The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Thursday, January 20th 2011, 4:00 AM
Mark Sanchez #6 of the New York Jets is rushed by LaMarr Woodley #56 of the Pittsburgh Steelers during the game on December 19, 2010 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (December 18, 2010 - Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images North America)Nobody would have believed this a week ago, but the team the Jets play this Sunday is better - and tougher - than the one they played last Sunday. The quarterback they face this Sunday, Ben Roethlisberger, will be a tougher out than Tom Brady, the one they faced last Sunday. Brady has won more Super Bowls than Roethlisberger. Not lately. And guess what? When you smack Roethlisberger around a little bit, he doesn't act as if he wants to go home.
The Steelers aren't likely to let the Jets run the ball the way they did against the Patriots or Colts. The Steelers have a much better defense than either one of those teams.
It is why Mark Sanchez, as good as he was in Foxborough, will need to be even better in Pittsburgh on Sunday night when James Harrison and Troy Polamalu come after him. One more time, the Jets ask the kid to play like a star.
"The bigger the stage the more (Sanchez) wants to play," Rex Ryan said Wednesday.
"Wins and losses (in games like this) change people's careers," Sanchez said in Florham Park.
Sanchez made the throw he needed to make at the end of the Colts game, setting up the winning field goal. He made some huge throws in Foxborough, to Jerricho Cotchery and Braylon Edwards and Santonio Holmes.
He ended up with 16-for-25 and 194 yards, threw more touchdown passes than Brady, the Jets won. Bill Parcells always said that the only stat that matters for a quarterback is the one that matters for a point guard in basketball: The final score. On the greatest day in the history of the New York Jets, Super Bowl III, Joe Namath was 17-for-28 and a modest 206 passing yards and didn't throw a touchdown pass.
Already, Sanchez has made the playoffs as many times as Namath did in his whole career. There were fewer playoff teams in those days, but the fact is that Namath played a total of three playoff games and won two of them. Sanchez is already 4-1 in two postseasons, all of his wins coming on the road.
Now the kid is asked to do in his second year what he could not do his rookie year, and that is take the Jets back to their first Super Bowl since Namath. He has gone up against two Hall of Fame quarterbacks the past two weeks and now he goes up against somebody, Roethlisberger, who is probably on his way to Canton himself if he can stay out of trouble the rest of his career.
At 3 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, Sanchez stepped to the stage in the second-floor interview room wearing a neon-bright green sweatshirt and talked about the responsibility of being the quarterback of a team that thinks it can win it all.
"You're the face, you're the guy," Sanchez said.
He wins road playoff games like this at a younger age than anybody to ever play his position. He makes the big throw, sometimes when you least expect that. Last Sunday night in Foxborough, when the Patriots came back to 14-11 as badly as they had played, he threw a short one to Cotchery and Cotchery ran a long way and before you knew it, Sanchez was throwing one to Santonio Holmes in the corner of the end zone. The Jets were ahead 21-11 and on their way to Pittsburgh.
But Sanchez will have to do even more on Sunday. The Steelers will make him do more, won't care one bit that the Jets beat them a month ago in the regular season. The Jets rushed for 106 yards in that game and that was a lot for the Steeler defense to give up. Maybe the tremendous offensive line of the Jets will do better this time, knock back the Steelers the way they did the Colts and the Patriots.
More likely the Steelers are going to ask Sanchez to beat them with the Super Bowl on the line. So the Steelers will ask a lot of Sanchez the way the Jets will on Sunday, not so long from when he was the junior quarterback at USC. Roethlisberger knows how to win the game that gets you to the Super Bowl. We find out Sunday if Sanchez can do the same.
Wednesday, Sanchez talked about the leadership he learned from his dad, Nick, saying that while he would never compare the job of being a football quarterback with the life-and-death job of being a firefighter, he did see some similarities.
"You rely on each other," he said, "and you're accountable to each other."
Then Sanchez does what he does a lot, what the truly great quarterbacks always do, and that means talk about his teammates. He talked about how lucky he is to play behind a center like Nick Mangold. He talked about how lucky he was to be in the same backfield with a future Hall of Famer like LaDainian Tomlinson. Sanchez has not always made the right reads and right throws in his two seasons quarterbacking Rex Ryan's Jets. But he showed up knowing how to act, what to say.
Ryan spoke Wednesday about how some guys say they want the stage, but when asked to perform on it, well, "not so much."
His kid, Sanchez, gets the stage again Sunday. He tries to go to 5-1 in his playoff career. Tries to go to the Super Bowl. At 24. In his second season. He doesn't talk like Namath did, doesn't talk like Rex or some of his teammates. But he's the face on Sunday. He's the guy.
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