From the moment that we heard Tim Tebow was heading to the New York Jets earlier this year, we thought it was only a matter of time until a quarterback controversy would arise. However, according to comments made by twelve Jets teammates, there is only one clear quarterback for the Jets, and it is not Tim Tebow.
Twelve Jets players reportedly spoke to The NY Daily News, but one comment by an anonymous defensive player summed up the Tim Tebow era in New York to date:
“He’s terrible.”
The bulk of the criticism against the back-up quarterback was his lack of improvement since he joined the organization from the Denver Broncos.
Both offensive and defensive players admitted that they hadn’t noticed any appreciable improvement in Tebow’s quarterback skills in practice since he was traded to the Jets in March. Tebow has been a poor practice player throughout his career. His current teammates echoed sentiments from Denver Broncos players a year ago about the lefthanded signal caller’s poor practice performance.
The Jets are a mess on and off the field and they have had a miserable 3-6 start and face a realistic shot of not making the playoffs. Tim Tebow must be quite bad in practice if his teammates still think that Mark Sanchez, who has a league-low 52% completion rate and league-leading four red-zone interceptions, should remain the Jets starter.
Left guard Matt Slauson is among the Jets players who firmly believes that Sanchez is their guy.
“It’s not even close, all the other quarterbacks know it. I have all the confidence in Mark. We don’t really have a choice.”
The Times continued to release quotes from players stating that Tebow is no more than a gimmick.
To most of the people in the organization, Tebow is nothing more than a specialty player who doesn’t have the requisite skills to be a true quarterback in the league. “We don’t look at him as a quarterback,” another starter said. “He’s the Wildcat guy.”
The long and short of it is that Tim Tebow is not perceived to be a starting QB by his teammates, but given the poor performance of Mark Sanchez so far you have to think that Tebow really must be “terrible.”