Everyone Loves Tim Tebow, Except Rex Ryan

You have to feel for Tim Tebow. Okay, so you don’t have to feel for him—Lord knows there are many out there who don’t—but you can understand how he might be feeling today after Rex Ryan finally decided to bench Mark Sanchez during yesterday’s game; a game which Tebow was not active for and so could not be called upon to rally the New York Jets to victory in dramatic fashion as he has been known to do from time to time. So instead of Tebow getting a chance to prove he can lead this Jets team better than Sanchez, Ryan decides to use…Greg McElroy? Who?

It’s funny how Ryan’s ridiculous and unwarranted loyalty to the woefully underwhelming and overrated Sanchez has largely kept Tebow off the field this year, and yet the first chance he gets to replace Sanchez with someone other than Tebow, he takes it.

Never mind the fact that this is another blatant display of Ryan’s arrogance and hubris, and never mind that the Jets’ season is basically done (they’re two games back of the last wild card spot—which currently looks like it will go to either the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Cincinnati Bengals, as odd as that is to say—with four games to play, so the odds aren’t good, even if all four games are against teams with losing records). Ryan is once again demonstrating that he doesn’t care whether the Jets win or not, or whether he keeps his job or not (which he likely will not once this season is finished). What is more important to him, for some reason, is making sure Tim Tebow doesn’t have the chance to save the Jets’ season and make it into something respectable.

You have to think this is because of Tebow’s outspoken beliefs and that he just isn’t one of Ryan’s guys. Maybe Ryan would be embarrassed to be winning football games with someone like Tebow at the helm. Who knows? He certainly wouldn’t be any more pathetic on the field than Sanchez has been, so it can’t be the pathetic “he’s not a good-looking quarterback” argument that so many people keep on making.

Have you seen the garbage efforts Sanchez has produced this season? I don’t care if the talent around him is non-existent, a decent quarterback should be able to do better than Sanchez has done. Keep in mind also that Tebow was medically cleared to play yesterday’s game, and Ryan still decided to make Tebow inactive. This speaks to a deeper issue which is that Ryan does not like Tim Tebow and probably has wanted nothing to do with him since the day the Jets traded for him.

And does McElroy’s success from yesterday create a quarterback controversy in New York, as some have suggested? No. What you have is a second-year player who was getting his first shot in an NFL game, and if anything benefitted from the fact that the Arizona Cardinals didn’t have a book on him and didn’t quite know what to expect. Don’t be surprised to see Ryan go right back to Sanchez next week against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

And as for Tebow? Well, maybe he can finally get some love this week. With the team traveling to Jacksonville, media outlets will probably start heating up the rumors about how Jacksonville desperately wants to trade for him the next chance they get. That should lift Tebow’s spirits a bit. Plus, the Jets organization is all about drama, so why not put this old log back on the fire for this week and see how much attention that gets them?