All Tebowed out...

Ohhh... even I'm sick of hearing about me at this point.

OK, so I've officially got Tebow burn-out. Really. I'm sick of talking about the guy... frankly I'm sick of hearing the guy talked about. Never has a less capable, less qualified, less talented NFL quarterback gotten so much undeserved attention. So this is the very last time I will devote more than a single sentence or two to the pious, preachy, pontificating, passing-deficient option QB from Denver. I don't care that he's "humble" (hint... genuinely humble people never have to remind you how humble they are), I don't care that he's got "god" on his side (it's always weird to me how anyone can think that if god exists, he would in any way, shape or form have a rooting interest in the football success of Tim Tebow... if that were the case, wouldn't god have given Tebow even moderate passing ability? Someone needs to explain this to me. And does god hate everyone else Tebow is playing against? And does god really hate Kyle Orton and Brady Quinn? Hell, Quinn played college ball at the feet of "Touchdown Jesus", you think the old man would have a soft spot for him), I don't care about anything except can he play the position of quarterback at an NFL level and lead a team to playoff glory. And I dare anyone to show me the slightest bit of evidence from any part of Tebow's game that he can do that... that he can do anything of note over the course of a season except pull out a few close games with his legs and his moxie. He can not, and has not, put a team on his shoulders from start to finish of a game and carried them to victory. What he has done is relied on his defense and special teams to keep them close, muddle through three and a half horrible quarters of offense, and then hope for a chance to steal a game late. I can't tell you how many Tebow acolytes I had telling me how wrong I was and how Tebow's a "winner" and how I should just admit I was wrong. Hell no. What I wrote last week was the following:

if this Tebow-run-option scheme is actually successful at this level, then everything I thought I knew about football at the pro level is dead wrong.

Then after the game on Thursday I had one of my friends and fantasy football opponents (his team is dead last and completely hopeless, but that's beside the point) post a message pointing out that I had to admit that I know nothing about pro football. It was a clever, if a bit weak, smack-talk tactic, but what it lacked was any actual teeth to indicate that what I said was wrong in any way, shape or form. For anyone who actually watched that game it was painfully obvious that Tebow's read-option offense was not working. Not remotely. It was stuffed repeatedly.  And had the Jets managed to put any semblance of offense together themselves, all we'd be talking about this week is how awful Tebow looked and if the Broncos should really try to continue with this experiment knowing it wasn't sustainable over the long term. But instead Tebow's putrific performance was bailed out by his defense, who stymied the Jets time and time again, and forced another terrible QB, Mark Sanchez, into throwing a horrible pick-six. So, by the middle of the fourth quarter you had the Broncos with less than a hundred yards of offense, 3 points scored by the offense and 8 straight punts. That's bad. Hell, that's bad in pee-wee football. But you also had a Jets team unable to put any points on the board themselves, and in a giving mood with a pick six, so the game was allowed to come down to one series for Tebow with a chance to win it. And, despite all his shortcomings, despite his terrible mechanics and horrible sense of defensive scheme... Tebow does have uncanny athletic ability, moxie, and guile. And he is capable of making one drive, and seems to have a knack for doing so when the game is on the line. I will give him all the props in the world for those qualities. If you give him a chance to beat you with one drive, he very much can. The Jets played every drive but one the same way, with huge success, and then decided to change their approach on the last, game-deciding drive. Who does this? Isn't Rexy supposed to be the defensive genius? Why would you change what's working when it's most critical. The Jets bewilderingly went into a prevent nickle defense against a guy who can't throw the ball. It was just surreal. And sure enough, Tim Tebow pulled off runs (duh) of 15, 9, 7, 3, 3, and 20 yards... the last culminating in a touchdown where the Jets inexplicably had no-one on the edge. Till the day I die I will never understand that defensive sequence. At any rate, it was a great drive by Tebow, the only drive of even moderate success he put together since the opening drive. I've been watching football for a long, long time, and I can tell you without hesitation that that performance will get you crushed 9 times out of 10, unless you possess the Bears '85 defense or the Ravens 2001 defense.

