The Jets lost a game yesterday, and probably their season.
In a bigger picture broader view, though, it’s growing abundantly apparent that Mark Sanchez is not capable of carrying the Jets when they need him to.
Unlike the case with the Giants and Eli Manning, who has carried them into NFC East title contention with his play this season, Sanchez is proving himself to be exactly that “game-manager’’ quarterback he has been labeled as.
Without strong support around him — great protection and a powerful running game — Sanchez cannot carry his team.
Manning, by contrast, has played virtually the entire season with a nonexistent running game and an offensive line in constant flux after being decimated by injuries.
Yet he has the Giants in position to win the NFC East with a home win over the Cowboys next Sunday.
The problem yesterday for the Jets, who dropped to 8-7 and had their playoff chances dangerously close to extinguished, was they didn’t ask Sanchez to manage the game the way they have always had the most success with him. They asked him to win it.
The Jets put the ball — and their season — in Sanchez’s hands and he couldn’t handle it.
With the Jets’ plan to attack a Giants secondary that has played so badly this season it’s become a bigger punch line in this town than Kim Kardashian’s deposed husband of five minutes, Kris Humphries, Sanchez failed to deliver.
The end result — a Giants 29-14 win at MetLife Stadium — wasn’t all Sanchez’s fault.
The Jets defense, in the biggest moments of the game, let them down, missing more tackles than a Pop Warner defense playing together for the first time (consider Victor Cruz’s 99-yard touchdown catch-and-run as Exhibit A).
But, more than anyone on the Jets, this game was in Sanchez’s hands.
Sanchez threw the ball a career-high 59 times, threw two interceptions, lost a fumbled snap at the Giants 1-yard line and was inaccurate on some potential big plays that were left on the field.
“You’re not going to beat anybody — we’re not, for sure — when you throw the ball 59 times,’’ coach Rex Ryan said. “We’re really not built to play that game.’’
Ryan’s words surely weren’t intended to be damning to Sanchez’s limitations, but that’s exactly what they were: Damning.
They screamed between the lines: We cannot count on our quarterback to carry us.
Ryan insisted it “wasn’t our plan’’ to pass the ball so often. At one point he talked about falling behind and having to “speed’’ the game up because of it.
But the fact is the Jets, who trailed just 10-7 at the half, ran the ball only 13 times in the first half and threw it 28 times, just four fewer than the 32 Sanchez entered the game averaging per game. They threw it on seven of the 10 plays of their opening drive, which ended in a touchdown and a 7-0 lead.
Based on the mood of the offensive players in the locker room after the game, they were clearly perplexed and angered by the way the game plan unfolded.
“It was a bit surprising to be that we didn’t run the ball more,’’ running back LaDainian Tomlinson said.
Asked what his reaction was to throwing the ball 59 times, left guard Matt Slauson said: “I’d better not comment on that one.’’
“I have no idea. Not my department,’’ center Nick Mangold said.
“I don’t have anything to say,’’ Brandon Moore said.
Sanchez’s toughness and his chops under pressure cannot be questioned. He’s engineered more comebacks in the last two seasons (nine) than any other quarterback in the NFL.
He never gives up and that’s an admirable trait. So, too, is his ability to rise up with game on the line.
Ask him to carry his team from the start of a game with his passing, though, and it simply doesn’t work. Not yet anyway. Maybe he’ll grow into it. Maybe he won’t. If Sanchez and the Jets are going to be elite, though, he’d better.