You know all the adages by heart. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t test for an electric current with your tongue.
And above all, you don’t give Tom Brady of the Patriots additional time to work.
Yet that was exactly what Mark Sanchez did by calling timeout with 1:24 left in the first half — and 17 seconds left on the play clock — last night in the Patriots’ 37-16 rout of the Jets at MetLife Stadium.
On the sidelines, coach Rex Ryan fumed. And at halftime, Michele Tafoya reported that Ryan labeled Sanchez’s decision as “the stupidest play in NFL history.”
Way to sugarcoat it, Coach.
No matter that Sanchez ran it in for the Jets’ first touchdown and a 9-6 Jets lead.
The TD came with 1:20 to play in the half, which in Brady time is like having 136 shopping days before Christmas.
Ryan eased up after the game and said, “It was my fault.”
Sanchez disagreed, claiming it was “totally my fault.” OK, blame them both.
Sanchez said he heard confusing instructions in his headset, called time and then knew immediately he had goofed.
“They were talking [through the headset] to, ‘Take a timeout here and talk about the play,” Sanchez said. “I just walked over to the ref and said, ‘timeout.’ You can’t do that. We’ve got to run the clock and we didn’t do that. That’s poor clock management on my part.”
Sanchez said he realized his mistake “as soon as I did it. I walked over and Rex started walking over, like ‘Why’d you call time?’ and I looked back and said, ‘arrgh.’ It was a horrible mistake and you can’t do that.”
Brady marched the Patriots 80 yards in six plays, needing all of 1:11. Suddenly, the wasted seconds by Sanchez looked mighty big.
At least Sanchez could have let the clock run down to one tick, rather than giving a guy known for lightning quick drives have more time to complete a lightning quick drive, which was exactly what Brady did.
The Jets almost escaped. Almost. But a review of an apparent fumble by Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski was overturned — and New England used a wise timeout there to avoid a :10 runoff.
So after Sanchez scored and there was a touchback, Brady hit completions for 12, 14 and 25 yards to sit at the Jets 31 with 42 seconds left in the half.
A facemask, an incompletion and a 2-yard loss on a pass then had the Pats on the 18 with :17 left.
Brady then connected with Gronkowski for the touchdown at :09.