Jets will run and face Wildcat against Bills

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- The countdown has begun: T-minus five days until Tim Tebow takes center stage.

Rex Ryan said "there's no doubt" the Jets (finally) will roll out their version of the Wildcat in their season opener against Buffalo on Sunday.

"If we don't, everybody's going to be like, 'Wait a second. You guys have been [talking] about this Wildcat and we haven't even seen one snap of it,' " the coach joked Monday. "But sure, we're going to run some Wildcat."

The anticipation has been building since Tebow addressed a crowd of more than 250 media members at his introductory news conference in March.

But Ryan still seems taken aback by the attention being paid to a formation that may or may not be an integral part of their offense.

"I understand where it comes from," he said of the intrigue. "But it's kind of funny. We're just trying to field a good football team and in any way possible."

And so are the Bills -- one of the few teams in the NFL whose penchant for running the Wildcat rivals Tony Sparano's. Buffalo doesn't expect to be caught off-guard by anything Tebow does.

"Anything they're doing is not new," Bills linebacker Nick Barnett told the Buffalo News. "It's the NFL, and everything's been done before, and it'll be done again. The things you prepare for are the history: What that offensive coordinator's done mixed with what [the Jets] did last year."

Buffalo has a lot of history with the Wildcat, too.

Quarterbacks coach David Lee is the expert when it comes to the formation, having run it as the offensive coordinator at Arkansas in 2007 before introducing it to Sparano the following year when he was the Dolphins' offensive coordinator.

The Bills also have Brad Smith, a record-breaking quarterback during his days at Missouri who ran the Jets' Wildcat package before his free-agent departure in 2011.

"We'll benefit from having to face Tebow and the Wildcat here," Ryan said. "And they'll benefit from having to face Brad. You might not be surprised necessarily by what they do with the Wildcat, but you still have to prepare for it."

Smith did not practice Monday because of the groin injury he suffered last week against Detroit. But the Jets are game-planning for a healthy Smith, a host of weapons -- and lots of Wildcat.

But while the Jets' defense has been preparing for the formation, Ryan and the coaching staff refused to showcase it on offense -- much to the dismay of some and the confusion of others.

"I guess we never appeased whoever by putting him out there," Ryan said of using Tebow in a single-wing offense during the preseason. "If that added to [the suspense], that wasn't our intent. Our intent was there's no sense showing it right now in the preseason, just like I'm sure a lot of teams are saving specific things for their openers."

When informed that Bills running back C.J. Spiller recently ran the Wildcat in a preseason game, Ryan said: "I never really saw Brad run it and that's the guy you're going to run it with. Brad has been nicked up, apparently. Look, Spiller is a perfect guy to run that flash thing . . . [but] Brad Smith clearly is a Wildcat quarterback."

Several Bills said they don't need a preseason sample size to figure out how to defend Tebow.

"There are only certain things you can do with the Wildcat anyway," cornerback Terrence McGee told the Buffalo News. "You just go out with an idea of what they were doing in Miami and what they did in Denver and then adjust to what we see."