Mike Lupica: Zach Wilson is trying to write his own comeback story with the Jets

The Jets now play a December game in their division against a real contender, which means the Dolphins, and the problem is that it matters a lot more to the Dolphins than it does to them.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, of course, back when it all started for the Jets on that Monday night against the Bills; when the Jets suffered their biggest loss of the season on a night when they actually won an overtime game. When they looked at the schedule then and saw the Dolphins in Miami the second-to-last Sunday before Christmas, they had to think first place might be on the line, but for both teams and not the home team.

Now the Jets play this game with the quarterback who wasn’t supposed to be their quarterback, near the end of a season that was supposed to be so full of possibilities because Aaron Rodgers had come to town, before he got hurt and long before all the crazy comeback talk, comeback talk about this season even after an Achilles injury, as Rodgers tried to convince Pat McAfee and the rest of us that he was some kind of football Lazarus.

Only now the comeback to talk about, with four games left, is about the quarterback who wasn’t supposed to be the Jets quarterback, Zach Wilson, who last week threw a whole lot of Lazarus and whole lot of game at the Houston Texans. Wilson, who had been benched for Tim Boyle, got his job back and last Sunday played the game of his life, which is actually saying plenty in the same season when he and the Jets beat the Eagles, the best win by so much this season for either the Jets or the Giants it’s not even close.

Now he tries to do it again, against another first-place team, the one from his own division this time. It is why that is the game to watch Sunday and he’s the quarterback to watch, even with everybody’s current cutlet obsession about a nice local guy named Tommy DeVito. DeVito is the better story right now, as he and the Giants once again draw a team, the Saints, that doesn’t have a winning record (the Giants’ wins this season have come against teams whose combined record is 13-26). Wilson, though, showed last Sunday that he has it in him to be a better quarterback.

It doesn’t mean he will do it again, or will ever turn out to be the player Joe Douglas thought he was drafting out of Brigham Young. It doesn’t change the fact that the Jets have done everything except hire skywriters to tell the kid they don’t want him past this season. As fast as Wilson is in the open field, it may turn out in the end that the game is too fast for him, despite the kind of arm he showed you against the Eagles and then against the Texans, when the Jets waxed a team that had their own No. 2 overall pick, CJ Stroud, at quarterback.

But Wilson, who had been counted out again, just because counting him out long ago became one of the national pastimes around here, wasn’t just the numbers he threw at the Texans and at us on a rainy and windy Sunday when you thought we might end up with the kind of 3-0 game the Vikings and Raiders played later. It wasn’t just that he threw an almost perfect game in the second half (despite a bad fumble) and ended up with 27-for-31 and over 300 passing yards that got him named AFC Offensive Player of the Week.

It was something else, and something more, last Sunday:

Wilson was really fun to watch. For all the nice moments DeVito gave us against the Packers, especially the end, the Packers did everything except Christmas-wrap that game for him and for the Giants on Monday night. It was different with Wilson, who gave you a game last Sunday. Now we do see if he can do it again, against a first-place team like the Dolphins, but a first-place team whose defense got lit up by Will Levis and the Titans at the same time the Giants were playing the Packers.

Here is one of the things Wilson said about what the Jets — finally — did on offense:

“As an offense, everybody was clicking. Receivers were getting open and they were making the 50/50 plays. Hack [Jets offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett] was calling an awesome game. The O-Line was giving me more than enough time to sit back there and make plays…When it’s truly 11 guys and you do your job on the field, those guys, they did it. The quarterback gets more credit than it’s deserved, but it is truly an offensive unit that went out there and I thought everyone went out there and played well and how can we get there again as an offense is the key.”

Getting there again as an offense isn’t just a key. It’s everything for the Jets as they try to make this look like the season they thought they were going to have, even without No. 8.

Is there still drama around Zach Wilson? There has been since he was drafted. Some of it he created himself, with those comments he made after the Patriots game the season before this one. Some of it is because he was the second overall pick and has been such a disappointment to here. A lot of it is because he is the quarterback of a New York team, which is like having a career in the place Looie Carnesecca used to call Macy’s window even if he does play his home games in Jersey.

But even before he showed up as big as he did against the Texans and played the kind of game that Rodgers was supposed to play for the Jets this season, he read and heard that he didn’t want his old job back, as if we were actually supposed to believe he was afraid to come out of the locker room. Maybe it was because the Jets, who aren’t good at keeping secrets but tremendous at looking for cover, really have made it clear they don’t want him past this season.

Nobody knows if he is ever going to be a frontline starter in professional football, or if he is going to end up being a backup who occasionally causes the crowd to go wild the way DeVito is doing that at the moment for the Giants.

But know this: Wilson has been terrific off the field this season. Last Sunday he was as tough as he’s ever been in the pros against the Texans, after a career where the Jets have let him down a lot more than he’s let them down, at almost every turn.

Maybe he won’t do it again against the Dolphins. I hope he does.

STANTON SLIMMING DOWN AGAIN, NBA STILL NEEDS LEBRON & IT’S TIME FOR DRAYMOND TO GO …

Giancarlo Stanton is slimming down before next season, and stop me if you’ve heard that one before.

As we move up on Christmas Day games in the NBA, and with more than a quarter of the season already in the books, here’s what we still don’t know:

Whether the Nets or the Knicks are the better team.

Speaking of basketball shows?

LeBron, as he moves up on his 39th birthday, is still the best one of all.

And the league needs him as much as ever.

Because guess what?

If pro basketball was as strong as Adam Silver wants it to be, and people still pretend that it is, they wouldn’t need to trick it up with an in-season tournament.

If you’re keeping score at home, Shohei Ohtani just signed for 70 times more money than George Steinbrenner paid for the Yankees.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto really is the best pitcher pretty much nobody has ever seen.

Has there ever been three better hitters at the top of any batting order — I mean, ever — than Mookie Betts, Shohei, Freddie Freeman?

Or ever been three former MVPs at the top of anybody’s order?

Juan Soto didn’t exactly sound as if he sees himself ending up in Monument Park someday, did he?

Once Draymond Green blew up the Warriors’ chance at another title, when he got himself suspended from a Game 5 in the NBA Finals against LeBron and the Cavs when the Warriors were ahead three games to one and going home to clinch.

Now he tries to blow up an entire season.

At least the guy is consistent.

You know what the deal ought to be with Draymond?

He goes.

And before the Warriors and the team does some kind of welfare check on him as a way of shortening his suspension, everybody go back and look at his explanation of the play — and backhand punch — that got him suspended.

Because he sure sounded pretty calm and pretty rational to me.

I’m sorry, but whose idea was it to make Chargers coach Brandon Staley answer on-camera questions at halftime when his team was getting waxed 42-0 on Thursday night?

Rodon better be better in 2024.

Just putting that out there.

For the last time, it wasn’t the refs’ job to tell Kadarius Toney to line up properly.

If it’s true that Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie are going to play Danny Ocean’s parents in an “Ocean’s 11” prequel, I’m in.

Red Sox fans are starting to talk about 2018 the way they used to talk about 1918, if it’s any consolation to Yankee fans.

Anybody heard from David Stearns?

Guy’s only big move so far is Carlos Mendoza.

I still think of “Die Hard” as a Christmas movie.