The Jets have transcended ridiculous, and moved to a higher plane, where the insanity has begun to feed itself.
They’ve now reached the point of having paparazzi, which today offers an image I can only apologize for if you’re reading over breakfast.
The New York Daily News had a photographer tracking Ryan at a resort in the Bahamas, and discovered that he had a tattoo on his right arm of a woman resembling his wife wearing nothing but a Mark Sanchez jersey.
It got the front-and-back cover treatment, with the headlines “KINKY INKY” AND “MARKED FOR LIFE.”
There are several problems here, beginning with the fact that no one really needs photos of a shirtless Ryan Brother before breakfast.
But columnist Gary Myers wrote a reaction that borders on hysterical and ridiculous, wondering if the tattoo “could affect Ryan’s credibility with his players.”
Yes, this will be the very thing that makes people question the credibility of the Jets organization.
It gets crazier.
The following is an actual paragraph in an actual newspaper:
“In more than 30 years covering the NFL, I can say with certainty that I know of no other coach who honored his quarterback with a tattoo of his wife dressed in the player’s jersey. Tom Landry, who I got to know very well in the eight years I worked in Dallas and covered the Cowboys, loved his wife Alicia more than words can describe, but he never commissioned a tattoo artist to dress her up in Roger Staubach’s uniform top and place her on his right arm. I am pretty sure Tom Coughlin does not have a similar tattoo of his wife Judy in Eli Manning’s blue No. 10.”
I respect Gary, one of the longest-tenured men in the business. But seriously?
This just in: Rex Ryan is not a buttoned-up automaton whose entire life revolves around a mythical sanctity of the Jets, that frankly has never existed.
You know what Jets players probably think this tattoo is?
Funny.
And that’s how this should be treated, such that it was treated at all.
Photo credit: New York Daily News