DownSwinging.com

On a day when Drew Brees threw 6 touchdowns, the Eagles D obliterated the Panthers and Adrian Peterson ran the equivalent length of North America, Mark Sanchez’s performance for the Jets may get overlooked. I’m not trying to take anything away from any of those other guys, their gameplay was far superior to Sanchez’s, but the fact of the matter remains that in comparison to a lot of expectations, Sanchez did what he was supposed to do: lead his team to success. If you think about the other two rookie quarterbacks, Matthew Stafford played alright and Brady Quinn came literally as close to a swing and a miss as you can while throwing a football, Sanchez stood out.

Sanchez went 18/31 with 1 TD and 1 INT. In the beginning of the game, no doubt, he looked shaky. He had a couple of bad passes that maybe should have been picked off. At one point he twisted and turned a good 10-15 yards behind the line of scrimmage in an attempt to outrun defenders, literally looking like a newbie playing Madden for the first time, before ultimately making a bad pass that should have been picked. But once he settled in, Sanchez started making good reads and firing the ball accurately. He had good pocket prescence, and wasn’t afraid to step up. Overall, his performance was a big part of the Jets 24-7 win over the Texans, a team that was favored to beat the Favre-less Green.

All in all, it was a good day in football, and one that I was looking forward to for quite some time. I wonder how Jay Cutler feels after his old team, the Denver “6″ Broncos, pulled off a wacky victory against Carson Palmer’s Bengals while he proceeded to throw four picks on national television.