Garrett Wilson reached to the heavens and caught the Jets season with one hand and saved it from falling into eternal darkness.
Wilson saved Aaron Rodgers’ season.
It was third-and-19 at the Texans 26 when Rodgers lofted a rainbow that Wilson snared with his right hand, falling backward against Darryl Stingley in the back of the end zone. It was ruled incomplete. And then overturned. Right shin landing in-bounds.
A catch right out of the Odell Beckham Jr. playbook.
“I hope he gives me a chance,” Wilson said. “I’m glad they overturned it.”
Jets 14, Texans 10, on the way to Jets 21, Texans 13.
“Oh my goodness. I was talking to the ref when they were reviewing it,” head coach Jeff Ulbrich said. “I’m like, ‘Just for the sake of posterity, you have to say that’s in so it goes down in history.’ It would rival the Odell catch. It’s amazing.”
It indeed goes down in history alongside OBJ’s one-handed monster of a catch against the Cowboys. Wilson was at his Texas home watching it with his father.
“When I was in Little League, man, I used to have some catches, man,” Wilson said. “It felt like I was going back to those days a little bit.”
Tyler Conklin had never seen a catch like this. Jalen Mills rated it better than the Beckham catch.
“It might be the best catch I’ve ever seen, ever in my life,” Mills told the Post.
It was Wilson’s second one-handed, right-handed TD catch of the night.
Wilson was going to play second fiddle to Davante Adams.
He said to hell with that.
Adams was out of the game being evaluated for a concussion, and Rodgers turned to Wilson.
When Adams returned, Rodgers found him with a picture-perfect 37-yard TD pass, and it was Jets 21, Texans 10, and C.J. Stroud (eight sacks) wasn’t bringing his team back. Adams’ chemistry with Rodgers materialized earlier on a critical fourth-down catch by the left sideline that left him getting checked for a concussion.
Rodgers, following a first half in which the emotionally bludgeoned boo birds were chanting, “Sell the team!” at Woody Johnson, must have poured himself some cayenne pepper and water in the halftime locker room.
He used a balanced attack and the first one-handed catch from Wilson for the 21-yard TD on a drag route that made it Jets 7, Texans 7.
“He kinda came [and] looked at me last second,” Wilson said. “When I turned upfield, there was no one there.”
You can’t just snap your fingers and go Back to the Future. You can miss an entire season and turn 40 and dream about doing what Tom Brady did and discover that it was little more than The Impossible Dream.
So here was Aaron Rodgers, trapped in a body soon to be 41, trapped inside a franchise that cannot shake Kotite’s Law, formerly known as Murphy’s Law, desperately seeking to exorcise demons he had only heard about from afar.
Desperately searching still for MVP Aaron.
He can still give you glimpses of MVP Aaron.
Especially on a night when Garrett Wilson can remind him of the young Davante Adams.
For Rodgers, it was his first three-TD game of the season.
Wilson (9-90, 2 TDs) allowed him to turn the jeers to cheers.
The Texans took a 7-0 lead on Joe Mixon’s 3-yard TD run at the end of a 98-yard drive that consumed 8:23 of the second quarter.
It should have been 7-7.
Rodgers was sprinting to the end zone on the opening play of the second quarter to congratulate rookie Malachi Corley because Corley had taken a pitch right to the house for a 19-yard TD.
Because these are the Jets, Corley nonchalantly dropped the ball inches before he crossed the goal line.
Touchdown to touchback in the blink of an eye.
“You can’t do that,” Ulbrich told him. “You owe us one.”
At halftime, players and coaches barked passion at one another. Rodgers talked about the season on the line in the second half.
Garrett Wilson reached to the sky and caught a season that was free falling.
