DETROIT — He is still capable of making you either scratch your head or throw your remote control across the room, everyone’s in agreement on that. Mark Sanchez can still make his share of puzzling reads, make his share of befuddling throws.
Yet he is still capable of throwing a ball like the one just before halftime in yesterday’s 23-20 Jets’ overtime victory, which resulted in a 74-yard touchdown strike to Braylon Edwards, a ball that couldn’t possibly have been thrown better.
And he is showing himself ever-more capable of leading the Jets through the teeth of a fourth quarter, even when the situation seems utterly bleak and hopeless. Perhaps he was a bit fortunate three weeks ago when he led the Jets back against the Broncos, benefiting from a fourth-down penalty flag.
Yesterday, though, it was all on Sanchez, and all on his right arm.
“The kid,” Rex Ryan said, smiling, “he was just sensational.”
The kid had his first 300-yard passing game as a pro yesterday, 22-for-39 for 336 yards with a touchdown throwing, a touchdown running and an interception. More to the point, after overseeing an offense that seemed perilously close to shutdown mode for all of last week and most of this one, he helped score 13 points in the 6 minutes and 44 seconds that bracketed the end of the fourth quarter and the whole of overtime.
“I think the entire team is a resilient bunch and when we need it the most, it seems we find a way to win games,” Sanchez said. “We didn’t do that last week but this week we just didn’t want to let it slip away.”
Sanchez made sure of that. Starting at his own 39 with 4:26 left, he completed four straight passes and then lunged in from the 1 with just under 3 minutes left. After the Jets held, Sanchez completed four more passes that helped push the Jets from their own 22 to the Lions’ 18 and in position for the game-tying field goal.
“The kid is always pushing us to run the two-minute offense and when we had to have him do it for us, he did it,” Ryan gushed.
Linebacker Bart Scott was even more specific.
“He’s maturing before our eyes,” Scott said.
Sanchez himself looked and sounded the part, acting completely unimpressed by what he’d done.
“The two-minute attack was great for us,” he said. “We repped it all offseason, we do it every week. And it gave us our best chance to win today. It was just a matter of me executing.”
Which became a matter of fact by the end.