Insisting he doesn’t offer anonymous quotes or criticize his teammates in the media, Antonio Cromartie denied an accusation by former teammate LaDainian Tomlinson he was one of the Jets who ripped Tim Tebow.
Tomlinson, who was Cromartie’s teammate in both San Diego and with the Jets, said on his Sirius XM NFL Radio show on Tuesday he thinks Cromartie and Bart Scott were the anonymous Jets quoted as being critical of Tebow. Scott denied it to The Post’s Brian Costello on Tuesday.
“I heard [Tomlinson’s accusation]. But I have no response for a retired player,” Cromartie said Thursday. “But y’all know me — if I say something, I put my name on anything that I want to say. I really don’t care if I hurt anybody’s feelings or anything about that. That’s not me.
“And for me to sit here and say I would talk about a teammate, no. If I’m going to talk about a teammate, I’m going to tell him personally. I’m not going to go and get into the media or say I’m an anonymous-type person to speak about it. I’m not that kind of a cowardly person. I’m a person that will speak my mind, no matter how it goes. … I’m never going to sit here and talk about a teammate through the paper.”
A current teammate also told The Post on Tuesday the belief around the Jets is Cromartie was the anonymous Jet who reportedly tabbed Tebow as “terrible.”
Cromartie called into question whether all the sources in the Tebow story were legitimate.
“A source is a source. It can be a made-up source, too,” he said.
He called the idea of ripping Tebow “stupidity,” praising him for being “a great teammate.”
Running back Shonn Greene also tried to clear his name, denying he ever said Mark Sanchez should be benched for Tebow in a Yahoo Sports story.
The article quoted Greene as saying: “Something’s got to change. When you get to the point where you’re 3-6, and losing and losing, a couple of guys are like, ‘Oh, what would happen [if Tebow played]?’ But guys at the same time have faith in Mark, so it’s kind of an up-and-down thing. You feel bad for Mark, but at the same time you want to win games. We’re not here to protect people’s feelings.”
“I think what the quotes were, were totally out of context,” Greene said Thursday. “What I said was, we’re 3-6 and things need to change. I said nothing about changing quarterbacks, nothing about any single person on this team. I’ve been here four years. I’ve never once said anything about anybody on this team. … I mean [things have to change] as winning. We need to win.”