After the Jets melted down at the end of the season, several stories published anonymous quotes from players inside the locker room, ripping Sanchez. Now Sanchez is ripping them back.
“It is a gutless thing to do,” Sanchez said on the Michael Kay Show on ESPN 1050 in New York. “If you don’t put your name on what you’re saying then you don’t speak for yourself, you don’t speak for the team. That’s how I’ve always felt about that. If I ever had an opinion on a player, something I wanted to talk to them about, I would just tell them.”
Although Sanchez doesn’t sound happy about the unnamed teammates who ripped him, he insisted that it hasn’t bothered him at all, that the only time he thinks about it is when reporters ask him about it, and that he isn’t making any attempt to find out who the players behind the anonymous quotes were.
“No, I don’t care,” Sanchez said. “I heard about it, I moved on. No big deal.”
It was certainly a big deal in the media, but if Sanchez is telling the truth when he says it was no big deal to him, that’s a good sign that he’s becoming the mature leader that the Jets need him to be.