Matt Stafford and Mark Sanchez, the first and fifth overall picks in April’s NFL draft, have a lot of similarities: they both play quarterback, by teams that fired their coaching staffs after the 2008 season, they both figure to be starting for those teams by the end of the 2009 season, and they’re both expected to be the saviors of their respective franchises. Oh, and they’re both handsome young men with millions upon millions of dollars coming in the door.
That is a pretty exclusive club they’re a part of; there aren’t too many other people in the world who understand the intense pressure each of these two young men is under. It only stands to reason that they’ve come to rely on each other. AP writer Tim Reynolds, writing for the National Football Post, has posted a very cool article on the common pressures and privileges they've encountered, and the friendship they’ve forged throughout those experiences. Much like Joey Harrington and David Carr, Eli Manning and Philip Rivers, Aaron Rodgers and Alex Smith, and the Couch/McNabb/Culpepper/Smith quartet, these two quarterbacks will be relentlessly compared in development, production, and success for the rest of their careers—and possibly lives.
Here’s hoping, for their sake and ours, that their friendship and friendly rivalry culminates in a Super Bowl contest between the two teams that drafted them.
Discuss it here, in The Den!
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