RENTON — When Mark Sanchez announced his decision to leave USC early for the NFL following the 2008 season, his coach at the time, Pete Carroll, made no effort to mask his disappointment.
“We don’t see this decision the same,” Carroll said in that 2009 press conference.
Carroll did say he was thrilled that Sanchez will get his chance to live his dream of playing in the NFL, but he also cited stats that say quarterbacks who leave college early tend to struggle in the league: “Mark is going against the grain on this decision. He knows that, he knows coming out early is a tremendous challenge for a quarterback.”
It was a bit awkward, to say the least, and perhaps came across as sour grapes from a coach who was upset about losing his quarterback. But nearly six years later, Sanchez has a different take on Carroll’s comments. Those words didn’t ruin a strong relationship; they only enhanced it according to Sanchez, who will face his former coach on Sunday as the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I took it as a form of respect, to be honest, because I love coach Carroll, I always have and always will,” Sanchez said on conference call with Seattle-area media. “I think he’s one of the best, not just coaches, but people I’ve ever been around, and such a great motivator, and more than a coach, he’s a teacher. So I took it as a form of respect that he wanted me back on his team, and that meant the world to me because I had so much fun playing for him. That’s never been an issue.”
Sanchez has been asked about Carroll plenty of times since he left USC, including in 2012 when he was playing for the Jets and faced the Seahawks. All these years later, he’s surprised that a big deal is still made of those comments made by Carroll in 2009.
“We just disagreed, and it became something bigger than it really was,” Sanchez said. “We just disagreed about one thing, and that’s OK. We disagreed about a lot of things over the years; friends do that, that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. There were never any hard feelings. He didn’t wish me ill will or hope I played poorly or anything like that; he just expressed his opinion. I had made up my mind and knew what I wanted to do, and that was it. It kind of took on a life of it’s own in the media.”
Carroll’s take on that press conference is similar: “We just had a difference of opinion at the time. I wasn’t going to hold back in that regard. He was awesome with us, he had a great career, he kind of grew up with us.
“That had nothing to do with our relationship or anything. I love Mark, he’s a great kid and I’ll always be close to him and follow him and root for him, but it was an interesting time.”
Looking back, you can make an argument that, in a way, both sides were right about Sanchez’s decision. On one hand, Sanchez was the No. 5 pick in the 2009 draft, which meant a huge contract — then he got an extension in 2012 — and he started for the Jets for four seasons and went to the AFC championship game in each of his first two years in New York.
On the other hand, it’s hard to say Sanchez has come close to living up to his draft status, having never posted a passer rating above his 78.2 mark in 2011, and having thrown one fewer touchdowns than interceptions in four seasons with the Jets. By the end of his career in New York, Sanchez was best known for the infamous “Butt Fumble” play in 2012, and after missing last season with a shoulder injury, Sanchez was released.
In his first season in Philadelphia, Sanchez began the year as Nick Foles’ backup, but has started the past four games with Foles out with a broken collarbone, and Sanchez is arguably playing the best football of his career. And yeah, maybe things would have turned out differently, for better or worse, had Sanchez stayed at USC, but that’s not a road he’ll go down six years into an up-and-down NFL career.
“Honestly, in the position I was in, I really felt like either way, things would have been great,” he said. “Either way, I would have worked my butt off to make sure things worked out, whether that was in school or the NFL, and I’m still doing that now. I chose my path, and now you live it out to be the right decision no matter what happens. It’s been an incredible experience, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
When Sanchez showed signs of turning this around this year during the preseason, Carroll texted him words of encouragement. And when the Seahawks were on their way to a championship last season, Sanchez not only was pulling for his former coach — “It’s great to see how successful he is and how well they did last year, I was fired up for him” — he predicted a Super Bowl blowout while the game was in the first quarter.
“I remember in the first quarter, I looked at my dad and said, ‘Dad, they’re going to blow the doors off this thing. They might rout ‘em. It’s going to get ugly.’ My dad said, ‘no, no they’re coming back, it’s going to be a tight one down the stretch.’ I said, ‘I don’t know, man. These guys are too excited, they’re too energetic, they’re having too much fun and they’re too prepared. It’s just going to go bananas.’ And that’s exactly what happened. You could feel it, you could see it watching them, and it was so cool. It was so cool to watch that.”
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