This may be a coal-in-the-stocking kind of season for the Green & White, but Garrett Wilson is the holiday gift that keeps on giving to his offense, his team and Jets fans.
"I've got to find a way to play my best football down the stretch, is how I look at things," Wilson said not too long ago. "I've got to be my best version of myself."
G has been doing that. For starters, there are his receptions. With 7 catches at Miami last Sunday, he sits at 81 grabs for the season. He still has 4 games left to send that number through the roof, but after 83 and 95 catches his first two seasons, he's already passed a few mile markers.
He is the first Jet with 80-plus receptions in his first three seasons, and he is one of only seven wide receivers to do that in NFL history.
Even more of the league's wideouts have produced 1,000-yard receiving seasons in each of their first 3 seasons. And Wilson, with totals of 1,103, 1,042 and so far this season 877 yards, looks like a lock to join that club in short order, perhaps as soon as Sunday at Jacksonville with 123 receiving yards.
Whenever he does it, he would become the first Jet with 1,000 receiving yards in his first three seasons. Further, Wilson would become only the second Jets pass-catcher, and the first in 56 seasons, to clear 1,000 yards in any three consecutive seasons of his Jets career.
The only other receiver to do it? George Sauer, a Jets rookie in 1965, caught his four-figure trifecta in 1966-68. For a fun bar bet, see how many Jets fans think Don Maynard was the first NYJ receiver to first get 1,000 receiving yards three times in a row. Maynard had many achievements, including retiring from the game after one 18-yard catch as a St. Louis Cardinal in 1973, with 11,732 receiving yards, at the time the NFL career record. But Maynard never even had two back-to-back thousand seasons let alone three.
Then to update some more mundane Wilson streaks, his run of consecutive games with 5-plus catches ended at 8 at Indianapolis. But his streak of 4-plus-catch games is at 13 games, every game this season, and just 6 games shy of Laveranues Coles' 19 in a row in 2002-03.
Then for the most basic and yet iconic streaks in the WR stats ledger, Wilson has still not missed a Jets game for any reason, and every time he takes the field, he makes at least one catch. So that streak is up to 47 games in a row from the start of his Jets career. He broke his second-place franchise tie with Wayne Chrebet at 45 games with his first catch vs. Seattle.
And if he keeps going, he'll get to Keyshawn Johnson's franchise record of 62 straight games with a catch (64 if we count playoffs). Johnson had at least one catch in every Jets game he played in, missing only 2 games with an injury as a rookie in 1996).
So G could pass Key with his 63rd straight regular-season game with at least one catch as soon as Game 12 right at the start of the 2025 holiday season.
"It's really cool to see Garrett growing and evolving as a football player," IHC Jeff Ulbrich has said. "We're just going to see this guy blossom into the superstar we know he can become."
