Tim Tebow won’t be disappearing unless the Jets tell him to disappear.
Tebow was asked about Tedy Bruschi’s recent request that he “disappear” after Jets practice on Wednesday afternoon. His response was exactly the one you should have expected when the criticism was leveled at the wrong place. Tebow isn’t off calling into sports radio stations to get in touch with the media. His interactions come via the Jets and Tebow says that’s who decides how much he’s talking to the media.
“To be honest, I just do what I’m told -- and this day to talk to you (reporters), so I’m gonna talk to you,” Tebow said, via Nate Davis of USA Today. “And to be honest, I just go about it however the Jets set it up -- the rules that they want us to (follow), who they want us to talk to, who they don’t want us to talk to. And so I don’t get paid enough to make all those decisions. I just do what I’m told and try to do it as best as I can.”
Criticize the Jets all you want for pushing Tebow, but Tebow himself isn’t to blame any more than Bruschi was to blame for limited media availability when he played for the Patriots. Teams do things different ways and, as Tebow said, the players don’t get paid to make all those decisions.
They get paid to play, which leads us to the obligatory reference to Tebow’s role during Jets practice. He played two plays with the first-team offense, although he said that people said he shouldn’t read anything into that regarding a battle for the starting job. Conor Orr of the Newark Star-Ledger reports that Tebow completed 1-of-2 passes on his two plays.