Mark Sanchez On Fox ‘Rearview’ Show, Caleb Williams’s Slow Start

Former NFL and USC quarterback Mark Sanchez launched the new digital show, Rearview, with Fox Sports and production companies Goat Farm Media and Shadow Lion this week. He spoke to Front Office Sports about what his goals are for the show, his dream guest, and whether he’s concerned about fellow former Trojan QB Caleb Williams living up to being the top overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. 

Front Office Sports: You’ve launched this new digital show, Rearview, this week. There’s a lot of content out there—and a lot of content from athletes. How do you make your show cut through?

Mark Sanchez: It’s about giving the fans inside access to players after games throughout the season, and deep conversations. The ethos of it is they’re built on trust where guys can share what’s on their mind. It’s not really like a clickbait thing. It’s not based on press conference soundbites. It really gives the fans a perspective of the athletes they love and support. 

I’m leveraging my relationships with these players. They understand I’ve been in their shoes. My only regret with the show is it wasn’t around when I was playing.

FOS: Who is your dream guest this season?

MS: I’m thrilled that Fox is helping us with stuff like that, and Shadow Lion—Tom Brady’s production company—is on board too. I think that’s the only favor I’ve gotta call in is to get Tom on the show. We battled against each other in the AFC East for years. They kicked our butt a fair share of times. We got ‘em once or twice. That would be a pretty cool guest. 

I feel like even if it’s not about when he was playing—just as a broadcaster, he’s just finished his first year. I remember where I was at after one year. Some of those conversations, about talking to players, watching the game and as it happens using your replay machine in the booth—just his process on those things would be interesting to fans. It’s a whole different world. That first year, you’re really treading water.

I felt he did an excellent job last year, and had a good run in the playoffs with some of his best games, so that’d be pretty cool to talk about.

FOS: You mentioned you wished something like this existed when you were a player. As you’ve transitioned from athlete to media member, what do you wish you knew about the job the media has at the time you were a player?

MS: It’s the coaches trying to do the best to position their team and avoid bulletin board material for opposing teams—that’s where a lot of this comes from—but there’s a lot of apprehension to engage with media members, as if they don’t necessarily have your best interests at heart, and they’re about selling stories, and are willing to dip into unethical practices and twist some words and throw some stuff together that don’t make you look really good.

In reality, the media has a job to do and they report on what they say. If 10 people watch a game, there will be 10 different versions of the game. But if you throw five touchdowns, you had a pretty good game. If you throw five interceptions, you had a pretty crappy game. 

I think I understand where the fear and apprehension comes from. But after doing broadcast boot camp, and being on the other side of it, and actually following through in a production meeting where a player discloses something and immediately after they’re like, “Oh man, I’d appreciate it if that wasn’t on the broadcast.” I say, “Yeah, no problem, dude—I got you.”

If you could just be open and develop a relationship with those people, you don’t have to tell them your deepest, darkest secrets, but at the same time you can be a little more candid and real instead of cliches after cliches like “We gotta bring our A-Game” and “We gotta win on Monday to win on Sunday” and all the scripted, autopilot answers. That’s kind of what all the players major in until they get in a place where they can just sit down, relax, and talk.

FOS: As a fellow USC quarterback, are you at all concerned about the development and long-term career status of Caleb Williams?

MS: No, there’s plenty of room on the runway. We’ve seen this with other prospects, like Alex Smith—multiple different coaches and offensive coordinators the first five years in the league. Then he gets with Jim Harbaugh and Andy Reid and his career explodes.

That kind of partnership and the right tutelage for Caleb, it just takes time. He’s taking a lot of trends and habits for awhile that have gotten him by, and now he’s adding new structure, language, and terminology, and he’s learning how to recognize and communicate that glossary of terms that he kind of drank through a firehose this offseason.

Now he’s starting to do it at a high level week after week. You see flashes of it, but I think you’ll start to see more consistency as he gets more and more comfortable.

FOS: You don’t think there’s any chance he gets benched for Tyson Bagent? Ben Johnson runs a trains-run-on-time offense. Caleb has a lot of improvisation in his game. From the outside, this looks like a personality mismatch.

MS: They’re definitely different personalities, no question about it. Ben’s kind of a say-less kind of guy. Caleb’s a little more new-school, a little more TikTok/Instagram. It’s a new generation of player. 

But the principles of the game—the timing, your footwork, your eyes—I don’t care who does it. Whether you’ve got pink nails or bite your nails, it doesn’t matter as long as you go through the proper protocol, you trust the system, you fall back on what you learned and execute plays. Nobody cares about all that stuff.

If he shows up to work in a suit or he shows up in a lime green kilt, it makes no difference to me as long as you go throw touchdowns and win games.

He looked a little unsettled at times. A lot of that is footwork-based stuff. Learning to really invest in those drills and the footwork—it’s so monotonous and boring to do those things over and over and over, but you gotta get good at the boring if you want to execute at this level, to where those things become second nature and he’s not sailing the flat routes for incompletions.

When he hits them, he’s unbelievable. That’s the thing: His good plays aren’t just good plays, they’re some of the best you’ve ever seen. And then the bad ones, there’s some headscratchers where you’re like, “Huh! I’ve seen him make that throw before. What happened there?” I think some of that stuff is just footwork and drilling that stuff down. 

But I don’t think it’s anywhere close to throwing in the towel on this guy. There’s way too much talent. There’s a lot of runway left. He’ll be alright.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.