Denver Broncos: Can Mark Sanchez Win a Super Bowl?
By Luke Sims
The Denver Broncos are a talented football team, even with the recent free agent demolition at the hands of other teams, and can contend for the next Super Bowl, but can their quarterback get them there?
Mark Sanchez is a quarterback more famous for a fumble than for any particularly great pass. He’s more famous as a New York pretty boy than as the kind of gritty quarterback that buckles down and wins games in tight moments.
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And yet the Broncos are forced to turn to Sanchez because 2016 free agency has absolutely decimated their roster. Even in his worst season, the recently-retired Peyton Manning makes Sanchez look bad. For now, however, Sanchez is the Broncos’ best bet.
Defense wins championships in the NFL and no team has a better defense than the Broncos. It allowed them to win even with the aged Manning struggling to look like his former self and it set themselves up for a bright future behind the arm of now-Houston Texans quarterback Brock Osweiler. Even with the cannibalizing of its defense by other teams, the Broncos can still rely on that side of the ball to compete.
After Osweiler left, there weren’t a lot of quarterback options left to pursue. Colin Kaepernick is a possibility in a trade for the young player. Mark Sanchez offers some level of security. Free agency isn’t over and trades can still happen, but for now it looks like Sanchez could very well be the guy, especially if Kaepernick stays in San Francisco as proposed by Michael Silver at NFL.com.
So the question is, can their quarterback do enough to get them the Lombardi Trophy two years in a row?
The last time “the Sanchize” played for 10 games or more in a season was back in 2012, when he posted a 6-9 record as a starter with the New York Jets. The last time Sanchez had a winning record as a starter was in his second season in 2010, leading the Jets to an impressive 11-5 mark and reaching the AFC Championship Game (as he did as a rookie). If the Broncos expect to win, then they need Sanchez to revert back to his best playing days (his first two seasons) rather than be the quarterback he developed into: mediocre and unimpressive.
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The quarterback situation for the Broncos, as laid out by Mark Sessler of NFL.com, may be better than Sanchez’s record indicates. He writes, “…the Broncos have in Sanchez an experienced signal-caller with 72 regular-season starts under his belt along with six starts in the postseason. He’s not the answer as a No. 1 passer — not remotely — but Sanchez had his moments in Philly…” That experience may be just enough to get by for the Broncos but, then again, it may not be enough at all.
It may be too early to already peg Sanchez as the guy who will even be competing as a starter for the Denver Broncos. Other options, including Kaepernick, New York Jets QB Ryan Fitzpatrick, and possibly others all present intriguing options that may inspire more confidence than Mark Sanchez at quarterback. But it’s worth exploring whether the veteran quarterback can channel his younger self and, with a championship defense, deliver enough wins to get a Super Bowl for Denver.
The long and short of it is that Sanchez brings some playoff experience, a veteran presence, just a 56.7 career completion percentage and 86 touchdown passes to 84 interceptions. That’s something the Broncos could theoretically work with if their defense is able to step up again in another crucial year while the playoff and Super Bowl window remains open.
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The odds aren’t great and if you were planning on betting on the Broncos to repeat, you may want to hold off for a bit, but the possibility is still there. The hope has not escaped the Denver Broncos just yet. Who knows, Sanchez could finally turn into something special and make us all forget the butt fumble.
But probably not.