ORCHARD PARK — The ball came out of Mark Sanchez’s hand all wrong and, sure, that was a problem, but even the quarterback understood that the genesis of the glitch had started a few seconds earlier, when his eyes had seen three white jerseys surrounding one green one in the end zone.
And his brain had sent the message: “Throw it anyway!”
Jairus Byrd, the Bills’ free safety, accepted that unexpected piece of largesse, wrapping his arms around the ball, taking it out of the end zone, sending 70,133 white-clad fans into a teeming, if temporary, tizzy. A 15-play, 10-minute drive had evaporated just like that. It can make a quarterback feel about 6 inches tall.
“You just can’t throw picks like that,” Sanchez would say later. “That’s just no good. I have to be better than that. Bad throws happen, but that’s the way you lose football games.”
The Jets didn’t lose this one, as it turned out, same as they didn’t lose two weeks ago to San Diego, when Sanchez had thrown another end-zone interception. The Jets mauled the Bills 27-11, restored a sense of order to the AFC East, gathered a nice bit of momentum heading toward next week’s critical home game with the Patriots.
Sanchez? In so many ways, he played a quintessential Sanchez game. He threw that one head-scratching pick, and was lucky to avoid a second when replay overturned it. But he also threw for 230 yards, hooked up with Santonio Holmes on a pretty touchdown pass, and generally dismissed the growing tide of sentiment that Ryan Fitzpatrick had zipped by him in the passing lane of young franchise quarterbacks.
Meaning: There was some bad, more good, nothing that inspires images of the young Otto Graham just yet but more than enough to remind you that Sanchez has now won 28 games in 2 1/2 years as the starting quarterback for the Jets, and if you’d like a point of comparison, here’s one: That’s five more than team watchdog Joe Namath had in his final seven years as a Jet.
That won’t be enough for some, of course, partly because there is a segment of Jets clientele and football cognoscenti for whom nothing is ever enough when it comes to Sanchez. And if we’re going to be fair about this, it’s also right to mention that Sanchez can still be scary. To Jets fans. To his coaches. To himself.
He has seven interceptions on the season; three have been in the end zone and one was a pick-six.
“Always,” he said, “at what seems like the worst possible moment.”
Said Jets coach Rex Ryan: “It’s tough down there because you don’t have a lot of room to work with, and [the ball] has to come out quick, you’ve got to throw it in tight spot. And you’ve basically got points on the board when you know you have a good kicker. Clearly, that kills you.”
So, yes, there is that.
But there is also this: Sanchez shaking off that awful pick against the Chargers two weeks ago, leading the Jets back. And Sanchez shaking off that dreadful pick yesterday, leading the Jets back again, regaining his confidence completely across the second half.
There may have been a time when the Jets — both sides of the ball — might have taken a cue from these Sanchez struggles and used them as an invitation to curl into the tuck position. But this is a team that has clearly hit a stride, if not a full-fledged gallop. Holmes offered up a few handclaps and a few one-liners. The defense kept the Bills muffled most of the day.
“It’s like a hot shooter in basketball,” safety Jim Leonhard said. “Even when he misses, you want to keep feeding the ball to him because you know he’s going to find the range. We know it’s our job on defense to keep feeding our offense the ball. Eventually they’ll get their stride.”
Eventually, yesterday, they did. Eventually, more often than not, they do, behind Sanchez, the lightning-rod quarterback who probably made you swear yesterday, certainly made you sweat, definitely made you shake your head a few times. And then did what he’s done 62 percent of the time he’s walked on an NFL field.
He walked off a winner.