Zach Wilson’s cougar situation is all over the place
The New York media spotlight doesn’t just attract interest in how its star quarterbacks are connecting with their receivers, but also who you’re with off the field. Ask Broadway Joe.
The ugly side of that prurient fascination with the personal lives of New York quarterbacks reared its head. This is the world Zach Wilson has thrust himself into.
It all started when a spotlight was shined on Wilson’s ex…receiver and his ex-girlfriend, who made things Instagram official with one another over the weekend.
Back in January, Abbey Giles and Wilson, who’d been together since high school, scrubbed each other on Instagram, a 2022 digital age form of mating calls. Over the weekend, Commanders receiver Dax Milne (props on the futuristic steampunk name) posted a snap to his IG taking his relationship with Giles public.
However, internet sleuths noticed Milne and Wilson also had unfollowed each other on social media. If there’s anything we’ve learned in this TMI era, it’s that athletes frequently use social media to send passive-aggressive messages.
During their final year at BYU together, Wilson and Milne connected on 70 passes for nearly 1,200 yards. We just saw Davante Adams and Derek Carr pine for each other after nearly a decade since they were a lethal 1-2 punch at Fresno State, so Milne and Wilson unfollowing was the equivalent of smoke billowing from the Vatican after the pope dies.
However, athletes dating each other’s exes is a tradition as old as the Olympics. Apparently, they were also roommates, which makes Giles one of the few people who successfully pulled off the Seinfeld Switch.
However, Giles set the whole rumor mill ablaze with everyone still inside after she was referred to derogatorily as a “homie hopper.” In response to that comment on her page, she decided to air out Wilson’s dirty laundry, claiming in a now-deleted Instagram comment that Wilson was “sleeping with his mom’s best friend... that’s the real homie hopper.”
Sheesh. Things definitely didn’t end on a cordial note between them. Yet she misfired almost as badly as Zach did throughout his rookie season. Presumably, Wilson woke up more confused than Curtis Jackson about why he was catching strays.
The NFL is so starved for attention that you can see its rib cage showing, and a post like that from the ex-girlfriend of a Jets quarterback was like dropping greasy bacon on the league’s plate. It provides a dopamine rush and fills our bellies, but it’s about as vacuous as an all-dessert diet.
Having said that, it’s fitting that this whole thing popped on Instagram. Giles’ page has gone dark since then, but whether or not it’s true, their CW drama was too salacious for the Extremely Online NFL community to ignore. In August or September, it would have been buried underneath training camp observations and Robert Saleh’s overly optimistic takes on the offense.