The “Football Player” *Might* Want to Start
Brian Bassett , theJetsBlog.com
We’re one game into the season, and according to Gary Myers, Tim Tebow wants to play more and might not be satisfied with the role that the Jets project to provide him over the rest of his contract. Emphasis is mine.
He won’t make a stink during the season, but if Mark Sanchez doesn’t provide an opening to play, then I think Tebow is one-and-done as a Jet. I believe he endorsed the trade to the Jets rather than his hometown Jaguars because he felt he would have a better opportunity to get on the field as a quarterback. Sanchez was vulnerable, but he has responded to the pressure put on by Tebow. [...] Tebow is a football player. Football players want to play.
Whoa whoa whoa … so Tim Tebow was ALLOWED to pick the team for which he wanted to play (something he aw-shucks’d publicly) and then after he does that and realizes he maybe he made the wrong choice, he wants the team he picked to rectify the situation for him?
If I pick between two new jobs, one with more stability but less upside, and one with much less stability and more upside and I pick the stable one and it turns out to be Dunder Mifflin and the other was Google … exactly who’s fault is that? Tebow should count himself lucky, most players with as little tenure as he has in the league have even gotten the chance to pick a team to play for.
We get that it is Myers’ job to write columns, but this centerpiece of this article (which I am guessing is already lighting up talk radio like a Christmas tree) lacks any actual substance. It consists solely of his opinion and a sloppily used anonymous source. There’s no quote from the player or the agent supporting the claim of the 690 word article, in the end it’s just uncut conjecture.
Myers’ premise here is based in general logic. Football players always want to play more, ergo Tim Tebow wants to play more. That Tim Tebow wants to start at some point in the indeterminite future is a given, and likely the sooner the better. So with that rather logical premise, Myers then takes a huge leap by quoting an anonymous NFL source with no known inside knowledge about what Tebow will do.
“I think he will be a good soldier,” one NFL source said Wednesday. “At the end of the year, I think he will express those concerns to the Jets. He will want to move on. The one thing about Tebow is he is the quintessential team player. He would never do anything that is going to undermine the team. But he’s football-aholic. It’s in his blood.”
If Tebow remains in his limited role all season, then the source anticipates the QB will sit down with Jets decision-makers and ask them to trade him. His contract runs through the 2014 season, and Tebow is not ready to concede defeat on being a starting quarterback again. “Absolutely he will talk to the Jets or we will have misevaluated his competitive nature,” the source said. “There comes a point, where they get it and realize this is who I am and just accept that role. Tebow is not there yet.”
Well, the last quote makes it seem pretty likely the source isn’t his agent.
My biggest problem with the article is that for for the looming threat (which Myers himself notes is a guess) there is essentially no teeth. What threat of moving away from the the Jets does Tim Tebow realistically pose? He will have time left on his deal, no ability to renegotiate that deal and most importantly as we just saw in March, few teams who are interested in bringing him in as a quarterback option.
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