DIVE TEAM: With Reshad Jones trying to wrap him up, Mark Sanchez dives into the end zone for a touchdown during the second quarter of the Jets’ 24-6 victory over the Dolphins last night. (AP)
You can go ahead and take Mark Sanchez and the Jets out of the intensive care unit.
Monday night medicine came mercifully in the form of a winless Dolphins team that belongs very much in the Suck For Luck Sweepstakes.
Just what Dr. Sanchez ordered.
For one night, Team Turmoil — now Team .500 — is no longer in critical condition.
“It’s just what we needed,” Sanchez said after Jets 24, Dolphins 6. “We’re back on track.”
That next step we keep asking Sanchez to take came on a banana peel when the night began, but here’s what we have come to learn about Sanchez: He will always get up. Once again, he showed us he is a fighter.
When the sky seems like it is falling, when the walls feel like they are closing in from every side, it is the quarterback, more than anyone, whose job it is to pick his team up by the bootstraps and let the sun shine back in through the dark clouds of doom and gloom.
“He just hung in there . . . he hung tough, as we like to say,” LaDainian Tomlinson said. “He kept his confidence, and I think he knew that eventually, things would start to break and they will loosen up as the game went along.”
Darrelle Revis’ 100-yard interception return had done the job in the first half, and now it was the quarterback’s turn to rise from the sick bed and return the patient to stable condition.
“He just keeps on coming back, he’s not gonna let that stuff get him down, he’s just gonna continue to play his game,” Dustin Keller said.
Plaxico Burress had just dropped a pass, but now Sanchez bought some time in the pocket, looked right, saw nothing he liked, then slung the ball left to Santonio Holmes, who raced down the sidelines for the 38-yard touchdown that made the Dolphins sleep with the fishes for the night and stopped the bleeding in Rex Ryan’s infirmary.
“Sorry,” Sanchez told Holmes on the sidelines. “I took an hour-and-a-half, my bad, I’ll get rid of it sooner.”
Sanchez is a developing quarterback, but he isn’t a baby anymore, which means it is time to see that development. To be fair, he has been sabotaged this season by everything from the playcalling to the absence of Nick Mangold on the offensive line. Everything from a new set of receivers to a rusty Burress to the disappearance of the Ground and Pound to his own erratic accuracy and decision-making and reckless disregard for the football.
But you either trust your quarterback, or you don’t. The Jets need to trust the Sanchise, and thankfully they began letting him take more shots downfield than he has of late. You make him predictable if your passing offense is little more than a quick slant here or a quick slant there. Because you can ruin a young quarterback, and your team’s confidence in the quarterback, if it becomes clear that you do not have full faith in him. Don’t just tell us you do, show us you do.
“Just a great competitor,” Ryan said, “and a guy that doesn’t get rattled.”
For much of the first half, this was Sanchez and the Jets offense could be described thusly:
Three-and-ouch.
Three-and-out-of-sorts.
Three-and-out-to-lunch.
Three-and-out-of-their-league.
Four times Sanchez attempted to convert a first down, and four times he failed, and four times the boobirds savaged him and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.
The Jets were up 7-6 after the zebras failed to call pass interference on Revis for incidental contact on Marshall by the goal-line.
No Ground & Pound. No Burress. A no-huddle offense that was much more a no-offense huddle.
“I was just telling guys on the sideline, ‘Stay with it. Just keep fighting, keep fighting, we’re gonna blow this thing open, I promise. We’ll get the running game going, we’ll get this thing rolling, I promise,’ ” Sanchez said.
Finally, a first down, Sanchez-to-Jeremy Kerley, 14 yards. Finally, a drive. Finally, a big play downfield, Sanchez buying time and finding Dustin Keller for 27 yards. Then finding Captain Holmes, who has apparently mistaken the “C” for Coach or Coordinator, for 20 more, who was sent out by Ryan with adversary Brandon Moore for the coin toss in a masterful unifying stroke that left everyone with amnesia.
Finally, an offensive touchdown, Sanchez pump-faking from the 5-yard line and diving into the end zone on a quarterback draw just before intermission.
“That was gonna be a touchdown, for sure,” Sanchez said.
Finally, a quarterback and an offense and a team no longer on their death bed.