THROWBACK: Mark Sanchez (6) drills with QBs Matt Simms and Greg McElroy (14) as a sense of normalcy returned to Jets camp. (Anthony J. Causi)
The locker is still here. It hasn’t been preserved for eternity the way the Yankees kept a shrine for Thurman Munson — another guy who used to wear No. 15 — at the old Stadium. Ryan Quigley, a 23-year-old kicker out of Boston College, occupies Tim Tebow’s old stall.
The number is still here. It now belongs to Ben Obomanu, a veteran wide receiver who has played parts of seven seasons with the Seahawks. When the Jets first acquired Obomanu, he wore No. 9, but after a few days he was able to swap with undrafted free agent Zach Rogers.
So Obomanu wears No. 15 now.
“It’d be pretty neat if I did come in and could keep 15,” Obomanu joked not long after the switch to a reporter for the Jets’ website. “I’m pretty sure there’s some leftover 15 jerseys out there and I can have a little fan base from the start.”
Yes, somehow the sun rose over Florham Park yesterday, and the world remained on its axis, and the Jets opened their mandatory minicamp bidding farewell to the remaining residue of Tebow Time.
Because they are the Jets, they awoke a national punchline in some sectors, as the world breathlessly awaits how Bill Belichick will lay hands on Tebow now, resurrect his career, perform a Lazarus trick on his left arm (add your own Biblical reference here, if you like).
Somehow, the Jets marshal on.
“You telling me about that, that’s the first I’ve heard of it,” receiver Stephen Hill said, and he said it with a straight face, and he said it without irony, and he apparently was as serious as a tax audit.
“I don’t do social media and I don’t do TV,” he said. “It’s all fake.”
Fake was a wonderful word for Hill to bring up, actually, because yesterday, in an odd way, seemed like the first time in a long time anything about the Jets was genuine and real and not the product of some reality-show producer’s fever dream. Tebow was gone, New England’s problem (or secret weapon, if you believe the Belipologists), or whatever he’s going to be now that he’s wearing No. 5 and spreading the word on the other side of the Great Divide.
This isn’t about Tebow, the same way it never really was about Tebow, not at any time during this ridiculous stunt. He’s a fine guy, he was a terrific college player, maybe he’ll make a fine tight end someday. But yesterday, for the men who work in Florham Park and will try to make something of their football season in three months, it seemed a perfect — and perfectly fitting — fresh start.
For better. And for worse.
Let’s face it: As much as it has seemed inevitable that the Jets are in for a long stretch of road this season, as bare as it’s seemed the cupboard was bound to be when the massive player exodus began in earnest a few months ago, it’s something else entirely when you see a football team gather together and work for real on a field.
It’s something else entirely when you see Mark Sanchez in action, again, and you realize he’s still probably the Jets’ best option at quarterback, and you see him fill the sky with flutterballs, and you see his happy feet are still thoroughly happy, and you hear the groans and the mutterings of the fans in attendance, season-ticket holders all, meaning they represent the truest of the true believers, the deepest-pocketed of the diehards.
“Mark!!!” one leather-lunged fan screamed, on more than one (more than 10) occasions, “I believe in you! I’m in the minority, Mark, but I believe in you 100 percent!!!”
Yes, I checked. It wasn’t Joe Namath.
So if the reality-show vibe has evaporated from around the Jets, reality itself has not. Sometimes, it really is hard to remember that two short years ago the Jets were coming off back-to-back treks to the AFC Championship Game, and Rex Ryan was a superduperstar coach, and we couldn’t wait for the lockout to end so the Jets could unleash their assault on the rest of the league and … that was really only two years ago?
“This is the same job it’s always been, with the same goal,” Ryan said. “Expectations may be different among the general public, although I can’t pay attention to that. I know we have our own expectations around here and those haven’t changed.”
He has three months to prove his ambitions can make everyone else’s assumptions seem hasty and premature. If Ryan — and the rest of the Jets — sound as if they already have moved on from the guy who used to occupy Ryan Quigley’s locker and used to wear Ben Obomanu’s number?
Well, they’d better. Tebow is New England’s issue now. The Jets have more than enough of their own.