Rex Ryan swears on the head of Mark Sanchez that never, ever, would he risk the kid’s health. Effectively, the coach is swearing on his own career, too.
Whether or not the 6-6 Jets hit their long shot at a playoff spot in his first year as a head coach, Ryan will be well on his way back to a lifetime of defensive coordinating if by Year 3 he’s breaking in a new quarterback or trying to win with some other team’s failure at that position.
“We’ll never put a guy out there if we think he’s going to be in jeopardy,” said Ryan yesterday, words to be Marked and remembered should temptation ever prove to be his guide with any important player, let alone the franchise quarterback.
Should Sanchez play in eight days at Tampa Bay? Even the best doctors can disagree on the level of risk and, like columnists, just make predictions. With guidelines from medical professionals, the head coach has to be the adult. And it has become increasingly clear that Sanchez requires one.
Advised to go down feet first since training camp, Sanchez dove into a posterior cruciate ligament sprain Thursday night, two days after receiving the opposite instructions from invited guest instructor Joe Girardi. And Ryan isn’t going to let it slide.
“I’m just trying to get him to see the big picture,” the coach said about a kid who hasn’t heeded the advice of football coaches and now a World Series winning baseball manager. “It’s just not his instinct right now.”
Sanchez’s instincts haven’t proven correct on a lot of things in 12 NFL starts, which followed just 16 starts at USC, such as waiting for the team-provided post-game snack, or waiting for the reporters to ask the post-game questions.
He’s not the first kid with a big new contract and new huge responsibilities to not come football-factory equipped with the proper brain filters asking: “How will this look?”
Certainly Sanchez is not the first 23-year-old to believe himself invulnerable, nor the premier new millionaire to feel alone with his fame and fortune, even with all the support the Jets have provided to protect their huge investment.
By choosing not to sign a veteran backup, Ryan and general manager Mike Tannenbaum provided Sanchez no safety net, a determination that seemed reckless even before Kellen Clemens was chained to predictable and tedious roll-outs Thursday night with his team nursing a two-score lead.
If the Jets believed Clemens was capable of being an above-average starter, then he already would be one here. So why does their emergency quarterback have no track record, leaving Sanchez with the following mentors:
* A first-time head coach who got the job off his work as a defensive coordinator.
* An offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, who never played in the NFL.
* A quarterbacks coach, Matt Cavanaugh, who was 8-11 as an NFL starter almost 30 years ago.
* And a fourth-year backup, Clemens, with eight largely unsuccessful NFL starts.
Who is the guy who tells Sanchez “I’ve been there” after Sanchez’s second interception of the day?
The Jets swear by the kid’s work habits, and five interceptions in one game certainly speak to a confidence and single-mindedness that in the long run should render his knuckleheaded plays an endearing memory. There are few shortcuts to a process where failure often breeds success. Sanchez has the talent and personality to make it as big as anyone ever has in this town, but in lot of ways has been set up to fail.
He needs tough love. And Ryan’s success hinges on whether he proves the provider.