Zach Wilson is So Bad He Freed Belichick Up to Spend Part of the Bye Week Working on the Vikings

CJ GUNTHER. Shutterstock Images.

The term "Work smarter, not harder," is generally credited to an industrial engineer named Allen F. Morgenstern in the 1930s. But it's a concept that has been around in some form or another almost since the invention of labor itself. Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Ford and other great innovators espoused the concept of proper, efficient time management using other words. Even noted anti-industrialist Henry David Thoreau expressed it, in his signature prose. "It is not enough to be busy," he said. "The question is, what are we busy about?" 

And so it is with inspired football geniuses. The stories of coaches putting in 18 hour days and sleeping on cots in their offices are so common as to be a trope at this point. But if simply putting in long hours directly led to success, then all the championship rings would be worn by insomniacs. And with all due respect to the man, Andy Reid strikes me as a guy who follows Coach Fintstock's first rule of life, "Never get less than 12 hours of sleep."

Meanwhile, the Old Coaches Shelter is filled with out-of-work jerks who prided themselves on out-working everyone else, without giving any thought to how to utilize their time to maximum efficiency. 

And the man who has mastered the art of coaching time management is the one who needs it most this week. Bill Belichick's Patriots have to go from a last-minute win in Foxboro to Minneapolis to take on the team with the second best record in football, coming off a humiliating 40-3 loss at home. And they have to be there by tomorrow. 

So how do you prepare for a challenge of that magnitude with such a quick turnaround? You use the time you didn't need to prepare for the Jets:

Efficient. Productive. Effective. Diabolical. 

Why waste time on prepping for Zach Wilson when you know you've already put ;little red plastic hotels on every piece of property you own in his head? He wasn't suddenly going to figure out how to beat you between the third game you dismantled him and the fourth. Any more than Sam Darnold did. Or Geno Smith before him. Or Mark Sanchez before him. It's a tradition with the Jets that their quarterbacks see more ghosts than the Scooby Gang when they face Belichick's defenses. So rather than just revamp the game plan for every meeting, just replace the old names with the new names Mad Libs-style, and - voila - you're done! Chef's kiss!

And speaking of Smith, here's a measure of how bad Wilson has been:

And just because I haven't gotten sick of admiring just how bad Wilson was, here's the video evidence. 

Not seeing Denzel Mims as the Pats middle safeties in Cover-4 miscommunicated, with both Devin McCourty and Kyle Dugger sitting on the hitch route, and leaving Mims all alone on a post:

Missing Mims with a throw on another post, this time where it appeared Wilson didn't know the play:

Much to the consternation of Garrett Wilson:

Then there was this, on the throw you ask your quarterback to make in youth football, just to give him some confidence when things aren't going right:

Then there's this compilation of all his near-interceptions:

So why waste the effort on the Jets when the Vikings are a clear and present danger? What, are you going to try to hold Wilson to eight completions and force 11 punts, when nine and 10 respectively are enough to get the job done? It would make no sense. ay

Thursday night, when the rest of us are in elastic-waist sweat pants and on our third helpings, Belichick's jet-lagged troops are going to have to solve the problems presented by Justin Jefferson, Dalvin Cook and Kirk Cousins. Fortunately, they won't be going unprepared. Thanks to the Jets. The gift that has kept on giving ever since the "hc of nys" press conference that changed the world forever.