DENVER — When we last left Sauce Gardner, he was playfully marching off Lambeau Field wearing a cheesehead after the Jets upset the Packers last Sunday.
In the aftermath of the incident, a number of emails flooded my inbox from readers chastising Gardner as a cocky kid rubbing the loss in the faces of his opponents.
Despite the optics of a seven-second Twitter video that might suggest otherwise to the uninformed, this isn’t who Gardner is.
The 22-year-old rookie cornerback out of Cincinnati, whom the Jets picked fourth overall in April, is fun-loving, respectful, humble and hard-working. He deftly straddles a unique balance as a player who knows he’s really good with legitimate potential to be great, but who doesn’t thump his chest and tell you so.
Gardner has a unique chill vibe to him that makes him approachable and likeable.
“That’s just me,’’ Gardner told The Post this past week. “It’s natural. I don’t know where it comes from. I’ve never been somebody who does something and flaunts it. I’m an empath.’’
An “empath’’ is defined as someone who is “highly attuned to the energy and emotions around them.’’
Sauce likes to chat on the field, but he has boundaries.
“I definitely talk on the field, but I don’t get personal,’’ he said. “I keep it within something that can go back and forth [with an opponent]. Nothing that gets personal. I don’t bring up family or anything. It’s like at the Packers game, I was just having fun with the cheesehead, soaking the moment up. The moment meant a lot to me.’’
When Gardner accidentally walked into the Packers tunnel, Green Bay receiver Allen Lazard came up from behind him and slapped the cheesehead off his head. But Lazard made it clear to reporters afterward that he wasn’t upset with Gardner, in fact saying he’d have probably done the same thing.
This is one of Gardner’s unique gifts — a gift that goes beyond his remarkable physical ability on the field. Even when he’s beating his opponent, Gardner doesn’t piss people off.
Next up for Gardner is Denver’s top receiver Jerry Jeudy when the 4-2 Jets play the 2-4 Broncos on Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High, where if things go as well as they did in Green Bay, Gardner might ride “Thunder,’’ the Broncos’ mascot horse, to the team bus after the game.
This is how young, raw and refreshing Gardner is: When speaking of Jeudy, who’s just 23 and in his third NFL season, Gardner revealed that, when he was a beanpole high-school receiver, he used to study Jeudy’s moves and emulate them.
“He’s a guy who has great confidence in himself [and] he definitely has swagger,’’ Jets defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said. “Typically, the young guys have a lot of that attitude and swagger and get on guys’ nerves. And he has this endearing quality to him that even though he is young, and he is a rookie, his swag, his cockiness, it’s endearing.
“I think guys love it. They gravitate towards it. He has this rare ability as a rookie to affect others and bring others with him. He’s really a unique personality in that way.’’
D.J. Reed, a veteran offseason free-agent acquisition who starts opposite Gardner, called Sauce “super humble, but at the same time he knows he’s very good as far as what God has blessed him with.’’
Gardner isn’t a player who relies solely on his physical skills. He’s a student of the game, a rabid film watcher — much the same way Darrelle Revis, the greatest Jets cornerback ever, operated.
“He knows he’s good, but he puts the work in,’’ Reed said. “God has given him stuff. He definitely has it — 6-3, he’s long, he has all the prototypical characteristics that teams are looking for in a cornerback. You pair that with his work ethic, he’s just elite.’’
Ulbrich said what the “casual observer’’ doesn’t see in Gardner is that he’s “a student of the game at the highest level. … That’s the reason he’s going to be a special player in this league.’’
When Ulbrich’s compliment about his note-taking was relayed to Gardner, he said he had “no idea’’ his coach was paying any attention to his notes and he seemed genuinely taken aback by it.
“I didn’t take notes in high school,’’ Gardner said. “It definitely makes it easier if you can watch a lot of film of formation splits. Then when you get in the game it’s easy.’’
That’s the way Revis did it. He knew where the opposing receiver he was covering was going before the receiver made his break. Gardner said he hasn’t met Revis yet, but they spoke on the phone in the offseason.
“I want to be the best,’’ Gardner said. “Here with the Jets, [Revis] has been the standard. I want to create my own standard. He’s definitely somebody I look up to. He was a big player here and I want to be the next one.’’
Perhaps someday Gardner will own his own island the way Revis famously did.
“Sauce Island’’ surely has a nice ring to it.
