Just four years after the New York Jets took him with the second overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft, Zach Wilson’s NFL career may have reached a point of no return.

Following their elimination from the playoffs with a Monday night loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers (which helped the Jets), the Miami Dolphins decided to bench starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, as reported on Wednesday by ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

Presumably, this should have paved the way for their backup, Wilson, to start for Miami in Week 16. Instead, the Dolphins are turning to their QB3, rookie Quinn Ewers, a seventh-round pick in the 2025 draft.

A major move in Miami: the Dolphins are benching QB Tua Tagovailoa and turning to Quinn Ewers as their new starting QB, per sources.

Ewers’ first start comes Sunday vs. the Bengals. pic.twitter.com/lzs2J1EfjP

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 17, 2025

It’s not a good look for Wilson that Miami’s coaches, who have watched him in practice all year, elected to turn to a rookie seventh-round pick instead of giving Wilson three weeks to prove himself as a starter.

Wilson has served as Miami’s backup throughout the season, making three appearances. He only served in mop-up duty, completing six of nine passes for 32 yards, no touchdowns, and no interceptions. His most recent appearance came against the Jets in a Week 14 win, with Wilson attempting no passes in his return to MetLife Stadium.

Wilson suited up as the backup in Miami’s most recent game against the Steelers. Yet, despite Wilson’s backup status, the Dolphins have decided to promote Ewers over Wilson.

This past offseason, Miami signed Wilson to a fully guaranteed one-year, $6 million deal to back up Tagovailoa. That price would indicate that Miami was confident in Wilson’s ability to step up in a pinch, but after watching him up close for the last few months, it appears that the Dolphins have changed their tune on the BYU product.

As he prepares for unrestricted free agency in the spring, Wilson’s NFL career has reached a crossroads. He has not gotten an opportunity to prove himself since the Jets tossed him aside, throwing zero passes for the Broncos in 2024 and just nine garbage-time attempts for Miami in 2025.

Now, Wilson’s best opportunity to prove himself has passed him by. Simultaneously, the move sends a message to the rest of the league that Wilson has not earned his coaches’ trust on the practice field, which will surely hurt his stock on the open market.

While Sam Darnold built a redemption story after leaving New York, things aren’t trending in that direction for Wilson. In fairness, Darnold did not prove himself as an above-average NFL starter until his seventh NFL season; Wilson still has two years to go until he reaches that point.

Still, when Darnold left the Jets, the league continued to value him as a starter. He stepped right into Charlotte as the Panthers’ clear-cut QB1. The results were tumultuous, but at least the league retained faith in his potential. Wilson can’t even say that much. He has spent two straight seasons as a benchwarmer.

Perhaps Wilson will figure things out in due time. Maybe the Geno Smith route is more applicable for him. Smith spent seven years as a backup until he finally broke out as an above-average starter in his 10th year, at the age of 32.

After getting so much time to work on the mental side of his game, Smith looked like a different quarterback in the latter stages of his career. Wilson, who has a talented arm but seems lost on an NFL field, could benefit from a similarly extensive period of time on the bench.

Or, maybe he just isn’t cut out for the pros. After all, Wilson didn’t fly up NFL draft boards until a breakout junior season during which he spent most of the year playing in front of empty stadiums against BYU’s cupcake schedule. Wilson only faced one top-20 team in his breakout junior season, No. 14 Coastal Carolina, and it was his worst game of the year.

Of course, hindsight is 20-20. The football world was aware of those concerns going into the 2021 draft, but he was still hailed as the consensus No. 2 overall prospect and the Jets’ clear-cut best choice with the second overall pick. Reports indicated that many other NFL teams would have made the same pick in the Jets’ shoes.

And for good reason: Wilson’s film was tremendous, even if it came against lowly competition with no crowd noise. He seemed like a gifted thrower who could learn to lead an NFL offense in due time with proper development.

A half-decade in, though, that prognosis has not transpired. If any hope remained as of recently, it may have been squashed with this latest development. A second chance opened up for Wilson in Miami, and yet, he inspired so little faith in the Dolphins’ coaches that he couldn’t even get on the field for that second chance.

Some college hoopers just aren’t cut out for the big leagues, and there’s no way of knowing until we see how they react when the bullets are flying in a regular season game. If there were an easy way to separate the Zach Wilsons from the Josh Allens, teams would have figured it out by now. There simply isn’t a cut-and-dry formula to understand whether a prospect has “it,” whatever “it” is.