MISSION VIEJO, Calif. — Mark Sanchez wasn’t kidding about keeping Jets West under wraps.
Sanchez’s annual West Coast confab with his Gang Green offensive skill mates here this week feels more like Fort Knox to observers not on the invitation list to get inside the stadium at Mission Viejo High School.
Yesterday’s roughly two-hour workout in the late morning was guarded by five uniformed Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies (one of them openly sporting a shotgun) in four marked vehicles, as well as several other plainclothes officers at the entrances.
While the Jets worked out in shorts and without helmets on the sunken field below, Sanchez’s security detail wrapped bright yellow police tape around the entire stadium and patrolled the parking lots and any potential vantage points.
Only people with credentials — a green wristband — were allowed inside, and while that list included one fan with a green Tim Tebow No. 15 jersey shirt, it most definitely didn’t include reporters or photographers.
What made the extremely tight security amusing is that for most of the morning, the officers outnumbered the would-be spectators not on the invite list as no more than a handful — mostly teens attending summer school or athletic camps — trickled by.
Though the police might have seemed necessary to deal with an influx of Tebow Mania, which suddenly reared up in the form of nearly a dozen autograph-seekers when he came off the field, tight end Dustin Keller said Tebow’s presence had nothing to do with it.
“Mark just wanted to keep the distractions out,” Keller told The Post. “After what happened last year [an 8-8 finish and home for the playoffs], he wants all of us totally focused on football and the job at hand. [No media allowed] is not what we’re used to back in New York, but it makes sense here.”