Sports Illustrated's Special Sauce Issue Features Jets' Cornerback on Cover

The print issue starring second-year pro Ahmad 'Sauce' Gardner hits newsstands June 23

Sports Illustrated

New York Jets' All-Pro cornerback Sauce Gardner has been as self-advertised. 

The lockdown defender carried an air of confidence coming out of Cincinnati as he was drafted No. 4 overall. 

Gardner walked the walk on the field in 2022, spearheading the NFL's fourth-ranked defense en-route to the League's Defensive Rookie of the Year award.

There were numerous fun times along the way, too, including the Cheesehead display in Green Bay and his off-season social media sales pitch to Aaron Rodgers. 

Gardner's latest achievement is an honor reserved for only the best in the world of sports. The Jets' confident cornerback has landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The subject of an in-depth feature story by Conor Orr, Gardner graces the cover of the upcoming June 23 print issue. Purchase your copy of Sauce on the SI cover HERE.

The sweet life of Sauce Gardner.

The Jets’ young star graces the cover of Sports Illustrated: https://t.co/7TuPzCsrJp pic.twitter.com/BjV6DYZGxr

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) May 12, 2023

The Sweet Life of Star Jets Corner Sauce Gardner (Excerpt):

Gardner had to find that blueprint for himself. Before he was known universally as Sauce, before he was a catalyst for the Jets’ Super Bowl dreams (“I definitely think this is the year for it,” he says), before he was helping assemble a superteam, he was a 14-year-old in Detroit watching a man get shot to death in front of a liquor store. Ahmad was just walking out of the barbershop one day; for years he didn’t tell a soul about what he saw, despite the dark thoughts that would intrude on his mind when he heard the metallic popping sounds on Call of Duty. He was afraid his mom would coddle him if she knew he was struggling.

It was in those moments that his personality was solidified. Ahmad decided he would never touch alcohol or cannabis, believing them to be contributing factors to the kind of spiral that could get someone stuck in a neighborhood, on a corner, in a life they couldn’t escape. He would read the Bible, as he still does regularly, flipping open to random passages in Philippians or Psalms to try to ascertain the meaning (a process, he says, that has gotten easier with time). He would, as his mom challenged him, do only what would make him different from the people who wouldn’t make it out. He would devote his life to never letting down anyone who wanted the same for themselves.

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Sauce Sighting at the NFL Combine

2022 Draft Review: Sauce Gardner Talked Talk, Walked Walk