Rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez made headlines for his bare-chested GQ photo shoot and now his teammates are making him pay for it.
Practice didn't go well for Sanchez on Thursday. Playing with the second-unit offense, the former USC quarterback struggled to find an answer for the Jets defense. It's possible that the defenders dialed things up a notch for the rookie as part of a concerted effort to make him think twice before taking his shirt off in a major magazine again.
Sanchez has been hearing it from the boys in the locker room, from being asked if he'll be practicing with his shirt on or off to getting called David Hasselhoff because of a pose that captured him in red skivvies with a flotation device.
"It was a team effort, they definitely put him on blast (embarrassed him)," cornerback Lito Sheppard said. "Coming from the West Coast and that sunny mentality, I guess you do some weird things. He thought he was auditioning for 'Baywatch.'"
If Sanchez needs to remind himself that these things pass, he need only look to the closest picture of Joe Namath wagging his index finger after Super Bowl III. When Namath became a Jet, he was not well liked by teammates who made a fraction of his $400,000 even though they'd spent years in the trenches. The gap between haves and have-nots isn't so wide in today's NFL, but the reminder that you have to earn your keep remains intact.
It's unfair for Sanchez to keep hearing comparisons to Namath, but that doesn't mean they're going to stop coming. The nice thing is that he doesn't need to throw for 4,000 yards or capture the imagination of an entire country for them to go away. He just needs to let that defense do its job, hand the ball off and lead the team to winning records. Easier said than done, to be sure, but the best things in life always are.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
