Quarterback Mark Sanchez will have a chance to silence his doubters if he earns the starting job with the Denver Broncos this summer.
Denver Broncos starting quarterback Mark Sanchez. Get used to reading and hearing that.
Maybe. Allegedly.
The saga of the former “Sanchize” is one that has played out on National Football League fields and behind the scenes, and it has become a fascinating rise-and-fall tale.
Sanchez went from being a QB featuring for the New York Jets in AFC Championship Games to a guy relegated to mop-up duties in exhibition games who was hung out to dry late in a preseason contest against the New York Giants back in 2013. Sanchez suffered a shoulder injury that ultimately resulted in the end of his Gang Green tenure during that game against the shared-stadium rivals of the Jets, but he found new life and a different shade of green with the Philadelphia Eagles in the spring of 2014.
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What was new quickly became old again for Sanchez. The once-promising Chip Kelly experiment in Philadelphia quickly went south, as Sanchez, Nick Foles and Sam Bradford all spent time atop the QB position on the depth chart without any of them ever earning Kelly’s full support and backing. The writing was on the wall even before Kelly and the Eagles parted ways in December 2015.
Sanchez would soon have a new home.
Sanchez found that new home earlier this year when the Denver Broncos traded for his services. The Broncos lost Peyton Manning to retirement and Brock Osweiler to free agency and then to the Houston Texans, and thus the Broncos needed a QB. Enter Sanchez, the 29-year-old given a chance to resurrect his career with the defending Super Bowl champions.
Then the Broncos selected Paxton Lynch in the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft.
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You couldn’t blame Sanchez for thinking the supposed football gods were against him at this point. Even when Sanchez was the toast of New York, he failed to receive the adequate weapons, protection and tutelage to fully succeed. The debacle that was the Kelly era in Philadelphia is one that has been well-documented over the past seven months. That dead horse has been thoroughly beaten.
Now Sanchez is once again on a roster that has a shiny new toy at the QB position.
Maybe, though, it isn’t all gloom and doom for Sanchez as the summer of 2016 approaches. Jeff Legwold wrote the following for an ESPN.com piece that was published on May 31:
"Better wrap your head around the idea: Mark Sanchez will be the quarterback who opens the regular season for the defending Super Bowl champs unless injury gets in the way. And the Broncos are just fine with that because, frankly, they like him more than you’d think."
Legwold isn’t the only person penciling Sanchez’s name as the Denver starting QB. Mike Klis of 9News.com reported on June 7 that Sanchez is the clear favorite to be the starter for the Broncos when they take on the Carolina Panthers in a Super Bowl 50 rematch.
Why, one may wonder, would the Broncos be so high on Sanchez, a QB who has already flopped himself off of two rosters? The answer, beyond the idea that the team is actually high on Sanchez, may have little to do with the man himself.
There are two things all should remember about the Broncos:
- Denver should theoretically be good enough to, at the very least, compete for a playoff berth in 2016.
- The Broncos that won the Super Bowl did not rely on top-tier play at the QB position
It’s weird to think, at a time when NFL rules protect passing attacks and QBs more so than ever before, that a team could win a title and prove itself to be the best in the league without having a top-ten QB on the roster let alone on the field. That, however, is exactly what the Broncos did from last fall through early February of this year.
Now that “The Sheriff” has ridden off into the sunset for what we hope will be his final rodeo, we can all admit that Peyton Manning probably did not belong on a football field last September or at any point during the season. Manning’s arm strength and maybe even his grip on the football had betrayed him.
Brock Osweiler was fine in relief of Manning. Osweiler had his ups, he had his downs, and he matched 10 touchdown passes with 6 interceptions. His final pair of picks occurred in the regular season finale, a game in which Osweiler was benched in favor of Manning.
Sanchez has, for the majority of his career, been similar to what Osweiler gave the Broncos in 2015. The biggest positive Sanchez has going for him is that his completion percentage rose by over nine points after he made the move from the Jets to the Eagles, per Pro-Football-Reference.com. The worry, as has been the case since his first season in the league, is that Sanchez can have meltdowns as he did against the Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers last season.
Sanchez isn’t a gunslinger. He likely won’t be the victor of a high-scoring affair that finishes 49-45. Sanchez shouldn’t find himself having to play such a role in the Denver offense. Besides, wide receivers such as Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders are reliable targets for a QB looking to merely gain confidence during training camp sessions and preseason games.
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Things can, of course, change in an instant in the NFL. All bets are off if Sanchez suffers a physical setback at any point between now and September 1. Maybe perceptions that Lynch needs some seasoning and a year on the bench are off, so much so that Lynch will dazzle coaches and win the job in August. Unless one of those events or something similar occurs, though, Sanchez seems on his way to being named the Denver starting QB.
Broncos fans should be just fine with that; for now.