The Face of the franchise, the Face of the future, is shrouded in a beard now, the result of the rampant, contagious superstition now making its way through the hallways of the Jets’ headquarters in Florham Park. They lost to the Falcons in Week 15. Mark Sanchez shaved. The Jets beat the Colts in Week 16.
He hasn’t shaved since. And won’t until given a reason.
“Why mess with something that’s working?” the Face asked.
The Face of the franchise, the Face of the future, is screaming at you from the cover of Sports Illustrated, a football in his left hand, a clenched fist in his right, yowling from behind a green-and-white mouth guard, through a green facemask, a shriek the Jets have been waiting four decades to hear. Maybe you worry about some crazy cover jinx. The Face doesn’t worry about such things.
“I’ve tried to keep it simple, because I think that’s what works best,” Sanchez said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m not worried about any other kinds of stuff. It’s like Coach [Rex] Ryan told us today in our meeting: This is the most important thing in the world right now. Magazine covers and new movies and new restaurants . . . you worry about all of that later.”
This, as much as anything, is what the Jets have yearned for. Ryan is the new voice of the green team, and it is a fresh voice, a lively voice, a voice you don’t imagine will ever be easily quieted, a voice that inspires and instills and sounds like a sweet Sinatra tune inside the walls of this facility. A new voice was important.
But a new face was necessary. It was vital. Joe Namath had a hell of a run as the face, and that image is still everywhere, shadowing everything. You walk down a stairwell that leads to the Jets’ locker room, there it is, larger than life as it’s always been, frozen in time: No. 12 dropping back, his arm cocked, his eyes locked, his dimples evident even behind the helmet.
Back in Houston on opening day, Namath said, “I would love to see Mark enjoy the kind of career I had and the kind of life it’d given me. But I’d love to see what would happen to the Jets if that happened even more. The team needs a young kid to wrap its future around. That’s what’s exciting for me to see.”
The Face has yet to win the Big Game that the old one did, but Sanchez already has won as many playoff games — two — as Namath did in his entire career. He has won as many as Richard Todd and Chad Pennington did in their entire careers, too. Twenty-three years old,
18 games under his belt, and he’s already as decorated as any quarterback in the Jets’ playoff history.
“Everybody keeps talking like we’re propping him up,” Braylon Edwards said yesterday. “But anyone who’s around this team knows that he’s one of the most important reasons we are where we are. If not the biggest one.”
Even in the darkest moments of the season, Sanchez brought an exuberance to the huddle that was almost jarring to watch, running and chest-bumping and high-fiving after good plays — when the most important thing he did was hand the ball off cleanly.
“He reminds me — and I know this is bad around here — a little of Brett Favre,” guard Brandon Moore said, smiling. “But it’s that kind of enthusiasm, a love for the game, that I mean. He’s always out of breath by the time he comes back to the huddle, but that’s great, to me. Who doesn’t like that?”
Said Edwards: “I’d rather see that than a guy who throws a touchdown and just trots off the field and goes back to studying his notes.”
Yes, the Face of the franchise is the face of the future and also of the now. It was a whale of a run for No. 12. Back in the day, the package included a Fu Manchu. Now it’s a beard. Either way, the Jets have been hunting a hell of a long time. Maybe — just maybe — the search is really over.
EXCLUSIVE: MARK SANCHEZ’S FAMILY PHOTOS
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com