Mark Sanchez has never been awestruck by the presence of Tim Tebow at the New York Jets facilities. Well, almost never.
"After we traded for Tim, I'm in the weight room, feeling good, feeling big, thick, really in shape," Sanchez recently told Yahoo! Sports. "I'm doing pull-ups with extra weight on. I'm doing squats, the whole thing. Then here comes Tim, The Incredible Hulk.
"I'm doing the pull ups with the extra weight and then he does them with two kettle bells and he just powers through them. He's just an ox. He was awesome and I'm like, 'OK, I'm not at that level.' It was funny. He's just a monster. He has been a really great guy to be around."
Weight-room swagger aside, Sanchez doesn't sound like a man who's been shaken by Tebow's arrival, nor should he. Snap counts in OTAs have proven that Sanchez remains the unquestioned starter, and any speculation about a quarterback controversy seems silly ... at least for now.
In an enlightening profile by Jason Cole, Sanchez discussed a number of topics about his past, present and future in New York:
On working with former Jets QB Chad Pennington: "It made a grand slam, (with) him being one of the most cerebral quarterbacks in the game the past few years, up there with Peyton Manning. (He's) a great decision-maker, knows when to throw the ball away, knows when to check it down, knows when to take a sack, call a timeout, how to run a two-minute drill. He knows how to save turnovers, and that's key to me. If we save four or five turnovers last season, we're looking at a different season, and a different last three games, and who knows?"
On his struggles with mechanics last season: "I took a couple of shots early in the season and I wasn't able to lift as hard during the season as I wanted to. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Olympic lifter. But at the same time, you need some strength. By the end of the season, I was down to 218-220 pounds and I'm usually 225-230 pounds plus. I just didn't have it. I was trying to throw too much with just my arm and my upper body, I wasn't using my legs enough, and I just wasn't as sound, physically, as I should be, and it showed."
On the Jets' interest in Peyton Manning and the trade for Tebow: "The whole Peyton thing was a lot bigger than I really think it was supposed to be because my agent and my brother were talking to the team about my contract the whole time while that was going on. The team was saying , 'We're not going after (Manning).' Obviously, the team doesn't always show its hand all the time. They're not going to say everything they're doing. Still, I knew in the back of my mind that the contract was getting done, so I had that in my back pocket, fine. Then the trade for Tebow happened and I just didn't really have time to think about it or worry about it."
On the New York nightlife, and having his behavior compared to Tebow: "I have to make sure what I'm doing is the best thing for this team on and off the field. Does it have to be exactly what Tim does? No. Sometimes? Yeah, maybe. But I have to be comfortable that what I'm doing is protecting the team and then I have to ignore the noise. Lately, there is a lot of noise. But it's a good test. It really is. This is unique."
