You hear that term so much around Sanchez − Game Manager − that you sometimes picture him standing in the Cardinals’ dugout instead of Tony La Russa, getting ready to make a sparkling double switch. But one of these days, and it’s still early with the kid, we all get that, he has got to be more.
This isn’t a Game Manager’s league. It is a quarterback’s league. Every once in a while, you can win a Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer, or Brad Johnson. Not very often.
We can talk and talk about how Rex Ryan loves to run the ball and how, because of the big guy’s vision of the Jets and their best chance to win, Sanchez just has to make enough plays, not give the ball away when he’s not giving it to Shonn Greene and LaDainian Tomlinson. About we can talk about how that is the Jets’ best path to finally making it back to the Super Bowl for the first time in more than 40 years.
Except.
Except that isn’t why the Jets drafted Sanchez.
No, they drafted him because they thought he could be a big player in the league, moved up in the draft because Mark Sanchez was the guy they absolutely had to have. The kid swept away Ryan and Mike Tannenbaum and even the owner of the team, Woody
Johnson, when they worked him out that time in southern California before making their move on him on draft day. By now we know all about that particular day in Jets history.
The guys who run the Jets weren’t making that kind of move to get a guy who could hand the ball off and dump the ball off. They made that move because they thought they saw somebody who could be a star, and not just on the cover of fancy magazines.
So one of these Sundays we need to see Sanchez do it by himself the way Eli Manning has to do it by himself sometimes. We are going to find out if Sanchez is more than the New York Jets’ version of Joe Flacco. For now, in the season played so far, Sanchez has about the same stats as Andy Dalton, the rookie quarterback for the Bengals. Same basic quarterback rating, same yards, Sanchez has three more TD passes.
As a teammate, there is nothing not to like about Sanchez. He has handled himself as well on the New York/New Jersey stage about as well as any young athlete has lately. He doesn’t get hysterical when he gets criticized, he clearly reads and listens closely when somebody like Joe Namath, or even Bill Parcells, says something about him. He is easy to root for as he tries to become the first Jets quarterback since Namath to take the Jets to the big game.
Maybe this isn’t the day, in Buffalo, when he takes the big step forward, when he is the best quarterback on the field, when he outplays Ryan Fitzpatrick − who didn’t come into the league with nearly the fanfare that Sanchez did − and does something showy down the field with a game on the line. Maybe the Jets don’t need that from him today because they can run the ball on the Bills the way they have in the past, even if this team is so much better than the bad Bills teams we have seen recently.
In a quarterback league, we know the Giants have one, even if Eli Manning came into this season having played in such a sketchy way last season. You bet Eli told Michael Kay on the radio before the season that he considered himself an elite quarterback and has played like an elite quarterback so far: Elite Manning.
You add it all up, and over the first seven games of the season, and this includes the way he looked in the opener against the Redskins, Eli has played better than he ever has, despite another Giant going down to injury about every other day.
If you match up the two MetLife Stadium teams, go through all their strengths and weaknesses looking to give one team or the other the edge, the biggest edge the Giants have, right now, the season we have seen, is Eli Manning over Mark Sanchez.
That can all change over the second half of the season. But the questions about Sanchez coming into this season do not go away, starting with this huge one:
Is Brian Schottenheimer, the offensive coordinator, still afraid of his own young quarterback?
Sanchez played swell against the Chargers before the bye, threw those balls to Plaxico Burress in the red zone, made Burress look like the tall red-zone force he was signed to be. Sanchez has his weapons − sorry, Plax − and you better believe he does, even if he lost an important one in Braylon Edwards down the field.
Rex Ryan was talking this week about Fitzpatrick, the other quarterback today in Buffalo, and said this: “He’s got that leadership, he's smart, he delivers the football, and he's a good athlete.”
He could say the same things about his own quarterback, who already has four road playoff wins in just two-plus seasons as the Jets starter.
One of these days the kid is going to bust out, at which point we will start talking about him being the manager of great expectations, not just low-scoring regular season games.
NBA lockout, a Giant mouth, La Russa & the pizza man
-- If Billy Hunter , who should be the one doing the most talking in the room, doesn’t put decertification of his association on the table this weekend − and prominently − then he’s nuts.
Because telling David Stern and the owners that they’ll see them all in court − and bringing the league’s anti-trust exemption into play − is the only way for the players to get any of their leverage back.
You can keep blaming the players all you want, and tell them to fix all of the league’s problems.
They’re getting railroaded here, and deserve better than the lousy deal they’re being offered, with so many give-backs you get dizzy trying to keep track.
To the point where you want to ask Derek Fisher − who thinks he’s on “American Idol” − whose side he’s on.
Or what office he thinks he’s running for?
-- Brandon Jacobs will have a tremendous opportunity this afternoon to have his football c atch up with his big mouth, right?
And while he’s catching up, maybe he can catch some of those balls he’s been dropping.
Just so you know, the Game of This Century in college football got played when Vince Young ran it into the end zone at the Rose Bowl against Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart that time.
Of course the Yankees are scared off by C.J. Wilson losing games in the playoffs; they’ve got enough guys of their own who can do that.
Put me down as thinking we haven’t seen the last of Tony La Russa in a major league dugout.
Like, one in Chicago.
The real shame of a debt huckster like Frank McCourt is that he actually shares a name with the late, great Frank McCourt of “Angela’s Ashes.”
You have to say this about Kris Jenkins now that he’s making a living talking about pro football on television for SNY:
You sure do know the guy’s in the room.
-- The increasing, shabby demonization of the protesters in Zuccotti Park has been amazing to watch.
You’d think they were hackers or something.
Jennifer Rubin pointed this out in the Washington Post the other day: forget about President of the United States, you wouldn’t hire Herman Cain to be the CEO of a pizza company these days.
Rubin also points out that this phony is making noises about suing Politico, which broke the story about Cain and the sexual harassment charges against him.
Yeah, go ahead, Herman, sue.
And then you can tell your story under oath after they depose you.
That’s always a great idea in cases like these.
-- Sometimes you do get the idea that the Patriots are now built to dominate regular seasons the way, well, our kids from 161st St. are.
My absolute favorite part of the whole Kim Kardashian-Kris Humphries breakup was Kris Jenner, Kim’s mom, going on TV and tearfully saying that she hated for this all to play out in such a public way.
Absolutely right.
Because the family always likes to keep family things private.
People say that the Kardashians really can’t be all that slow out of the chute since they’ve gotten this rich being Kardashians.
Guess what? Snooki of “Jersey Shore” has gotten rich being Snooki.
Watching the trial of Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s doctor, play out, you start to wonder why the King of Pop didn’t just try to get his meds from Dr. House.
NY Jets' Mark Sanchez needs to transcend from 'Game Manager' to manager of great expectations
