Enjoying a Jags Game
ORLANDO, Fla. – The legend of Tim Tebow lives on and here in Central Florida, the local fans wish it would live on in the big empty stadium three hours north in downtown Jacksonville.
Tebow grew up just down the road from this navy/shipyard town on the St. John’s River, and grew up to become one of the most gifted high school and college quarterbacks in Florida history. While Jags fans are forced to watch rookie Blaine Gabbert try to figure things out, Tebow just keeps doing more amazing things every week.
Trouble is, Tebow is in Denver.
John Elway back in the day.
While ESPN’s tall foreheads, the NFL Network’s analysts and most of the American print media continue to rip Tebow and look for every possible hint that Broncos general manager John Elway will either bench him or waive him outright, Tebow himself just smiles and keeps on winning.
It’s making the average American TV football pundit spit more needless nastiness than a Tea Party Patriot at a Pentecostal prayer meeting.
“You’ve got Aaron Rodgers, you’ve got Drew Brees, you’ve got Tom Brady that set a standard of excellence in football that we haven’t seen,” NFL Network analyst Joe Theismann, told the Associated Press this week.
“What makes 2011 so unique is we have seen quarterback play in this league at such a high extreme and in Tim’s case, the bottom rung when it comes to completions.”
Theismann just hates Tebow and yet, like so many of today’s TV haters, he loves to give all the credit to a Denver defence that didn’t do diddly ‘tll Tebow stepped in as the starter.
“That defense is as good as any in football right now,” Theismann told AP. “The offense doesn’t turn the ball over. There’s been one interception in seven games. I say this tongue-in-cheek: The way Tim throws the ball sometimes, nobody has a shot at getting it, his guy, the defenders. It’s either bounce it in the ground or throw it in the third row.”
Thiesmann is a jackass. If that Denver defense is so good now, why wasn’t it that good early in the season when the Broncos started out 1-4?
The answer is simple. Professional sports teams almost always play well in all aspects of the game when they have a leader on the field that they believe can win football games. And when that leader is a quarterback, all the better.
Tebow can win. Period. He’s not pretty and he doesn’t have great numbers, but he wins. And while all the analysts were moaning all week about how terrible he is, give ESPN credit. Their writers and producers created the following comparison between Tebow early in his career and his boss, Hall of Famer John Elway early in his career. The numbers are staggering:
ELWAY 1983 TEBOW 2010-11
4-6 W-L 7-3
47.1 Completion Pct. 48.5
1,529 Passing Yards 1,626
6-14 TD-Int. 13-4
1 Rushing TDs 5
Now, granted, Elway’s first 10 starts all came in his rookie season while Tebow’s have come in his first two seasons in the league (more in Season 2, obviously). However, that shouldn’t matter. Straight up, number against number, Tebow has had considerably more success than his boss.
Tim Tebow
And when you consider that Tebow took a team that was 1-4 and made it 7-5 in seven weeks, you would expect that maybe, just maybe, the American media would concede that the kid is OK.
Nope. From Merrill Hoge to Shannon Sharpe, the ripping just keeps on coming. They hate that he doesn’t pass like Aaron Rodgers or run like Michael Vick or manage an offence like Tom Brady. And it really pisses them off that he wins.
And yet, throughout the NFL (especially right here in Jacksonville) there are quarterbacks who have “an NFL skill-set,” but couldn’t lead a team nor beat a defence made up of 11 DMV employees.
I mean, really? Blaine Gabbert? Christian Ponder? Josh Freeman? Josh Johnson? Carson Palmer? Colt McCoy? Tarvaris Jackson? Sam Bradford? Matt Hasselbeck? Philip Rivers? (OK, maybe we can blame Norv Turner for that one). Even in Detroit, the Lions have a good young quarterback, a kid that the NFL analysts love, but Matt Stafford is 7-5 and has been horrible the past two weeks. Hey, Eli Manning is 6-6.
The NFL is full of quarterbacks who LOOK like quarterbacks, but none of them can win, they don’t protect the football and they don’t manage games very well.
Still, the NFL’s TV critics like to dump on Tim Tebow and treat the rest of our list of losers as if they were all the next Peyton Manning.
I like unorthodox quarterbacks. They’re fun and exciting. From Joe Kapp to Steve Young to Randall Cunningham to Michael Vick to yes, Tim Tebow, they’re like Tiger Woods, something to break the monotony of a load of mediocrity that all looks the same.