National Football League

Sanchez is one cool customer in playoff debut

Published Jan. 9, 2010 12:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Mark Sanchez grew up idolizing Carson Palmer. Sanchez was the ball boy when Palmer was quarterbacking at Santa Margarita High School in southern California before following in Palmer’s shoulder pads at Santa Margarita. And just as Palmer quarterbacked the University of Southern California, so did Sanchez.

But on Saturday night in Cincinnati, Sanchez did all the leading.

The New York Jets’ rookie quarterback wasn’t asked to do much with his arm in a 24-14 AFC wild-card playoff victory against Palmer and the Cincinnati Bengals, but what he did do he did it with all of the efficiency and accuracy Palmer could not deliver.

Sanchez completed 12 of 15 passes for 182 yards, one touchdown and no turnovers as the Jets backed up last Sunday’s 37-0 rout of the Bengals at the Meadowlands to advance to next weekend’s AFC divisional playoffs.

New York, 10-7 and the conference’s No. 5 seed, will play on the road at either No. 1 Indianapolis or No. 2 San Diego depending on the outcome of Sunday’s other first-round game between Baltimore and New England.

“He’s coming into his own,” said center Nick Mangold -- a native of Dayton, Ohio, 50 miles north of Cincinnati -- who is accustomed to weather elements like the 9-degree wind chill the teams played in Saturday. “Those California guys can sometimes have a tough time with this weather, but he is handling it. I think he took it to heart when we said he didn’t have to do anything special, just rely on us. When he has had to make a decision or a throw, we want to make it as easy as possible for him.”

Running the ball 41 times for 171 yards as the Jets did helped make Sanchez’s decisions easy. But while the Bengals (10-7) got healthy production out of their run game with Cedric Benson rushing for a franchise-playoff-record 169 yards and one touchdown on 21 carries, Palmer and the Cincinnati passing attack weren’t up to the task against the NFL’s top-rated defense.

Palmer completed just half of his passes (18 of 36) for 142 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Leading receiver Chad Ochocinco had just two receptions for 28 yards, the first of which didn’t come until there was 11:51 left in the fourth quarter.

Cincinnati's longest pass play was for 19 yards on Ochocinco’s second reception, which came late in the fourth quarter when the Jets already led by 10 points and conceded the yardage in lieu of time off the clock.

The Jets sacked Palmer three times. And when he did get throws off, the Bengals weren’t very good at holding on to the ball. Bernard Scott’s opening kickoff return for 56 yards gave Cincinnati prime field position, but the Bengals failed to capitalize when wide receiver Laveranues Coles fumbled away what would have been a completion good for a third-down conversion at the Jets’ 26.

“I was throwing the ball a little high,” said Palmer, who was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2003 draft but has yet to win his first playoff game. “I don’t know if it was jitters or not, but I was missing some balls early.”

Even after the Bengals did score the first points of the game on an 11-yard Palmer throw to Coles, Sanchez and the Jets never panicked. The Jets tied the score on a 39-yard run by Shonn Greene in the second quarter. They took the lead for good on a 45-yard pass from Sanchez to tight end Dustin Keller with 6:19 left in the second quarter.

Thomas Jones’ 9-yard run in the third quarter pushed the New York advantage to 21-7.

The Bengals crept back into the game when Benson broke free over the right side for a 47-yard touchdown run to make it 21-14 with 11:04 left in the fourth quarter. It was Cincinnati’s first rushing touchdown since Week 11 and the Paul Brown Stadium crowd sensed the kind of comeback that had marked their team’s rise to the top of the AFC North after a 4-11-1 season in 2008.

Sanchez quelled the crowd by leading the Jets on an eight-play, 66-yard drive that ate up 5:17 and added an extra three-point nail into Cincinnati’s fate via a 20-yard field goal by Jay Feely.

“It felt great the entire game,” Sanchez said. “It just felt real comfortable with the game plan. I studied my tail off all week with Dustin, Jerricho (Cotchery) and with Braylon (Edwards). It really paid off today.”

Sanchez was asked to throw the ball just twice on the decisive drive, but he delivered both times; once for a 43-yard gain to Keller that began as a bootleg to the left, and then a quick slant to Cotchery for 3 yards to the Cincinnati 3. It was a tight throw with Bengals cornerback Leon Hall nearly jumping the route for the interception.

As was the case with the Bengals all game, nearly wasn’t good enough.

“He’s growing up right in front of our eyes,” linebacker Bart Scott said of Sanchez. “He made the tough throws when he had to, but most importantly he protected the ball and played to the strengths of our team. When a young quarterback does that, that’s when a team starts believing in him."