Garrett Wilson is betting on a different kind of fall for the New York Jets.
The wide receiver said he believes the team has enough in place to be playing “meaningful football in December” in 2026, a sign of confidence after a brutal 3-14 season that left New York at the bottom of the NFL in all the wrong ways.
“I believe we have the pieces in place that will get us to playing meaningful football in December, something I've dreamed about doing for a long time,” Wilson told ESPN.
That optimism comes after a Year 1 campaign under Aaron Glenn that went off the rails quickly. The Jets became the first team in NFL history not to record a defensive interception and lose five straight games by 23 or more points in the same season.
Wilson’s own 2025 season was cut short by injuries. He played in just seven games and finished with 36 catches, 395 receiving yards and four touchdown grabs.
Even with the missed time, the Jets still view Wilson as a centerpiece. The Chicago native has now played 58 games for New York and has piled up 315 receptions, 3,644 receiving yards and 18 receiving touchdowns.
The biggest change around him is at quarterback. The Jets brought in Geno Smith from the Las Vegas Raiders, and he’ll work under new offensive coordinator Frank Reich with a group that includes Wilson, Adonai Mitchell, Omar Cooper Jr., Mason Taylor, Tim Patrick, Kenyon Sadiq and Breece Hall.
Smith arrives with plenty of baggage and plenty of hope. He led the NFL in interceptions last season with the Raiders, but his best stretches came during his Seattle run in 2022 and 2023, when he made the Pro Bowl twice and won the 2022 AP Comeback Player of the Year Award.
A West Virginia product, Smith has thrown for 22,168 yards with 124 touchdown passes and 89 interceptions in his career, and his record as a starter sits at 42-56-0.
Wilson wanted a firsthand read on the quarterback before the deal became real. After the Jets acquired Smith, he reached out to Seahawks star Jaxon Smith-Njigba, one of Smith’s former teammates and one of Wilson’s close friends.
“Yeah man, when I heard we signed Geno, initially for me it was like I immediately hit up my dawg Jax, who had played with him for two years out in Seattle,” Wilson said on the Jets' official podcast, via Heavy Sports. “He had a lot of good insight. He just loved Geno, he spoke so highly of him.
“All of a sudden, I'm pumped, I'm excited, and then once I got to meet the guy, which would have been a month ago now, mid-April, I had constructed this view of him in my head and how he was going to be. It was cool, right?
I couldn't wait to meet him based on what I had constructed in my head. Then I met him and he just blew that out of the water.”
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