For someone with a slight cartilage tear in his right shoulder, Mark Sanchez sure was smiling a lot yesterday.
Whether that was just a brave face or whether Sanchez, as promised, really will be under center when the Jets travel to face the Bears on Sunday remains to be seen.
But despite being limited to non-throwing drills in practice by what a team source said was a cartilage tear suffered during the second series last Sunday, Sanchez guaranteed he would face Chicago in a game pivotal to the 10-4 Jets’ playoff hopes.
“I’m playing, that’s all there is to it,” Sanchez said after being peppered for several minutes about his health. “I have to be on the field. That’s what I’m here for, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Jets coach Rex Ryan, when he wasn’t ducking questions about his wife’s feet, was just as optimistic as Sanchez, who made some left-handed throws during practice, that the second-year passer would face the Bears.
“I think he’s going to be just fine,” Ryan said.
A team source agreed, saying club doctors feel Sanchez can play the rest of the season — including the playoffs, should the Jets make it that far — without making the torn cartilage worse.
But Ryan wouldn’t go as far as Sanchez and guarantee an appearance this weekend, which was understandable considering the Jets don’t even know if Sanchez will practice fully today or tomorrow.
Ryan said he is “99 percent sure” Sanchez will face the Bears, with veteran Mark Brunell set to take over if that purported 1 percent chance Sanchez can’t play grows over the next 48 hours.
“Is he really able to zip [the ball]? I don’t know about that,” Ryan said of how Sanchez looked yesterday in limited drills yesterday.
Ryan isn’t one of those coaches who requires his star players to practice fully at least once before allowing them to play, which is why Sanchez could get the green light Sunday even if he sits out many of the drills again today and tomorrow.
What also makes both coach and quarterback confident that Sanchez will start Sunday was his ability to finish the clutch, 22-17 road win over the Steelers despite hurting his shoulder on a first-quarter keeper.
“I just fell funny and it just didn’t feel right, but I felt good throwing on the sidelines,” Sanchez said. “Once you get in the game, your energy and your adrenaline kind of takes over. I felt like I could still help the team, so I didn’t want to come out.”
The injury didn’t appear to hurt Sanchez’s performance, either. In something of a bounce-back after two straight miserable outings, he was 19-for-29 passing, with 170 yards and no turnovers while notching a critical TD run on a beautifully executed bootleg.
That impressive effort came after one of the most trying weeks of Sanchez’s young career, culminating with Ryan giving some of Sanchez’s practice snaps to the other quarterbacks and the coach announcing that he wouldn’t hesitate to pull Sanchez during a game.
Sanchez reportedly got in a heated discussion with Ryan last week over the practice snaps being taken away, and the young quarterback shed more light on that yesterday.
“[Ryan] knows that we have an understanding that I don’t always agree with him,” Sanchez said. “[The starting job] is personal to me, and I think he knows that. I think the guys on the team know that. I don’t care if it’s a handoff or a ‘wildcat’ play, I want to be in the game.”
The result of that meeting, according to Sanchez, is that coach and quarterback — with no hard feelings — essentially agreed to disagree.
“I’m possessive about this job, so we had a little talk about it, but it’s good,” Sanchez said. “We’re both competitive, so it was good. I think part of it was a psychological thing just to kind of test me a little bit, so we’re good.”