Chargers News: Jets Head Coach Defends Zach Wilson After Terrible Night Against LA

The Chargers made it tough for their Week 9 opponent

The Los Angeles Chargers grabbed a much-needed win to stay alive in the playoff picture against the New York Jets on Monday, 27-6. 

The Chargers displayed their best defensive effort of the season, allowing a season-low 270 total yards and forced three turnovers. It wasn't pretty for the Chargers as well, but LA did more than enough to come out with the win.

Chargers QB Justin Herbert had one of the worst outings of the season, throwing for only 136 yards, going 16-for-30 on his passes, and getting sacked five times with a 41.1 QBR. 

Still, all that was overshadowed with the win, unlike Jets QB Zach Wilson, who had a slightly better performance than Herbert but got sacked for a fumble twice, and failed to find the end zone against the stifling Chargers D. 

Wilson was once again ridiculed after his performance, but his head coach, Robert Saleh, came to his defense and detailed what Zach did well. 

"There's some good, some bad that he can build off of," Saleh said Tuesday of Wilson, via team transcript. "Some things he still needs to get rid of whether it's understanding when enough is enough. Understanding what defenses are giving you and just being a little bit quicker and saying no to things, if you will. I thought overall he was distributing the ball and like I said we were moving it at times, always presence in the pocket for every quarterback in football can always be a little bit better, but like I said, he could be a lot better. It's lazy to just put it all on him. I think like I said, it was a very, it was collective all the way across the board."

(Per Robert Saleh via NFL)

It's easy to blame Wilson, considering he's been a bust for his draft position and how his poor play gets heavily scrutinized. However, since taking over, he's been quite solid for New York. 

It's not easy being the lead man in New York, especially after replacing a future Hall of Famer in Aaron Rodgers. Fans and pundits want nothing more than to blame Wilson and have him replaced, but Saleh points out the fact that there is more than meets the eye. 

"It is the easy thing to do," Saleh said of replacing Wilson. "He's the most, him and the play caller are the two most visible things. So, when things aren't good, it's easy to blame them, right? It's easy to blame the people who are most visible to the camera, but it's important to keep the main thing the main thing, watch the tape. Look at the breakdowns whether it was on the offensive line at an execution standpoint, play-call standpoint. There's a bunch of different reasons and obviously they also get paid. So, they did a lot of really good things too, but if it was just him, it would be something that would be worth discussing, but this is a collective issue that we all need to get on the same page with. Whether it's dropped balls, players being where they're supposed to be, executing the way we need to execute, calling plays that need to be called, putting players in the positions they need to be put into that's all of us and yes, he has a lot of things that he needs to improve on and I know he understands that, but at the same time, this is collective."

(Per Robert Saleh via NFL)

But, hey, that's a New York problem — unlike the Bolts who have their QB situation all situated.