Sauce Gardner likes to cook up big dreams, but MVP?
Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner catches a ball during training camp at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center in Florham Park, N.J., on Friday. Credit: Patrick E. McCarthy
FLORHAM PARK, N.J.
It’s outlandish to believe that Sauce Gardner will be the NFL’s MVP this season.
Only two defensive players have ever won the award, none since Lawrence Taylor in 1986, and no cornerbacks have ever really come close in the voting.
Even if the Jets do have the kind of success this season that they have been imagining for themselves during these first days of training camp, the credit for those achievements will go to others. If anyone on the Jets wins MVP, it likely will be the fifth such honor for Aaron Rodgers, even if others wind up having better or more impressive seasons.
This is a quarterback league and the MVP is, like it or not, a quarterback award. The last 10 trophies have gone to that position.
So when Gardner suggested this spring on a podcast appearance that he was aiming for that award, cackling ensued.
He said it again on Friday, too, that his goal for 2023 is to be the MVP.
This time, though, even he admitted the improbability of it.
“I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said.
So why say it? Why put the impossible out there?
“Reaching for the stars with stuff like that can help other stuff fall in line,” he said.
That’s been Gardner’s approach for most of his life. When he was growing up in Detroit, undersized as an athlete and underprivileged as a person, there were plenty of times when he did not get what he wanted. Sometimes it was a spot on a team, other times it was a more material desire, and other times still it was something most people would consider a necessity.
At some point, however, things turned around for him. In sports he sprung up and transformed from Ahmad into Sauce. He went off to college. Then he was a first-round pick of the Jets.
“When I was finally fortunate to achieve certain things, it was like, ‘Man, I used to get counted out for this,’ ” he said Friday. “So now, from this point moving forward, I don’t only just want one thing. I want this, this and that. I’m not perfect. I’m probably not going to achieve all the stuff that I want to achieve right then and there. But I’m always going to have another opportunity.”
It’s not greediness. It’s ambition. And not even a Defensive Rookie of the Year season in 2022 satisfied that part of him.
If anything, it’s driving him further.
“The beautiful thing about him is he is one of those intrinsically motivated individuals,” Robert Saleh said. “It’s amazing. I mean he cares [about what he’s accomplished], but I think he looks at it as motivation that he was Defensive Rookie of the Year and he wants more. So he has a great mindset. Whatever mountain he’s climbed, he’s looking for the next highest peak.”
There are plenty for him and the Jets to attempt to scale. Besides MVP, Gardner said he wants to win a Super Bowl in this, his second season in the league. And he spoke on Friday about his relationship with Darrelle Revis, who will be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in two weeks. Gardner wants that gold jacket for himself someday, too.
“Me, I begin with the end in mind,” he said. “But then I just take it one step at a time.”
This offseason, those steps have been, well, literal. He’s spent countless hours working on his footwork in drills, hoping to shave milliseconds off his reactions and make him a better player than he was as a rookie.
“If I’m not perfect at something, then I consider it a weakness,” he said. “I worked on everything: Press footwork, off footwork, off mechanics, going to get the ball, lean and locate, being more physical in the run game, block shedding. I worked on literally anything and everything you can think of, so I guess all of those things are weaknesses.”
The result:
“It’s going to be a whole different version of myself,” he said.
There are those who aren’t as impressed by Gardner as his Jets coaches and teammates. Earlier this month, when he was ranked the No. 2 cornerback in an ESPN poll of general managers and executives, former Pro Bowler Asante Samuel suggested that a New York media bias had propelled Gardner toward the top of the list (that Samuel’s son, a cornerback for the Chargers, was a few spots below Gardner may have had something to do with the assertion as well).
Gardner came to his defense on social media. As did Revis.
Gardner said he didn’t understand that thinking. He said it is “weird” to ever consider badmouthing someone else.
Fellow Jets cornerback D.J. Reed explained the phenomenon to him as best he could.
“I told Sauce: ‘If you ain’t got no haters, you ain’t popping,’ ” Reed said earlier this week. “Clearly people are mad at what he did, but you can’t deny being a first-team All-Pro, you can’t deny having the most [pass breakups, 20] in the league, you can’t deny having [one of the] lowest passer ratings in the league. People can say what they want, but it really doesn’t matter because he put it on tape last year.”
Now he’ll be asked to do it again this year. Do it better.
Gardner said one of the motivational phrases the coaching staff has been using for the team — and perhaps for Gardner in particular — is a simple question: Now what?
“I did this, I did that, I got this award, I got that, now what?” he said. “What am I going to do next?”
Defensive Player of the Year?
It’s certainly possible.
A Super Bowl?
Perhaps.
But MVP?
Ha. Right. It’s still a ridiculously absurd and unachievable idea.
That’s what makes it such a perfect goal for him.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
