Zach Wilson Is Steve Young


By [Daniel Suarez]

There are moments in sports when coincidence tiptoes toward prophecy—when history doesn’t repeat itself so much as it echoes in perfect, uncanny rhythm. Such is the case with Zach Wilson and Steve Young, two quarterbacks separated by generations but tethered by fate. If you’re not paying attention, you might miss the rhyme. But it’s there—loud, rhythmic, almost cosmic.

Both were legends at BYU. Record-setters. Flamethrowers in a quarterback-friendly system who could beat you with their arms and break you with their legs. Steve Young dazzled the NCAA in the early ’80s, Wilson in the strange COVID-shadowed 2020 season. They stood at the same physical intersection: around 6’2”, 215 pounds, agile, fast-twitch athletes with rifles for arms and a magician’s sense of improvisation. If you spliced their college highlight reels together—one left-handed, one right—you’d find near-identical flashes of brilliance: rollouts, cross-body lasers, sprinting touchdowns, and backyard bravado baked into every snap.

Then, the NFL came calling. Both were drafted by organizations that didn’t know what to do with them.

Steve Young went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the NFL’s graveyard for quarterbacks at the time. A disorganized, visionless franchise with a porous offensive line and a coaching staff that never quite knew what it had. In 19 games over two years, Young looked lost—11 touchdowns to 21 interceptions, a staggering fall from grace. He was, by every metric, a bust. A cautionary tale. A classic “wrong place, wrong time” quarterback.


Zach Wilson? Insert the same sentence, only change the name of the franchise from Tampa Bay to the New York Jets. Wilson’s 22-game, two-year opening act was erratic, painful, and loaded with turnovers. He tossed 15 touchdowns to 18 picks—not good, but notably better than Young’s flameout. His mechanics regressed. His confidence shattered. The Jets failed to provide the stability or system he needed, forcing a raw, unprepared quarterback into chaos. Sound familiar?


And yet…


When Steve Young was traded to the San Francisco 49ers, something changed. Everything changed. Surrounded by structure, by coaching, by a team with vision and history and identity—Young blossomed. In his first season under Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense in 1987, he played eight games and posted 10 touchdowns with zero interceptions. The same man who’d been left for dead in Tampa found salvation in a system tailored to quick reads, high-percentage throws, and mobility from the pocket.


Now, Zach Wilson finds himself in Miami, entering a true West Coast system—one that, like San Francisco in the ’80s, prioritizes rhythm, timing, decision-making, and turning controlled chaos into methodical beauty. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a mirror. A reflection.


Even their play styles, minus the handedness, are eerily aligned. Both are aggressive yet slippery. Both are at their best on the move, threading throws at strange angles or taking off when the pocket collapses. Young did it left-handed, Wilson right—but the improvisational DNA is the same. And while Young’s career transformation is now immortalized in Canton, it’s worth remembering that the player he became looked nothing like the player he first was.


Zach Wilson may never wear a gold jacket. He may never hoist a Lombardi. But to count him out now—when his journey so closely follows one of the greatest redemption arcs in football history—is to ignore the lessons of time. Steve Young wasn’t Steve Young until he was. And maybe, just maybe, Zach Wilson isn’t finished yet.

After all, history has a funny way of repeating itself. Or at least, casting a polar reflection. 

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