NFL

Jets’ great expectations start with Sanchez

The last time we’d seen them all together, their sweat was frozen to their cheeks, their road-white uniforms were covered in the muck and misery of a western Pennsylvania wasteland. The temperature on Jan. 23 was 10 degrees with a wind-chill factor of 2-below.

Mark Sanchez was last spotted looking forlornly at a scoreboard on the far end of Heinz Field, a few seconds after hugging Santonio Homes, and even if the night hadn’t grown positively arctic, those numbers would have remained frozen forever:

Steelers 24, Jets 19.

“I still think about that game,” Sanchez said. “I still think about the Colts game from two years ago. We had a lot of great plays from both games that we were able to put on our teaching tapes and that’s great … but also enough that we weren’t able to finish what we started.”

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It was 189 days later, Pittsburgh had become Florham Park, and a slate-gray sky had been replaced by one so blue it could sting your eyes, and it was only about 90 or so degrees warmer with the heat index. A new season was finally upon all of the Jets yesterday, a new chapter, a fresh opportunity to take that first giant leap toward the Super Bowl since man’s first small steps on the moon.

Inside, a bit later, coach Rex Ryan tried to make the case the Jets who walked onto the field for their first walk-through yesterday morning comprised a better, deeper roster than the ones who limped off the ruined turf in Pittsburgh six months ago. That’s a hard point to endorse, even in the giddy aftermath of the bookend signings of Plaxico Burress and Antonio Cromartie, but it’s also a moot point: The Jets know better than anyone that it’s far more useful to play terrific football in January than to have a glittery depth chart in August.

“To me, there isn’t a reason in the world why we can’t finish this year,” Holmes said. “We were right at the doorstep of the Super Bowl, and now we have to walk in the door, take that final step.”

That is the sentiment here, as the locks slowly come off the doors and windows of NFL training camps, as the rust and the dust and the cobwebs of a sleepy off-season and a frantic first week dissolve. This is what the business of contention looks like, and sounds like: players being asked to name the team to beat in the AFC East, some showing deference to the defending champs in New England, others following in lockstep behind their coach.

All of them eager to get out on the field, to get on with the business of chasing a championship. Even a team as chatty as the Jets realizes it’s a lot more fun to play football than to talk about it. And maybe no one understands that more than Sanchez, who has become such a significant part of the Jets’ foundation, you sometimes need to remind yourself he’s only in his third year in the league.

“My improvement determines any kind of ceiling this team can have and our potential,” he said, sounding a lot different from the aw-shucks kid who reported for work in Year One, and significantly different from the just-happy-to-be-here supporting player he was at the start of Year Two. “It’s time for me to step up my game.”

His teammates are eager for that, because as much as the Jets like to define themselves as masters of the universe on defense, as much as they fancy themselves a ground-and-pound battering ram on offense, it will be the quarterback, more than any other single contributor, who will allow them to knock down the door Holmes talks so dreamily about.

Even Ryan admits this year’s version of the chip on his shoulder is brought to you by one fellow in particular.

“Part of it is based on what I think our leader is going to do for our football team,” Ryan said. “The strides that I see Mark taking are huge.”

They mimic the expectations around this team, which have only grown across the past 189 days, have only risen after the slow walk out of Heinz Field. The blazing sun was the oddest possible setting. This team will be remembered for where it is when the skies grow dark again, and the air frosty. These were the first steps toward the final step.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com