Crazy enough to work?

The New England Patriots are underdogs Sunday.

That's when the defending AFC champions and current AFC East title winners – like they had any competition – will face the Houston Texans in the conference divisional playoffs.

The game is in Foxboro, where the Pats arm-burned the boys from Houston, then considered by many to be a Super Bowl favorite, 42-14 a little more than a month ago on Monday Night Football.

Yeah, I know you just checked the Vegas line, and the Patriots, with their smarter than Einstein head coach and pretty boy quarterback, are 9-and-a-half point favorites.

So now you're perplexed why I say the Pats are the dogs in the playoff game.

It's all psychological, bro.

Sitting alone in my car trying to nap today on my lunch break, I was listening to Teddy Bruschi chatting with Colin Cowherd about the upcoming game. Both acknowledge the Vegas line, but Bruschi said something interesting.

He mentioned that football players, understandably, like to be the underdogs. They thrive on the notion that everyone is counting them out, thus giving them more incentive to prove wrong their naysayers.

Remember the Jets did this a couple of years back, smiting the Patriots in a playoff game in Foxboro not long after suffering an embarrassing defeat to New Englanders weeks before on the same field.

Bruschi and Cowherd were talking up this underdog, us-against-the-efin-world philosophy, giving it merit.

They're right. Houston will go into the game feeling dogged and underrated, looking for revenge.

But it's not going to happen. Not this time. Patriots' coach Bill Belichick learned his lesson against Rex Ryan and his mouthy Jets.

I see the HC of the NEP turning this around, using this philosophy, a reverse psychology or sorts, to make his players feel as if they are the underdogs because Houston is coming in vengeance on their minds.

The Texans are coming in to take care of business and there's no way in a place hotter than Houston they feel they can be stopped, Belichick might effectively communicate to his troops.

Thus, creating a no-one-feels-we-can hold-off-the-ragging-Texans underdog attitude.

Think I'm crazy.

The Patriots will win, and they'll win convincingly. Houston will look like Notre Dame trying to figure out how to beat an SEC team.

Set Timmy Free

Hey, Tim. Are you still excited to be a Jet?

I'm guessing the answer to that question is a big, fat emphatic, "No!"

Manish Mehta, the Jets' beat writer for New York Daily News, tweeted last night: "Next domino in Jets QB situation: Tim Tebow will request to be traded/released after season assuming [Greg] McElroy starts last 2 games, per source."

First of all, with the Jets, nothing can be assumed. You know what they say what happens when you assume. Multiply that by 10 when trying to assume what the current Jets regime will do next.

As for Tebow, you can't blame the guy for wanting out. From all reports, it was his call to go to the Jets. I'm guessing his thinking was he could better expand brand Tebow and/or more broadly spread the gospel to more people from the platform of the world's largest media market.

I'm not sure what he was thinking, but whatever it was, it was wrong.

When Tebow was traded to the Jets, Rex Ryan told us we could see Tebow running some super secret form of the wildcat offense. Remember, they wouldn't even show it to reporters in practice. It was going to be earth-shattering when they eventually unveiled it in the regular season. It was going to blow the minds of defensive coordinators everywhere.

We're still waiting.

None of this is Tim Tebow's fault. He went to New York, fresh off turning Denver's season around and leading the Broncos to a playoff victory, thinking he was going to get playing time. And given his confidence and evidence from last season that Mark Sanchez was never going to be more than an average quarterback, I'm sure Tebow thought he could win the starting job.

He was never given a chance, most likely because he's not an NFL starting QB.

But the Jets specifically traded for Tebow. Brought him to New York and told us he would make a significant contribution to the team each. He may be in on 20 plays a game, Ryan said. We believed this, and I'm sure Tebow believed it, too.

We're 14 games through the season, and, except for that odd scripted insertion of Tebow into the game Monday night in Nashville, we've barely seen No. 15.

Whatever the circumstances, whether he could be a starting quarterback in the NFL or he just plain out sucks, the Jets need to grant him his wish – if that is really his wish – and trade or release him.

They haven't been fair to Tebow – perhaps they've even set his development back a year – and now they need to do the right thing and let him go.

Sanchez Has (Butt) Fumbled Away His Starting Gig

Mark Sanchez: Sacked!

If you're like me, you're a bit sleep deprive today and totally ticked off that you stayed up kind of late last night watching a game that, if it were not so darn popular, could have set the sport of American football back 25 years.

Good golly, the Jets were horrible.

And it's not fair to pin this loss, and the horrible, horrible season, off on fourth-year quarterback Mark Sanchez, but dagnabbit he deserves much of the blame.

Four interceptions and a fumble lost, although the latter was not really his fault, is what Sanchez gave us on the Monday Night Football stage in a dreadful 14-10 loss to the Tennessee Titans in Nashville.

So now, Sanchez, the fella who earlier this season gave us the butt fumble – the play that will live in Jets infamy – will ride the bench this Sunday against the San Diego Chargers.

(Oh, wow. Someone just cracked a sinker in the office.)

Greg McElroy, not the glorified back up and personal punt protector Tim Tebow, will be the starter.

It was just a few weeks ago that McElroy replaced Sanchez in a game and led the Jets, if you can really say that, to a 7-6 win over the Arizona Cardinals.

McElroy was no Kurk Cousins that day and did nothing extraordinary, but he did lead the Jets to a game-winning scoring drive in which he found a wide open Jeff Cumberland in the end zone for Gang Green's only touchdown of the game.

It turned out it was the only score they needed to beat the Cardinals, the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked.

So what does the benching mean for Sanchez in the long-term? That's yet to be determined, but it's almost certain, unless the Jets absolutely want him away from the team, that he'll be back with the team next year.

His contract leaves little wiggle room for the Jets to part ways with the QB, who, according to reports, is guaranteed $8.25 million next season. As ESPN New York's Rich Cimini writes: "Bottom line: He's uncuttable."

As for McElroy, we'll get a small sample size of what he can do this week and perhaps in Buffalo in the last game of the season. Those are two teams who basically have nothing to play for except for a strong desire to not lose to the hapless Jets.

If McElroy plays well, and perhaps even if he sucks, there's a good chance he's atop the leader board in competing with Sanchez for the top of the Jets' QB rotation in 2013.

Crow's Answer on Target

Cue the laughter.

Go ahead. Make your jokes.

On Thursday, when New York Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie told NFL Network his team would make the playoffs, you knew the media would jump on the statement.

Cromartie was asked in the interview if he thought his 3-5 team would play its way into the postseason.

"The Jets will make the playoffs this year," Cromartie responded. "We believe in each other; we believe in what coach Ryan and his staff is putting us to schemes and stuff, so we definitely are going to make the playoffs this year."

That's darn good answer if you ask me. But because of the Jets' propensity toward bold, and sometimes seemingly outlandish, predictions under head coach Rex Ryan, confident-in-my-team statements like Cromartie's are going to be overly scrutinized.

Fair enough. As a Jets fan, I have grown uber sick of hearing predictions from Jets' players and coaches, especially Ryan.

But, man, I have to stick up for Crow here. I'd much rather hear his statement, which is no where near a "guarantee" as some media outlets have labeled it, than a Jeterian-like response of, "we can't worry about the playoffs right now. We have to take one game at a time, and play our beast… blah, blah, blah."