This is the game, this is the night, this is the moment that defines The Kid’s season.
Not chomping on a hot dog on the sidelines. Not reading the prepared notes off a sheet of paper in the postgame interview room. Not forgetting Joe Girardi’s sliding lessons and spraining his knee and ticking off Rex Ryan.
This is the stage The Kid craved. America watching. New York watching. Jet Nation praying.
This is the game, this is the night, this is the moment the Jets need the boy to grow up and become a man.
A Manchez.
PATRIOTS’ BRADY EXPECTS TO PLAY, HELP JETS
Has Mark Sanchez learned how to be a color-coded caretaker, or hasn’t he?
Because if he hasn’t, if he can’t get the Jets to the playoffs by beating the Bengals on Sunday night with the NFL’s best defense and most feared rushing attack on his side, then this one’s on him.
His job, which should have been his job from the first game of the season to this one-game season, is not to win the game. His job is not to lose this game.
It is Thomas Jones’ job to win this game. It is Nick Mangold’s job to win this game. It is Gang Green’s job to win this game. It is Ryan’s job to win this game.
On a cold, windy night that suddenly has a chance to end in a sweet and warm embrace between a football team and a tortured, championshipstarved fan base, it is The Kid’s job to be the pressure-proof, weather-proof leader that Brett Favre was not last December.
“I’ll be remembered if we make the playoffs,” Sanchez said. “If not, it’s another rookie who couldn’t make the playoffs and couldn’t do it.
It has nothing to do with me.” It has everything to do with him. In his final college game at USC, Sanchez completed 28 of 35 passes for 413 yards and four TDs against Penn State. This isn’t Penn State. This isn’t the Rose Bowl. Ryan isn’t asking The Kid to carry the team on his back. He’s asking the team to more or less carry The Kid. He’s asking The Kid to go along for the ride, and not fall off.
Joe Namath mostly went along for the ride (18-26, 206 yards) and won a Super Bowl one magical time. He didn’t throw a touchdown pass in Super Bowl III. Matt Snell rushed for 121 yards against the mighty Colts, and the defense intercepted four passes.
Namath didn’t throw an interception. Ryan and The Kid’s teammates can say all the right things about Sanchez, they can gush about his swagger and his charisma and their faith in him. But the truth is no one knows how this will turn out.
Joe Flacco was all the rage around this time last year in Baltimore. He was a rookie quarterback from Delaware who basically got out of the way and let Ryan’s defense wreak havoc. He even won two playoff games that way, and then came the AFC Championship game against the Steelers. Flacco threw three interceptions, and the fairy tale was over.
The moral of the story: You just never know when your rookie quarterback will implode. Ryan and his offensive braintrust are taking every precaution, but there are never any guarantees.
This much they know: In the three full games (Raiders, Panthers, Colts) in which The Kid has thrown fewer than 20 passes, the Jets have won. Because The Kid threw only one pick.
The Kid started like a phenom, and because we trip over ourselves trying to anoint The Next Namath, we closed our eyes and imagined him in a fur coat, wearing white shoes and a Fu Manchu, filming pantyhose commercials. Broadway Mark. Hollywood Mark. Whatever. Ryan, more infatuated than he should have been, couldn’t stop swooning over him, calling him The Sanchise.
But the meltdown in the Superdome against the Saints, the five interceptions against the Bills, the four interceptions against the Patriots, the three interceptions against the Falcons, none of that matters now.
It’s a New Year. It’s up to The Kid to make it a Happy New Year.
Time for the boy to become a Manchez.
steve.serby@nypost.com