On many weekends late last spring and early summer, with his football future very much in doubt, Brigham Young quarterback Zach Wilson pulled his Mazda 6 onto an I-15 on-ramp in Provo, Utah. It would be a Friday, mid-afternoon, and Wilson would be road-tripping to see his quarterback tutor, John Beck, in southern California. On these trips, Wilson alternated between podcasts and an audiobook. (Steve Young’s lessons of the benefits of adversity in “QB: My Life Behind the Spiral” resonated strongly.) Wilson put his body on mind-clearing autopilot, driving through southwest Utah, skirting through 28 miles of northwest Arizona, then into the Pacific Time Zone, through the Vegas sprawl in southern Nevada, into the High Desert of southeastern California, into the SoCal ‘burbs and crashing at the home of BYU teammate Isaac Rex in San Clemente around midnight.
Drive time: 10 hours. Distance: 674 miles, stopping only for gas and food.
He’d actually spent a month-and-a-half in California working with Beck when BYU shut down workouts in March due to COVID protocols. As the season drew closer, the long weekend commutes and workouts were simply to leave no stone unturned. Before starting the off-season drills with Beck, Wilson knew the 2020 season would make or break him as a quarterback, coming off a so-so 2019 BYU season. “This is a really big year for me,” Wilson said to Beck. “The coaches told us it’s an open quarterback competition. I need to go out and earn it.” On these weekends, Wilson stayed for two workouts with Beck at Golden West College in Huntington Beach. On Sunday afternoon, he’d drive back to Utah; he needed to be back for BYU workouts Monday. When COVID eventually canceled the BYU workouts, Wilson stayed in California for five weeks or so for throwing and footwork and QB-conditioning drills with Beck.
Wilson worked DoorDash many Saturday nights in California (and sometimes back in Utah), for gas and expense money. On a busy night, he could make $200.
Now, just months later, Wilson is the 2021 version of Joe Burrow. Remember: Burrow was a likely day-three draft pick before his 2019 season at LSU, then blew up and went first overall in 2020. Wilson, entering last season, was not even a sure draftee this year. Of course, he won the starting job. And now, after his golden autumn (74 percent passing, 11.0 yards per attempt, 33-3 TD-to-pick ratio), Wilson might be the second pick in the draft.
“There’s days I’ll just sit back and be like, ‘Wow—where has this last year taken me?’ “ Wilson told me in a 50-minute conversation from California on Saturday. “It’s crazy how quickly my life has changed.”
Wilson’s story is complicated, and fairly inspirational.
This column, in late February or early March, is most often the NFL Scouting Combine column. It’s digging deep into JaMarcus Russell or Andrew Luck or Carson Wentz, or the story of the winter. Usually, at the combine in Indianapolis, I try to find the most fascinating player in the draft, or the top pick, and spend some time and illuminate the player who’s about to be a household sporting name. With no combine this year, and with the 330 players cast adrift in all corners of the country to impress NFL teams on Pro Days and Zoom meetings only, I’ll introduce you to one of the players far less famous than Trevor Lawrence, but who will be big news in the 60 days before we get to round one of the 2020 NFL Draft.
First, a quick veer to NFL news before we get to what makes Zach Wilson tick. It’s not the Deshaun Watson–Russell Wilson news, which will come later. It’s more about a strange new bit of scheduling that will impact virtually everything on the NFL calendar. In some order:
• The 17-game schedule is highly likely in 2021. No surprise there. TV partners and NFL schedulers are working under the assumption that the 17-game schedule (the way was paved for it last March when players approved a…
Read More: FMIA: Insight on NFL’s 17-Game Schedule and Story of Zach Wilson