So what's the pressure on USC's Mark Sanchez going to be like now that he's playing quarterback for the New York Jets?

Boomer Esiason can give him a hint.

Fifteen years ago after an especially disappointing loss to Miami, Esiason, then the Jets' quarterback, was making the seven-mile drive from the Meadowlands back to Manhattan.

While he was slogging through stop-and-go traffic at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, the car next to him was violently rear-ended. The quarterback threw his car into park, hopped out and ran to the woman whose car had been hit. She was wearing, of all things, an Esiason jersey, and was utterly shocked when he rapped on her window to check on her.

"Are you OK?" he said, trying to keep calm. "Are you OK?"

"Boomer? Is that you?" she asked the Good Samaritan, sounding disoriented. "I think I'm OK, but . ... "

But what?

"But you guys sucked."

Welcome to the New York Jets, Mark, where frustration is measured in decades, and quarterback grace periods are as leisurely as shotgun honeymoons. Sanchez won't be holding a clipboard for long behind Kellen Clemens, if at all, considering the way the Jets traded up to the fifth spot to draft him.

Sanchez passed his first test with flying colors. At his first practice with the Jets, Friday at the team's rookie camp, he wowed his new coaches by learning all 18 plays he was shown, rather than accepting the scaled-down alternative he was offered.

"There was some guy who we have who got the entire offense together and installed the base offense," new coach Rex Ryan told reporters after the first practice. "I guess you can figure out who that was. That's impressive. That's the kind of young man we brought in here."

Ryan was an assistant coach in Baltimore last season, when the Ravens made the postseason behind the very capable play of first-year quarterback Joe Flacco. So this coach knows what rookies can do at the position.

"Up until last year, there was a stigma that you don't win with a rookie quarterback," Ryan said. "I think we proved that wrong."

As a few of the franchise's former quarterbacks will attest, however, the pressure will be on the rookie to step right into one of the unique jobs in professional sports and win. Win now.

"Once you get to the aspect of playing quarterback there, it's a totally different realm," said Ray Lucas, a Jets quarterback from 1997 through 2000. "It's like Frank Sinatra said: If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere."

Lucas grew up in New Jersey, as did Neil O'Donnell, a Jets quarterback who came before him. Both said they expect Sanchez to do well, but emphasized this is worlds removed from the comfortable cocoon of USC.

"You're never prepared for it," O'Donnell said. "If you think you are, you aren't. Even when you're winning, it's still, `But ... ' You still have to answer that, `But ... '

"With the fans and the expectations, it's almost like they want you to fall on your face. You have to fight to even not stumble. Because it's an easy story for them — same old Jets, same old blown draft picks, same old blown free agents. It's a broken record."

O'Donnell thought he was prepared for the adjustment when he signed with the Jets as a free agent in 1996, fresh off a Super Bowl loss as quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was pretty sure he had seen and been through it all.

So it wasn't surprising to him that a large group of reporters was there for his introductory news conference. The eye-opener was that same large group gathered in front of his locker after every practice.

"When you go to your locker after a regular Wednesday practice in the middle of the season, there are 15 beat writers wanting your time," said O'Donnell, who now lives in Tennessee, where he finished his career with the Titans.

"You're never prepared for that. Usually most teams have three, four, five, maybe at the most six guys that want to get a little sound byte from the starting quarterback. But in New York it's 10-15 guys around your locker every time you come out there."

As tenacious as the New York media might be, the most scathing critiques come from the fans — the same ones who were cheering like madmen at Radio City Music Hall when the Jets selected Sanchez.

The young quarterback heard a bit of that last week while stuck in Manhattan traffic on his way to Esiason's show. Radio callers were complaining about the New York Mets so vehemently, dissecting every detail of their latest loss, some even suggesting the team was trying to lose, that Sanchez later remarked about it to Esiason.

Said Esiason: "I told him, `You haven't heard anything. The first time your ball gets caught up in a wind gust at the Meadowlands, they're going to say your arm's not strong enough. They'll be comparing you to Chad Pennington, and that you're no Joe Namath.' "

Ah, Namath, the only Jets quarterback to win a Super Bowl. Like John Wooden at UCLA, Namath holds a special, untouchable, even unapproachable place in the team's history. Eventually, it seems, every Jets quarterback is compared to him. And every one falls short. He did not return phone messages to talk about Sanchez.

"Joe Namath has been the 40-year, 800-pound shadow that has been hanging over this franchise," Esiason said. "So get ready to deal with it, son, because it's going to be a big part of your life.

"All Jet fans are like" — invoking his thickest New Jersey accent — `Aw, he's no Joe Namath! He'll never be Joe Namath! Only one Joe Namath!' Maybe that's true. But Jet fans are negative by nature. They're all cynical, they're all negative."

That's not to say Esiason doesn't love and appreciate those fans. But it's an acquired taste. Playing at the Meadowlands, too, takes some getting used to. Esiason mentioned trying to throw passes there when the wind is swirling, and O'Donnell said some days it can be the toughest place in the NFL to complete a pass.

"There were times in walk-throughs I'd throw a ball and it was lucky to stay in the arena," O'Donnell said.

For now, in the aftermath of the draft, the only winds Sanchez has been feeling have been gentle breezes. In his first week in New York, he threw out the opening pitch at a Mets game, toured the Central Park Zoo, ate a pastrami sandwich at the famed Carnegie Deli, and caught a performance of "Wicked" on Broadway.

"I'm an excitable young man, and I'm ready for challenges," Sanchez, 22, told New York reporters in his meet-the-media news conference. "I'm always smiling."

He was asked about a variety of subjects, ranging from his playing style, to his relationship with USC Coach Pete Carroll — formerly a Jets coach — to a blemish on his record: Sanchez was arrested in 2006 as a USC sophomore after being accused of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old female student. Los Angeles County prosecutors decided not to file charges, citing insufficient evidence.

"It was simply false allegations, but in that kind of situation, you're in a huge media spotlight just like here with the Jets," he told reporters. "People know where you go, where you go to eat, who you are dating, and things like that. To be in a situation like that, it taught me so much, especially without having any of the consequences because they weren't deserved. It was crazy.

"But you learn the kind of spotlight, the kind of pressure you are under, how important it is to be in the right situations and to trust the people around you. I can tell that I can trust the people here, and I've learned quite a lot to bring family back into that process."

Esiason, for one, thinks Sanchez has the ability and personality to succeed in his new surroundings. The rookie will graduate from USC this month with a degree in communications and is expected to receive a contract that guarantees him at least $30 million. Esiason stressed the distractions that come along with the job will add a layer of difficulty to the already daunting challenge.

"Twenty-two years old? (Thirty) million guaranteed? Manhattan seven miles away? Every young athlete has got to deal with the pitfalls of that," Esiason said. "And here in New York, whether it be Darryl Strawberry or Plaxico Burress, there are a lot of guys that have been swallowed up by all of that. But by the same token, there have been guys like Derek Jeter who have handled it absolutely fantastically, and they go down in history as one of the great all-time icons in the history of a New York franchise.

"All of us are hoping beyond hope that that's what Mark Sanchez will become for the Jets, and that in due time, 10 years from now when we're talking about him, hopefully you're talking about a couple of Super Bowls under his belt and about four or five Pro Bowls, and you'll realize that that trade on draft day was certainly worth everything that you gave up for him. I just hope that he doesn't get derailed."

Lucas seconds that, and says the key for Sanchez will be pouring all of his efforts and energy into the task at hand, while tuning out the static and off-the-field distractions that are always there.

Asked if he had a favorite New York place to celebrate after a good day on the job, Lucas didn't hesitate.

"Yeah," he said. "Home."