It is a play that will live in Jets infamy, and until he starts throwing touchdown passes and stops throwing and fumbling the ball away and wins games again, it will haunt Mark Sanchez and follow him everywhere.
He will be, now and possibly forever, The Butt Of Jokes.
There was no visible evidence last evening of his Thanksgiving night blooper mishap. There was no “face, probable” designation on the injury report.
No one begrudged Sanchez for wanting to look ahead, to the freefalling Cardinals, instead of … behind.
Except that no one was interested in letting him.
It was actually Sanchez, in the course of discussing what he termed his own “catastrophic” turnovers against the Patriots, who plunged head first into ButtGate.
“I’m just trying to do the right thing and I run right into Brandon Moore,” Sanchez began. “Sometimes that just happens. There’s no excuse for it. Try not to let it happen again.”
He was asked if he was surprised and upset with the attention that has been paid to ButtGate.
“It’s the way it goes,” Sanchez said. “And, it’ll probably be on a blooper reel for a while, so… that’s just part of playing. You play long enough, eventually a couple of plays like that’ll happen. So, just try and avoid ’em, and move on.”
Maybe it’s me, but I can’t recall Joe Montana or Joe Namath — or Richard Todd, for that matter — enduring a single ButtGate incident.
Sanchez was asked if he was trying to slide.
“Yeah, I was trying to slide, I was trying to slide,” he said, managing a half-smile. “I don’t know how to explain it. It was a wild one.”
Did he catch any flak from friends?
“Not really. Everybody’s been pretty cool about it.”
It was pointed out that Fireman Ed, who decided to support Sanchez by wearing his jersey, quit because of confrontations in the stadium.
“They said he was sitting next to [the Post’s Brian] Costello, so I don’t know?” Sanchez cracked.
Then Sanchez said: “He’s been real supportive. Obviously I appreciate that. He’s been around a long time, he’s seen ups and downs of our team. Obviously, if his safety’s in jeopardy here, maybe it’s a good move.”
He was asked if he was prepared to have his blooper moment played over and over again.
“I mean, it’s a part of it. … Hopefully we’ll laugh about it later,” Sanchez said.
Was it painful for you to watch?
“It’s embarrassing. You screw up the play … I’m trying to do the right thing. It’s not like I’m trying to force something and I start to slide, and I slide in the worst spot you possibly could. Right into Brandon Moore.”
Funniest thing you heard?
“Well I mean, I saw the cartoon,” Sanchez said, referring to a Page Six cartoon in Sunday’s Post. “That was pretty good, cartoon was good. It’s got like my head stuck in Brandon … there’s like a chalk line, and…”
Were you at all hurt or stunned?
“No, I wasn’t hurt, I guess more stunned than anything,” Sanchez said. “I don’t know — like a car accidents — I was like, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ And then, the ball’s gone, so … That was weird, man … that [stunk].”
It was Nick Mangold who showed the cartoon to Sanchez.
“It shows my helmet stuck in Brandon Moore’s butt,” said Sanchez, who couldn’t help a tiny chuckle at the absurdity of it all. “And there’s like a white chalk line, where I was supposed to be, and the ball’s bouncing around…”
He was asked what he thought when Mangold showed it to him.
“I mean, it’s funny — it’s not funny that it happened, it [stunk] but … ”
Sanchez called out across the locker room to Mangold.
“Nick, Serby wants to know about the cartoon.”
“What cartoon?” Mangold said.
“With my helmet in Brandon Moore’s butt,” Sanchez replied.
Coach Rex Ryan will never throw Sanchez under the bus. He would sooner let him rear end Brandon Moore.
“We’ve made mistakes in the red zone,” Ryan said, “and it hasn’t just been Mark Sanchez making a mistake, there’s been other mistakes as well — is it a route, is it a dropped pass, is it a protection area? Sometimes, a lot of it gets blamed on the quarterback, but sometimes there’s other things involved as well.”
Do not mistake Sanchez laughing about it as him not caring. I view it this way instead: His head’s in the right place.