HOUSTON — Mark Sanchez was already nine degrees of amped, geeked, and jazzed as it was, waiting for the minutes to melt off the big scoreboard clock at Reliant Stadium so he could get on with his football life. The Jets were finishing up their pregame warm-ups, getting ready to hear Rex Ryan go all Knute Rockne on them in the locker room.
Then the Jets quarterback of today noticed something quite remarkable standing in front of him: yesterday’s quarterback. Forever’s quarterback.
“Good luck today, Mark,” Joe Willie Namath said.
Well, what do you do now, rock star? After months of saying the right things, and doing the right things, and energizing the Jets’ fan base in a way it hasn’t been sparked in years, and filming car commercials, and doing magazine shoots, and slipping into the faded old smoking jacket once worn so effortlessly by Broadway Joe . . .
What do you do when suddenly, right there, is Broadway Joe?
Why, you ask him the kind of question a million other star-struck kids would have asked across the past four decades. You stumble around and you ask what Namath remembered about his first game, which is tough because time and age and a few too many shots from Ben Davidson and Willie Lanier shook that particular memory free a long time ago.
So he tells you this: “What I remember are the big games. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because this isn’t about me anymore. It’s about you.”
Namath was being gracious, and gallant, since he knows very well it won’t really be about Sanchez until and unless he duplicates the big games to which Namath referred. From the moment Namath became an ex-Jet 32 years ago, the team has searched in vain for a new face and a new name to usher in a new chapter, a new era of victory.
And even Namath would later concede: “It isn’t fair to anyone to judge a young quarterback after one game,” before flashing the deep-dimpled smile that is a permanent part of New York’s sporting scrapbook, “even if it was a really good game.”
It was a really good game, this 24-7 thrashing, good for the team, better for the quarterback. It was 272 yards and a touchdown and precisely the kind of precocious poise under pressure everyone wanted to see. It was making touch throws and rifle tosses and everything in between.
It was recovering from a horrid interception early in the fourth quarter and shaking it off immediately, threading a third-down ball to Dustin Keller the very next time he cocked his arm for 40 yards and a first down.
“It was,” Jets coach Rex Ryan said with a Texas-sized grin on his face, “the reason we wanted the kid on our team.”
Ryan’s introduction was every bit as striking as his quarterback’s, his team putting a woodshed-level beating on the Texans, his defense looking positively Ravenesque, his offensive line outlasting Houston’s star-spangled D before burying them late.
And his quarterback — destined to be Lennon to Ryan’s McCartney for as long as he works the Jets’ sideline — giving the Jets the potential for a boundless, bountiful future, something they haven’t had, really, since the first time Namath trotted onto the field (which, as a helpful reminder to No. 12, was a Saturday night, Sept. 18, 1965, against the Chiefs at Shea Stadium, in relief of Mike Taliaferro).
“I felt in control, like I was going to play smart all game,” Sanchez said. “And I did that . . . minus one play.”
It pleased Namath and didn’t surprise him, because the quarterback he encountered on the field 20 minutes before kickoff was a lot of things save for one: Namath didn’t see any nerves.
“What I saw,” the old quarterback said, “was a kid who was ready.”
“I knew I had to play well,” the new quarterback said, “because this team is relying on me to play well.”
He did, and so did they, a smashing start to a season that can’t possibly proceed as perfectly as this day did. No matter. There’ll be other days to fret about the future. This one, they were entitled to enjoy it, for a little while anyway.