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It’s an (anonymous) war of words in the Jets locker room.
One unnamed Jets player wants to make something clear: he doesn’t trust anonymous quotes. What’s to prevent a journalist from making them up to sell newspapers? However, if, in fact, the quotes are real, then the anonymous Jets player wants his anonymous Jets teammates to know that they should back up their words by going on record.
Let’s step back for a moment here and recap.
On Wednesday, a New York Daily News report emerged in which Jets players who refused to be quoted by name effectively slammed backup quarterback Tim Tebow, questioning his role on the team and calling him everything from “the wildcat guy,” to “terrible.” Head coach Rex Ryan shot back in short order, calling the nameless criticism “cowardly.”
Well, on Friday a new meta-angle was added to the back-and-forth in the Jets locker room. According to a Metro New York report, one Jets player — who also refused to go on the record — criticized his teammates for anonymously criticizing Tebow. That is, of course, assuming the original quotes weren’t made up by a nefarious journalist.
“That one right there, we don’t know if that necessarily came out of the locker room. We think that was made up or that was from an old story that he took and rewrote it again,” said the new anonymous player. “We don’t think that came from here and was recent. Whatever one comes from in here has a name on it, like the [Matt] Slauson one. We talked about it and moved on. But we’re not buying all this spin that is coming out right now and we’re not necessarily buying that the quote came out recently or even from this locker room.”
The player goes on to say that the controversy actually seems to have united the team as a whole. But we’ll see how that actually works out for the Jets as they take on the similarly 3-6 St. Louis Rams on Sunday.