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TARGET PRACTICE: Giants second-year linebacker Spencer Paysinger (pictured) is one of a handful of Big Blue defenders who could make a name for themselves by making a play against Jets quarterback Tim Tebow tonight. “I think anything involving Tebow opens people’s eyes,” Paysinger said. (Richard A. Brightly)
Sometime soon after the young man wearing green-and-white No. 15 trots out to the Jets huddle tonight, and electricity crackles inside Tebow Life Stadium on the night the Ringless Bros. and Ryan & Tebow Circus makes its New York debut, he will drop back to pass and hold the ball in his left hand because no one is open, and feel the pocket closing quickly around him, feel the hot breath of rabid Giants pass rushers not named JPP, Osi or Tuck if he is lucky, and transform into this crazed, wild-eyed, 250-pound raging bull.
There will be danger waiting for Tim Tebow even should he escape, because eager to make his acquaintance will be salivating reserve Giants fighting for their professional lives, ALL IN no-names looking to make a name for themselves, desperate to keep their improbable dream alive. And if, by some chance, the opportunity to intercept one of Tebow’s notoriously errant passes fails to present itself, not to worry, he’ll do what he does best, rumble in the jungle of predators, with an absence of fear or finesse and maybe an absence of malice as well.
For the Giant longshots, free agent and otherwise, who wait in ambush, for the junkyard dogs hungry to hold off a challenge to their precarious grip on a dream job, this could be any ‘ole backup quarterback, of course.
Except it’s not.
Target Tebow is something else entirely.
You blow up this guy, you stop this guy short of the first down, you knock the ball out of this guy’s hands, it isn’t only Tom Coughlin and Perry Fewell who take note, it is the whole wide world of sports.
You ride this bucking ex-Bronco to the ground, you hush the zealots who worship at the altar of Tebowmania.
You sack this guy on those occasions when he dares to throw the ball, you titillate the coaches into believing there is room at the Big Blue inn behind Justin Tuck and Jason Pierre-Paul and Osi Umenyiora.
This is the polarized world in which Tebow lives, but the only beliefs of his that should matter between the lines are his unwavering football beliefs, that no one and nothing can keep him from finding the end zone.
Spencer Paysinger is a second-year linebacker out of Oregon who is among the Giants’ top special-teamers. He has never played against Tebow.
Do you think it would open eyes if you made a big play on him?
“Truthfully, I think anything involving Tebow opens people’s eyes,” Paysinger said, “so if you have a good play against him, your name will probably get mentioned a little bit more than usual.”
It would quiet the stadium probably a little bit too, right?
“It will be a Jets home game, so if you do have a good hit against him, or a good play, a pick, or something against him, it will quiet the stadium down a little bit,” Paysinger said.
All of this attention is, of course, absurd and it is insane and there is no end in sight. Because you ignore Tebow at your own peril. This is what you would call a perfect storm: a Heisman Trophy-winning, God-fearing quarterback, a backup quarterback for crying out loud, whose everlasting faith is a blessing for some and a curse for others, inside the eye of a howling media hurricane that stalls over New York, of all ports, and threatens to buffet Florham Park, N.J., with the ill winds of a potentially damaging Quarterback Controversy.
Hopefully tonight isn’t the night Mark Sanchez — the starting quarterback, by the way, No. 6 on your scorecard, dark, curly hair — will have to start steeling himself for the boobirds who won’t wait patiently for him to make the kind of ascension that Eli Manning made in his fourth season and will scream for Tebow at the first hint of his distress and duress. No one — not Sanchez, not Tebow, not the Jets — knows for certain whether Tebow’s Wildcat will work, whether it will disrupt the rhythm of the Sanchez offense and eventually diminish him, or whether it will grow in importance and relevance with every passing interception from Sanchez. No one at Tebow Life Stadium tonight other than the Jets knows whether Tebow will even operate the much-ballyhooed, if-we-tell-you-we’ll-have-to-keep-you Wildcat.
Normally it is the Super Bowl champions who wear the bull’s-eye. There is nothing normal about this night, or about As The Wildcat Turns. It is Tebow who wears the bull’s-eye tonight. All eyes on him. Giant eyes. Big-game hunters of the world rejoice! It’s Target Tebow Time.
steve.serby@nypost.com