Jets' Garrett Wilson, Sauce Gardner want to prove more valuable than big pay days
The Jets' Garrett Wilson, left, and Sauce Gardner. Credit: Noah K. Murray
The one word both Garrett Wilson and Sauce Gardner said they want associated with them is “underpaid.”
Relax. They’re not already griping about the contract extensions they just signed which make them two of the wealthiest players in the league and in one case, with Gardner, the top-paid cornerback.
What they meant was they don’t want to lose their edge or their hunger and they want to overperform even the lofty expectations that now come with their updated Spotrac.com bio pages.
There is only one way for that to happen, though. They have to turn the Jets into winners. Big winners. Winners as big as the ones they came out of this offseason as individually, financially.
The Jets gave the duo their gold bars. They need to pay it back in silver trophies. It’s the only ROI that Woody Johnson, the organization, and the fans should expect for all that money.
Are they worth it now? Nope. Which is what makes these deals unlike most of the ones around the league.
Usually players are rewarded for what they have accomplished. The high cost of winning in the NFL is the rising price tag of labor. Generally it is teams that have legitimate Super Bowl aspirations, that make the playoffs over and over, and the ones that get parades and rings, who have to start handing out paychecks with all those zeros to their key components.
In this case, Wilson and Gardner have delivered zeros. Yes, they are two of the most exciting and dynamic players on the roster and, sure, they are young enough that they should only get better. But in the three years they have been together the Jets’ record is 19-32 and their streak of seasons without making the playoffs is now at 14.
“It's been pretty painful,” Gardner said of his first three Jets seasons on Tuesday, the day he and the rest of the team reported to training camp and the day he physically signed his new deal. “I've always won pretty much. Like, in college, I was always winning the conference championships and we went to the College Football Playoffs that year. Obviously you don't want to lose as a player.
“It's not a good look.”
Neither is rewarding losing.
These guys are getting the beaucoup bucks for what they might be able to do, not for what they have achieved.
The first part of their careers here were about the Jets trying to find ways to bring the best out of them, whether that was by surrounding them with a certain future Hall of Fame quarterback, creating game plans to highlight their skill sets, or just standing back and letting them exchange jukes and cuts, catches and picks, in the one-on-one drills they regularly run against each other that have become epic must-see parts of training camps.
This next phase needs to flip that relationship. It needs to be about Wilson and Gardner bringing the best out of the Jets.
Can that even be done? Wilson and Gardner need to get it done, or none of it will have been worth it for the Jets. Without results, Johnson might as well have used the combined quarter of a billion dollars in extension money to get himself a nice new yacht, bring Mbappe to Crystal Palace, or back his teenage son Brick’s ante into the world’s most lavish Madden tournament.
At least they seem to recognize the unique terms of this barter.
“I feel like I haven’t done anything,” Wilson said at one point on Tuesday. “We haven’t won many games. I haven’t had the season I had hoped and for them to still come in here and believe in me and say ‘Hey, we think you can be part of the successful side of this thing for years to come’ was awesome.”
Added Gardner: “My legacy I want to leave, I want to win games . . . I'm just looking forward to that. That's my main thing. I know my individual accolades, those are going to come with us winning games. I just know it's winning games. Everything else is going to come.”
It wasn’t long ago that Quinnen Williams was where Gardner and Wilson are now. He was the cornerstone draft pick, he was the dominating young player, and he was the one that the Jets opened their purse to keep around. That was two summers ago. It did not result in dubs.
Now Williams will get an assist from the two newest homegrown members of Gang Rollin’-in-the-Green.
“I’m super excited for them,” Williams said Tuesday. “I want to be part of this organization and turn this thing around and get the New York Jets to the Super Bowl. That’s what [the Jets] deserve. And I know those two guys are going to help me.”
Give this to the Jets: They certainly aren’t afraid of paying championship prices and haven’t been for years. It’s brought them notoriety and expectations and headlines and a pretty decent roster. The only thing they haven’t recouped from it is the actual championship itself. Not even close.
But if that ever happens, don’t worry, everyone will seem underpaid.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
