NFL

Jets are confused about Tebow’s role in offense

Through seven games — one shy of a half the NFL season — one word best describes what the Jets have looked like in their handling (or lack thereof) of Tim Tebow as an offensive weapon: Confused.

The only folks the Jets appear to have fooled with Tebow on offense are themselves and their fans, because outside of his work on the punt team, Tebow has not been the high-impact player he was advertised to be.

The Jets have followed the splashy (PSL-inducing?) buzz they created when acquiring Tebow by turning it into one of the biggest box office flops since (pick a Kevin Costner movie).

The 3-4 Jets will play their eighth game of the season when they play host to the Dolphins Sunday at MetLife Stadium and they still look like they have little idea what to do with Tebow on offense. That’s alarming.

Their treatment of Tebow on offense is akin to an inexperienced teenage boy nervously fumbling around in an intimate first-kiss moment with an older girl and having no clue what to do next.

The Jets have handled Tebow as one of their own players as well as they handled him as an opponent last season at Denver, where he beat them with a 20-yard touchdown run with 58 seconds remaining — which is to say poorly.

On that game-winning play, the Jets knew Tebow was going to get the ball and still they couldn’t stop him.

Now, a year later, they have no idea how to create that same element for opponents with Tebow on their own team.

The more you watch Tebow in the Jets’ Wildcat, the more you yearn for Brad Smith, who was a more dynamic big-play threat, averaging double-digit yards per touch in some stretches.

The more you watch Jets offensive coordinator Tony Sparano, the supposed godfather of the Wildcat from his days as the Dolphins head coach, the more you wonder about their previous offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and ask, “What would Schotty do?’’

Sparano yesterday dismissed the notion this Tebow thing is still a work in progress.

“No, I think I have a pretty good feel on how to use him and how to use him best,” he said. “ I don’t think I’m still trying to figure that out. I was born on a day, but not yesterday. That one there, I figured that out. I feel like I have a good answer on how to use him best.’’

Well, if this is the best Sparano has for Tebow, then the Dolphins defense can relax on Sunday and so can the rest of the Jets’ opponents, because what we’ve seen to date has hardly been game-changing.

Tebow has touched the ball just 25 times in seven games, including special teams. His 22 carries have averaged a pedestrian 3.5 yards. He’s thrown just three passes, one of which came on a fake punt. Overall, he has averaged about seven plays per game.

Why Sparano does not have Tebow throwing the ball more often is curious, because the best deception to the Wildcat weapon is making the defense fear the pass, preventing it from stacking defenders near the line of scrimmage to stuff the run.

“I’d like to see us using the pass a little bit more [with Tebow],’’ Jets safety Yeremiah Bell told The Post yesterday. “As a defender, when you’re playing against the Wildcat, most of time it’s a running back so you know what you’re going to get — a power run or a gadget pass. With Tim, there’s no safe way to defend it. You have to play honest.’’

The closest Sparano came to conceding he hasn’t had all the answers with the Tebow package was saying, “Can I put him in more in some of those different situations? Sure. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I can’t do that.’’

The Jets’ sparing use of Tebow has been surprising after all of the preseason hype they created. In the last two games, Tebow has been in on only 11 plays.

This can’t be what coach Rex Ryan had in mind when he predicted before the season that Tebow would get up to 20 snaps a game, or what Jets owner Woody Johnson had in mind when he said, “You can never have too much Tebow.’’