The Scene — Sanchez quietly shines in USC’s spring game
April 21st, 2008, 1:15 pm · Post a Comment · posted by ADAM MAYA, OCREGISTER.COM since 2006
LOS ANGELES — It took awhile to find USC quarterback Mark Sanchez.
He has been at USC for three years and is soon to be the face of one of the top teams in college football. But neither reporters nor USC’s media relations staff, two groups of people trained to find people like him in situations like these, could locate Sanchez immediately following Saturday’s scrimmage at the Coliseum, the final practice of the spring.
He somehow had disappeared.
When I finally spotted the 6-foot-3, 227-pound Sanchez, he was sitting on a bench on the sideline alongside a couple teammates. He soon approached a group of reporters and, before a question was asked, shook hands with each one. (He even called out to one of the beat writers he noticed still looking for him.) Immediately asked how he felt, Sanchez started talking about how good he thought the offense had looked.Days before, the 21-year-old junior was named the starting quarterback. Now he was going to make sure he talked like it.
Sanchez defended the play of the running backs, commended the performance of backups Mitch Mustain and Aaron Corp and said he would be treating receiver Patrick Turner to dinner because he “made a big play for me” — Turner was leveled by safety Taylor Mays after catching a pass, and had to be helped off the field.
What everyone really wanted to know was what Sanchez thought about being the starter.
“It’s just a breath of fresh air. It just let me feel really relaxed,” he said, before adding, “It’s a never-ending battle. I’ve worked too hard to be here and I can’t slow down.”
Sanchez sounded relieved, more than anything. A month ago, he told me how from the time he arrived at USC, in 2005, he thought himself to be the No. 1 guy, even though he knew that was not true.
“Now it’s finally happening,” he said. “It really (is) just reassuring. I’ve known for so long that I have the ability to do it.”
Three years of restlessness might have led to 30 minutes of uneven play by Sanchez to begin the scrimmage. He had to call a timeout before the scrimmage’s first snap. He was later sacked on consecutive downs and threw an interception to linebacker Luthur Brown on a flea flicker.
But Sanchez calmed down. He hit Ronald Johnson on a perfect lob down the right sideline for a 37-yard touchdown to begin the second half. He finished with three touchdowns on 16-of-24 passing, while leading a number of scoring drives against the first-team defense.
It was a pretty efficient afternoon in a setting where the defense is almost always ahead of the offense.
“He assumed that (starting) spot very comfortably,” Coach Pete Carroll said. “He asserted himself in the huddle with those guys.
“It was clear that this was the right decision for us at this time.”
Near the end of the scrimmage, as I made my way past a security guard and onto the field, a young boy asked me, “Are you famous?” I turned, smiled and shook my head, before blending in with others on the sideline, something I have done many times before and will do again.
This might be the last time Sanchez gets away with it.
—Adam Maya, The Orange County Register
