Mike White is back, and so are Jets fans’ chants after his win over the Bears
Matthew Barrera
Published Apr 07, 2026
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Sauce Gardner wasn’t with the Jets in 2021, but he heard the story all week, about the Bengals game last year when Mike White became a cult hero, and the entire MetLife Stadium crowd chanted his name.
Gardner, the Jets’ star cornerback, had a feeling it would happen again this week after White was named the new Jets starting quarterback, replacing Zach Wilson. Gardner had watched White perform in practice all season, and had been impressed since first playing against him in training camp. Something felt different during White’s first drive against the Bears on Sunday.
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It’s not hard to pinpoint what changed. White completed his first five passes: 11 yards to Garrett Wilson, 12 to Tyler Conklin, 9 to Conklin again, 16 to Zonovan Knight and another 13 to Wilson, and most of them were lasers. The Jets eventually scored at the end of a nine-play, 75-yard drive, capped by an 8-yard touchdown pass from White to Wilson. It was the first touchdown the Jets had scored on their opening drive all season.
At that point, Gardner turned to his teammates.
“It definitely gave us a boost,” Gardner said. “We were talking about it on the sideline. It’s one of the only times we’ve (the defense) been able to chill for a little bit longer. We were very excited.”
Gardner paused, smiled and then, unprompted, marveled at White’s best pass of the day. It came in the second quarter, when White squeezed a throw past a linebacker down the field to Wilson, who took it the rest of the way for a 54-yard touchdown.
White “looked real comfortable,” Gardner said. “We saw him make the throw when the ‘backer was right there, he still decided to fit the ball in there while he was running. Man, he played real good.”
The Jets won 31-10 against a going-nowhere Bears team, but White was nearly perfect, and New York’s passing offense operated in a way it hadn’t since at least Week 2, when Joe Flacco was the quarterback. White completed 22 of 28 passes for 315 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions, with a 149.3 quarterback rating. That’s the best rating for a Jets quarterback since Geno Smith against the Dolphins in 2014.
.@MikeWhiteQB's third TD pass of the day! @nyjets have a 2-TD lead. @e_moore03
📺: #CHIvsNYJ on FOX
📱: Stream on NFL+— NFL (@NFL) November 27, 2022
The first “Mike White!” chants started in the second quarter this time. And then again in the fourth.
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It got so loud when White was trying to snap the ball, he motioned to the fans to quiet down. They listened.
“I think it would be a lot cooler if they didn’t do it while we were trying to snap the ball,” White said, smiling. “But I’m not going to complain too much about that.”
The Jets are 7-4, with a locker room that seems to believe it has found its quarterback to lead it to the playoffs. And he is not named Zach Wilson. The vibes are different. After a week of negativity, everybody is smiling again.
“I remembered (watching) the impact he had last year,” said Garrett Wilson, who had 95 yards and two touchdowns. “He’s someone that when you go about things the right way — and obviously he has the talent at this point — I can’t say I expected him to go out and have a 149 passer rating but I expected him to ball.”
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Last week, a Zach Wilson-led offense could only muster 103 yards in a loss to the Patriots, including just 77 passing from Wilson. White lapped that total in the first quarter. Wilson has thrown for more than 250 yards just twice — in Week 4 against the Steelers and Week 8 against the Patriots, when he also had three interceptions. White already has more 300-yard games (two) in four starts than Wilson has in 20 (one). The Jets were averaging only 19.9 points per game before Sunday.
Then, that first drive happened.
“We had stalled out on offense too much to this point,” Garrett Wilson said. “Once we (scored) it felt like something off our chest.”
White never really slowed down, either. He nearly threw an interception when he tried forcing a pass to Wilson in the second quarter, but otherwise was practically perfect. He stood strong in the pocket when pressured — an issue for Zach Wilson all season — and completed a 16-yard pass to running back Ty Johnson, which set up the long Garrett Wilson score. His average time to throw, per TruMedia, was 2.46 seconds — the fourth-fastest of any quarterback this week. The Jets offense totaled 466 yards and converted seven of 12 third-down attempts.
Mike White completed 13 of 15 passes for 241 yards and 3 TD when holding onto the ball for 2.5+ seconds in his first start of 2022.
White threw more TD passes over 2.5 seconds today (3) than Zach Wilson had all season (2).#CHIvsNYJ | #TakeFlight
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) November 27, 2022
Earlier this season, wide receiver Elijah Moore was so mad about his lack of touches with Zach Wilson at quarterback that he requested a trade and was benched for a week. Sunday, White targeted him two times — and connected with him on a nice throw that Moore took and ran for a 42-yard gain. He also scored his first touchdown of the season in the third quarter.
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“I just feel like he executed his job,” Moore said. “Whatever quarterback is in, if you execute your job … I’m open, throw it. He did his job today.”
Garrett Wilson expressed frustration after last week’s loss, calling the Jets’ offensive performance “sorry.” He said: “Hopefully this is a wake-up for some people in the facility to get on our details” and that “whatever it was we were doing, it wasn’t working.” He felt like his words didn’t fall on deaf ears, especially after private conversations with Robert Saleh and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur this week.
“I didn’t mean any harm to anyone by saying it,” Wilson said. “I don’t think anyone took it that way. Honestly, I feel like people were happy I said it. To come back like this and play the way we did on offense this week, this is what we should be doing.”
The biggest change the Jets made this week, of course, was plugging White into the lineup. All told, White targeted 10 different receivers, and eight had at least two targets. He kept everyone happy.
“It’s just distributing the ball and letting (receivers) be who they are,” White said. “They’re all in that locker room for a reason. This is the NFL, everybody that wears pads on Sunday (is) very good and you just gotta get them the ball, get their confidence going and once someone’s confidence is up, I think you’ll see them go to the next level.”
Confidence is the key word here — that was the most confident the Jets have looked on offense all season. Maybe the opponent had something to do with it. The Bears are 3-9 for a reason, and on defense they lack a consistent pass rush with a secondary decimated by injuries. But the conditions weren’t easy Sunday. It was pouring rain, but White didn’t let weather conditions bother him, nor did he blame them for any errant throws.
“He made the easy look easy,” Saleh said, and the importance of that statement shouldn’t be overlooked.
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That’s what Zach Wilson was struggling with the most: the lay-ups. His pass that sailed over Braxton Berrios’ head last week will be a lasting memory until (or unless) Wilson takes the field again this season.
Sunday, Zach Wilson was inactive, demoted to third string. Cameras caught him on the sideline, sitting alone on a bench, wearing a poncho, stone-faced. After one touchdown drive, White returned to the sideline and, together with Flacco, practice squad quarterback Chris Streveler and quarterbacks coach Rob Calabrese, watched film on a tablet. Wilson sat alone, elsewhere.
As White conducted his postgame interview on the field with Fox, a handful of his offensive teammates mobbed him. Everybody was smiling, laughing. Wilson was already on his way to the locker room at that point, and by the time media arrived, he was nowhere to be found. Wilson had the starting job taken away from him, and it doesn’t seem like his teammates are in much of a rush for him to get it back.
Gardner said White playing on Sunday gave the whole team “a lot of energy, knowing if we get the ball right back to him, we’re going to be able to put points on the board.”
“He was making things easier on us,” Conklin said.
Garrett Wilson said that White “deserved” the love he got from the fans.
“I’m glad the fans saw what we all saw,” Wilson said. “He deserved every bit of that cheer and that chanting he got.”
(Photo: Adam Hunger / Associated Press)
