not identify the type of run play coming and therefore fails to counter the block he is facing. For example, he often gets cracked because he doesn’t see it coming, or he’ll allow his momentum to be carried by a tight end rather than anchoring against it or spinning off it.

While adding weight this offseason could help (Aaron Glenn told the media that McDonald added 15 pounds), his issues against the run will persist if he doesn’t improve his recognition and technique. That could prevent him from being a true force as an edge rusher no matter how dominant he becomes as a pass rusher.

One big difference

These same criticisms of Wilson’s game were clear after his rookie season. Rather than refining his technique, he has seemingly coasted on his talent ever since and has failed to take the next step.

Wilson’s issues with Aaron Rodgers may have stemmed partially from Rodgers’ inaccuracy and preference for Davante Adams, but they also came largely from Wilson’s tendency not to be in the right place at the right time.

Meanwhile, McDonald came into the league as an absurdly talented but raw pass rusher. He was considered a reach in the draft because of his lack of pass rush diversity or even much of a plan at all beyond his spin move. In the 2024 offseason and into the regular season, Robert Saleh emphasized that McDonald had to develop power in his game to become a reliable pass rusher.

But, unlike Wilson, McDonald showed immense improvement in that area. He showed enough of a bull rush and bull-jerk that blockers now need to account for that, even if it’s not his preferred move. He also learned to play with angles, threatening the linemen both inside and out, and he got better with his ghost move, leading to him landing on the ground less often.

That was incredible progress in just one offseason for a player who didn’t play football until his junior year of high school and entered the league as a nearly-24-year-old rookie.

In some ways, Wilson’s and McDonald’s outlook heading into 2025 is similar. Both are on the cusp of greatness if they can refine their technique to match the freakish athleticism and high floor they have established.

However, there may be some reason to believe in McDonald’s ability to maximize his potential more than Wilson’s. Namely, McDonald showed incredible improvement from Year 1 to Year 2, whereas Wilson stagnated.

To be fair, McDonald came from a much lower baseline than Wilson did. Wilson entered the league and became an instant sensation. McDonald had much more to learn. That could account for the difference.

But still, given the landscape of the NFL, when players show vast improvement from one year to the next, it often showcases their personal time and effort investment rather than just coaching. Players don’t suddenly develop new pass rush moves in the NFL’s ever more limited offseason program.

It’s rather like pitchers who come into spring training with a new pitch to work on; they don’t suddenly develop the pitch in spring training but rather work on it on their own time in the offseason, usually with their personal coaches and/or consultants.

McDonald clearly did plenty of his own film study and training to build his pass rush arsenal. Wilson, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be improving in any notable way, specifically in his areas of struggle.

Perhaps this is simply indicative of an inherent fallacy. There is a widespread belief that if a player was already so good as a rookie, things will only improve from there. But maybe some players just reach their peak faster and then stagnate. Maybe this is just who Wilson is. And maybe the 2024 version of McDonald is just as good as he will be, too.

But it doesn’t seem like it. When a player has all the athletic talent in the world, it seems like there should be a way to fix flaws in technique. If Jets X-Factor’s Joe Blewett can pinpoint the player’s exact areas of struggle, down to the finest details of technique, then the player himself should be able to identify and work on those, too.

We saw Quinnen Williams take a major leap as a player between Year 3 and Year 4. Before that, Williams was an excellent run defender and an okay pass rusher. He turned himself into one of the league’s best defensive tackles simply by becoming more assertive with his raw power.

Quincy Williams went from an extremely volatile linebacker playing with abandon to a far more complete force. Jamien Sherwood took advantage of years as a backup to go from a converted safety to one of the league’s most complete linebackers. John Simpson went from an afterthought to a rock-solid guard.

Every opportunity in the world to become elite stands in front of both Wilson and McDonald. There’s nothing holding them back from stardom except their own work ethic.

And if they make the leap, the Jets could become one of the league’s most surprising playoff contenders in 2025.