The New York Daily News published a story citing several anonymous team sources that absolutely buries Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez. In many senses you can say that the story is unfair; Aat least when Greg McElroy ripped the team, he did so on the record. In this situation, no names are attached to the quotes. But the quotes are out there, and they give you a sense of how at least a few members of the Jets organization feel about quarterback Mark Sanchez. The piece reminds me of the hit job on the Boston Red Sox following their collapse. There are many parallels too — a big-market team expected to do well collapses and gets buried by the press.
Below are the juiciest quotes from the story:
“We have to bring in another quarterback that will make him work at practice,” said one player. “He’s lazy and content because he knows he’s not going to be benched.”
“Come on. That’s a no-brainer,” a Jets source said. “If you have a chance to get a healthy 36-year-old Peyton Manning and you don’t do it, then you’re stupid. If I could get a healthy 36-year-old Peyton Manning, then, hell yeah, I would trade Sanchez.”
“How can we when he’s not improving at all?” one of Sanchez’s teammates said. “He thinks he is, but he’s not. He has shown us what he’s capable of
“They don’t want to be truthful with him,” one prominent player said of the way that the organization has handled Sanchez. “They treat him like a baby instead of a man. He goes in a hole when someone tells him the truth.”
“They see the organization babying him,” said a Jets source. “They see him with a sense of entitlement. He’s been given all this and hasn’t done anything. They call him ‘San-chise.’ They make him the face of the organization. They gave him the captain tag. He’s not a captain. He should have never been a captain.”
Another team source says that Sanchez isn’t as bad as people are making him out to be. He believes Sanchez lost confidence and everything snowballed from there, to the point where he wasn’t even confident going into games.
Ex-Jets defensive lineman Damien Woody disagreed with the comment that Sanchez is lazy, but he does feel the quarterback is babied in terms of media protection. Center Nick Mangold called the article “false,” saying the unnamed sources should put their name on the story. We agree.
If you’re going to rip a teammate, you should keep it between the team. But maybe the players or other team sources felt this was their only option to voice their opinion on the squad. Maybe they want to make it clear to the franchise that the players don’t believe in Mark Sanchez, and this was the best way of accomplishing that. Ultimately this is another consequence of playing in New York. Sanchez was lauded as a rookie when his team succeeded. Now he’s been shredded when his team failed.
