Fans need to show Sanchez patience

It’s easy to fall in love with a mirage, because what you think you see in front of you with 20/20 clarity isn’t necessarily what you end up having when you cut to its core. No better example of that is Mark Sanchez, the rookie quarterback for the New York Jets. Three weeks ago, their fans were christening Sanchez as the second coming of Joe Namath, an icon in the Big Apple. Sanchez was the city's newest golden boy, a ready-for-the-pros passer with the Southern Cal pedigree. His play had taken the Jets to the summit of their division and made their fans forget the Bret Favre era. How handsome does the Favre era look today? Sanchez is now coming off three nightmarish performances, the kind that might make the film “Paranormal Activity” look G rated. His most recent start was one that only reminds NFL fans of the difficulty involved in jumping from the college game to the pros. The transition, however, has never been altogether seamless, a fact Sanchez discovered the hard way after a 16-13 loss Sunday to the Bills. He deserved the blame for it. Some people might not think it fair to saddle Sanchez with this loss. One player shouldn’t be blamed for what wrong against the Bills; other Jets must share the blame – a giant piece of it. But people can’t have it two ways. If they want to credit Sanchez for a 3-0 start, they have to cite his play for the team's 3-3 record today. Surely, they have little choice but to do so in the loss Sunday. For he never found answers to the defensive schemes the Bills threw in front of him. Under pressure time and again, Sanchez hurried his passes (10 of 29 for 119 yards) and missed open receivers throughout the game. At game’s end, he had thrown five interceptions, the last of which led to a game-winning field goal in overtime. Sanchez had a game that should lead to restless nights. He’ll see Bills dancing in his dreams for the rest of this week – and maybe next week, too. It would be hard to forget five interceptions. After a game like this, Sanchez has to harbor doubts. So must Jets fans. Their euphoria has been tempered. They must look at Sanchez for what he is: a work in progress. Few quarterbacks can step off a college campus and into a starting job in the NFL. Some men need years to transition into a polished product. Just ask Brady Quinn, J.P. Losman, Tim Couch, Vince Young, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, Byron Leftwich, Alex Smith, Matt Leinart or Joey Harrington. They all entered the NFL with much fanfare, but their careers have been unimpressive, more the careers of a journeyman than of a No. 1 pick. Their struggles offer sage lessons. A strong arm doesn’t ensure a distinguished career. Playing quarterback in the NFL is a mind game as much as anything else. It demands a quarterback have the ability to read defenses, to think on his feet and to remain cool in the face of pressure – from opposing linemen and from critics. Sanchez will be hearing plenty from the critics this week, as all quarterbacks do after a lousy performance. Think this is journalistic hyperbole? Well, just listen to the howls coming out of Philadelphia after Donovan McNabb’s horrible display Sunday against the then winless Oakland Raiders. Rex Ryan, a first-year head coach, is unlikely to bench Sanchez. But if Ryan had expected according-to-Hoyle performances from his rookie each week, he was asking for miracles. He will have to show more patience with his gifted pupil than Jets fans will. For Ryan must believe that all the good things Sanchez did in his first three starts weren’t illusions but snapshots of what he can do with more experience.

A solid D plus a late TO = an ugly W

You hardly know what to make of a win that looked much like a loss, but if you’re somebody who cheers for the Cleveland Browns, you’ll settle for a 6-3 victory regardless of how ugly it looked. Think about it: The Browns had been rolling nightmarishly toward a futility that would match what the Detroit Lions did a season ago. Sixteen losses, although hardly guaranteed, did seem reachable, and coach Eric Mangini and the Browns did nothing Sunday to suggest they could win a game. They dropped passes, slogged around in the wind and, essentially, played as if it were an exhibition game. One thing that helped the Browns was a Buffalo Bills team that couldn’t get out of its way. The Bills stumbled and false-started from the opening whistle to the game’s end. Yet they might have escaped with a win (or a tie) if a muffed punt hadn’t set the Browns up for Billy Cuniff's game-winning field goal with 23 seconds left. The muff was a gift from the football lords, the sort bestowed on a hapless team like the Browns. They can’t beat many opponents on merit alone. Even in this victory, the Browns didn’t show that their short-term future under Mangini was overly promising. They didn’t self-destruct totally, but they didn’t do much to win the game with fine play. While it might be fitting to applaud the defense for its play, but to be overly kind to the defense would be to give too much credit to the Bills. To put it bluntly, they fielded an offensive line that couldn’t stop a Division III defense. How these Bills (1-4) had beaten anybody this season is a question that can’t easily be answered, not based on their performance Sunday. If the Bills aren’t the worst NFL team, they find themselves in the same league as the winless St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders. The three of them will be lucky to combine to win as many games as the Indianapolis Colts. It’s no Herculean chore to deconstruct a lousy team like the Bills, because they did so many things wrong that it would be silly to dwell on the few things they might have done right. The chore is to figure out, even with all the mistakes the Bills made, how the Browns couldn’t turn the game into a blowup. That, too, isn’t a chore. For the figuring can start with what has been one of the glaring weaknesses for the Browns this season: a bad quarterback. Browns fans have seen sorry play from quarterbacks for most of this decade, but few quarterbacks, not even the flawed Tim Couch or the inept Charlie Frye, had a game like Derek Anderson did and came away a winner. Anderson completed two of 17 passes for 23 yards. In Anderson’s defense, his receivers dropped a half-dozen passes, and maybe his statistics might have been more pleasing had those passes been caught. But he looked as shaky as he has been since Romeo Crennell -- and then Mangini -- refused to anoint Anderson the unquestioned starter for what he did in 2007 when his confident was sky high. Still, Anderson deserved some credit for not losing this game. Mind you, he did nothing to win it, but against a pitiful excuse for an NFL team like the Bills, he spared the Browns a possible loss simply because he kept turnovers to a minimum (one). When you’re a football team careening toward 16 losses, an ugly win halts a date with NFL infamy. Browns fans don’t have to worry anymore about matching what the Lions did, but can those fans, after witnessing the horror show that Anderson directed in Buffalo, think that anything better than a 15-loss season awaits them?