CINCINNATI — Man Oh Manchez. Man Oh Manchise. The kid looked born for the moment, for the stage. Mark Sanchez played nothing like a rookie on a day coach Rex Ryan and the Jets needed him to play like a veteran to back the rookie head coach’s Super-sized expectations, to honor Woody Johnson for his tragic loss. Once upon a time he was Carson Palmer’s ballboy/waterboy. Not anymore. Not last night. He played way beyond his 23 years. He was Cool Hand Mark, back in the Rose Bowl for USC, in the Jets’ 24-14 victory over the Bengals in yesterday’s wild-card game.
Once upon a time, Phil Simms missed three passes in the Pasadena Super Bowl. Cool Hand Mark (12-for-15, 182 yards, one touchdown, no interceptions) missed three passes last night, and one of them would have been a 41-yard touchdown if Braylon Edwards hadn’t let it fall through his hands.
If Cool Hand Mark plays like this, the Jets could have more bite than Ryan’s bark, if that is at all possible.
“I think he’s growing up right before our eyes,” Bart Scott said.
RAW AUDIO: MARK SANCHEZ ON THE KEYS TO WINNING
Someone asked Sanchez: “How satisfying was this for you personally after the season you’ve had, so up and down?”
Sanchez looked down from the podium at the questioner, an impish grin on his face, and said: “What are you trying to say, man?” Then he turned serious. “Nah, this is when you need to turn it on. You just need to turn it on.”
Then he started raving about the back-to-back sacks by Bryan Thomas and Shaun Ellis that enabled him to take a knee three times and said: “Got nothin’ to do with me. Maybe I lucked out today, who knows?”
With apologies to Branch Rickey, luck in the NFL is a residue of preparation.
“It just set me free tonight. . . . It just let me play,” Sanchez said.
He was a kid in a candy store, living a sweet dream.
“You hear the Bengal thing roaring, you hear the fans screaming at you, you see guys on the sidelines getting animated and. . . . you’re saying like, ‘Wow!’ ” Sanchez said. “The entire country’s watching this, and I get to say ‘hut’, and they don’t do anything until I say ‘hut’. . . . That’s crazy. It just blows your mind. It’s unbelievable.”
Then he smiled and good-naturedly tweaked Pete Carroll for leaving USC for the Seahawks: “I just want everybody to know, I completely disagree with his decision. . . .”
Fellow rookie Shonn Greene, a dynamic 21 carries for 135 yards-revelation, had made it 7-7 with a 39-yard touchdown romp and now it was third-and-12 and Sanchez needed to make a play.
Jerricho Cotchery ran a slant from right to left and Sanchez rifled a bullet to him for 14 yards. Ryan and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer recognized the need to take the shackles off Sanchez, especially on first down, because the Bengals were blitzing like crazy to disrupt the running game, daring the kid to beat them.
So Sanchez, who finally has learned how not to beat the Jets and whose command of the offense has grown in leaps and bounds, beat them.
He rolled right, and there was Dustin Keller, a forgotten weapon who was supposed to be this team’s Dallas Clark, wide open downfield. Sanchez hit him in stride at the 21, and Keller, aided by his wonderful athleticism, willed his way into the end zone, and it was 14-7.
The Jets unleashed smashmouth hell in the third quarter before Sanchez, third-and-6 at the Cincy 25, found Edwards over the middle for 16 yards to set up Thomas Jones’ 9-yard touchdown run.
But then Cedric Benson answered with a 47-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter. And Cool Hand Mark didn’t mind having the ball — and the season — in his hands.
“Let’s go,” he remembered thinking. He was talking excitedly, the same way he plays. “Let’s go. Let’s play. Let’s do it again, let’s score, let’s throw it, let’s run it, let’s score some points.”
He faked a handoff and rolled left and there was Keller, wide open in the left flat, one cut and gone, on his way to a 43-yard gain.
“That’s really a long handoff, and I get credit for those yards, but that’s like stealing yards,” Sanchez said.
Soon it was 24-14, and over.
“He wanted this game in the worst way,” Ryan said. “One of these days, he’s gonna be the biggest thing we got on this football team, the best thing we got, and . . . maybe that day’s coming sooner than later.”
If it is, the Jets can beat anybody, and they know it.
Bart: Rex is a great motivator
Bart Scott knows exactly why coach Rex Ryan handed out the Jets’ itinerary all the way through the Super Bowl and a Canyon of Heroes parade.
“Rex is the guy that has a vision,” Scott said. “Sometimes, it’s like your parents sometimes. You tell your mom, ‘I want to be an astronaut and go on the moon in two weeks,’ so what’s she gonna say? ‘You can do it, baby!’
“So when he goes out there, he believes, and it inspires you. He doesn’t put roadblocks in. And if you get in this tournament, if your goal isn’t to win it, then why are you in the tournament? Just to get an extra playoff check? The money’s not that good. . . . It’s good [laughter].”
Scott said Ryan’s belief is an asset.
“For him to spend time, to write a schedule out, means that he believes,” he said. “If not, he’d be wasting his time. So if he believes, we believe as well, and we just gotta go out and execute.
“We understand it’s one week at a time. He’s the coach, he can look farther ahead. We gotta take it one week at a time, that’s what we’re doing.”
Fans should want the Colts
The Jets ought to be rooting for a Patriots victory today over the Ravens, because I think they have a better chance against the Colts than the Chargers.
Philip Rivers and the Chargers start the postseason peaking at the right time, and believe it is their time. The Jets already know they can play with the Colts, and will have the added motivation of trying to prove they can beat Peyton Manning when he plays four quarters.
Coach Rex Ryan will get the troops ready by constantly reminding them — with the media’s help — that everyone thinks the only reason the Jets ended the Colts’ perfect season was because Jim Caldwell handed them a gift when he yanked Manning in the third quarter for rookie Curtis Painter.
Plus the Colts will be under suffocating pressure to justify resting players and sacrificing their perfect season.