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A bizarre week comes to a close, and you have to wonder where the Jets are at mentally. We will see on Sunday.
On Wednesday, the Jets world was turned upside down by Manish Mehta’s story with a slew of unnamed Jets player and officials ripping Tim Tebow.
By Friday, it turned into a love-in, with everybody saying all the right things, praising Tebow, and promoting unity.
We will see on Sunday where this team is really at. The proof will be in the pudding.
Even though the Jets aren’t a great team this year, they have enough to beat the St. Louis Rams.
But if they are distracted, they could easily lose this game.
So I think we will all see on Sunday what kind of toll the Mehta story had on the team.
Mehta’s M.O. has taken a little bit of a toll on Gang Green.
He quickly developed sources on all levels – players, coaches and executives, and caused quite a bit of upheaval.
Early this year, he had two stories destroying Mark Sanchez – one about how the team coddles him, and the second on how they need to go after Peyton Manning. Both stories quoted myriad unnamed Jets.
Now, 10 months later, he does this rip job on Tebow, claiming to have talked to over a dozen people around the Jets – players, officials, etc.
Because the Jets did nothing about his stories earlier this year (like reading the riot act to the player, coaches and executives about going unnamed), he doubled down this week.
The stories early this year had about half the unnamed people quoted as the Tebow story.
We asked a Jets spokesman if they are going to investigate all these unnamed people causing harm to the organization, and the spokesman said those kind of investigations don’t work.
I don’t know about that.
As I mentioned the other day, Bill Parcells sensed a leak, and got to the bottom on it, and forced the official out.
Antonio Cromartie denied being one of the unnamed players in Mehta’s latest story, but not many writers believe him.
He still remains a chief suspect.
There is one assistant coach that some feel is a source. And while we can’t prove it, this particular coach bent over backwards to praise Tebow while addressing the press this week.
It just seemed over the top, and made him seems suspicious – I’ll leave it at that.
There aren’t many reporters around the team who believe that Mehta actually had “more than a dozen sources.” Nobody believes that.
Brian Costello of the New York Post is pissed about the whole thing (and rightfully so).
Remember, the Post and Daily News are direct competitors, and this kind of back page “exclusive” for the Daily News can bring some heat from the powers that be at the Post directed toward Costello.
Costello doesn’t seem very happy with Mehta, and the Jets handling of this fiasco, and has been trashing the Jets on twitter all week.
There are some major changes needed after the season. Not just on the roster, but on the Jets-media front.
On both fronts, things are spiraling out of control.
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