So, how do we honestly evaluate Tebow? Analysts and talk radio hosts have spent the past 4 days drooling all over Tebow... Rich Eisen nearly kissed him on the lips in the post game interview... So what are we to make of it? For me, I'm not wavering one bit. And it's not about some sort of Tebow hate or jealousy or anti-religious sentiment or anything like that... it's simply a fair evaluation of what I see, and the entire scope of the context surrounding it. I have a feeling that most of the analysts and talk show hosts that are on the Tebow bandwagon aren't actually taking in the entire games that Tebow is playing... just the highlight reels that will typically show only, well, the highlights. Evaluating Tebow using just that set of data is foolish. You need to look at the full picture, and in my view, Tebow is a terrible quarterback, but an above average runner with great leadership skills. What this translates into is a guy who can win you a game if the defense keeps it close, but can't put a team on his shoulders, can't bring a team back from large deficits, and can't keep up if the defense lets him down. Let's look at the 5 starts for Tebow. Yes, he's 4-1. That's great.. but that record has WAAAAYYY more to do with the defense of the Broncos and the specific opponents than with Tebow... and frankly the Broncos defense should be getting irritated that Tebow is stealing all their well-deserved thunder. So, looking at the 4 wins... they came against the Dolphins, Chiefs, Jets and Raiders. The Dolphins, Chiefs and Jets all rank near the bottom in total offense. And the Raiders were playing in their first game with a QB who hadn't started an NFL game in over a year, and without their top running back in Darren McFadden, while also being the first team exposed to the new read-option the Broncos employed. They were totally unprepared on defense, and still not ready on offense. The Tebow-lead offense played well against the Raiders, but was mostly awful against the other 3 teams... fortunately for Denver those teams were not very good on offense either, and the Broncos have a very underrated defense. Again, I'll give Tebow full credit for making the plays he needed to, to win those close games, but I still contend that when forced to play a team that can put up points, the Broncos really will have no chance to compete. The read-option is a gimmick and will eventually be defended easily enough. I've used the example of the "wildcat" before, and it is still very apt... the Dolphins unveiled the "wildcat" in a game against the Patriots in 2008. It was the third game of the season and they had lost the first two after going 1-15 the season before. They were desperate to do something different to give them a chance... and the Wildcat was it. They finished 11-5 that year and were a playoff team, riding the Wildcat the whole way. The following season, however, teams began scheming their defenses for the Wildcat and found it easy to stop most times... and without it, the Dolphins went back to being a 7-9 team, and have been in decline ever since, just as the Wildcat has. The point is that gimmicky offenses don't last in the NFL. They've been tried... defenses eventually will take them away and if you are too reliant on it, you will struggle greatly once the gimmick isn't working anymore.

And here's the other factor... like most teams, the Broncos, top to bottom, are not built around this read-option offense. In order to commit to Tim Tebow for beyond the next year, they will need to completely rebuild their offense, replace most of the offensive line, and rethink their skill positions. They will need to build a team designed for the read-option... and then what if it fails, or Tebow gets hurt (likely given the amount of hits he will take)... what then? Every other QB in the NFL is actually a pro style QB (even the mobile ones)... so unless you go and grab another option-style QB in the draft you've crippled your team. So lets say they do take an option QB in the draft for just that reason... if Tim Tebow, the most successful and proficient read-option QB in College Football history, isn't successful, how can you possibly think some other similar styled QB will be? This whole experiment is a joke... a gimmick that only exists because Tebow was over-valued and drafted 4 rounds too high at least. So now the Broncos are stuck. Deep down they know they can't build a team around Tebow long term. But he's been just good enough (and lucky enough) to be close enough in games to pull off a few wins, and so fans in Denver who see this whole thing as some sort of "good vs. evil holy war" with Tebow as the fully armored Saint, will scream bloody murder if they change direction. This was such a bad idea by the Broncos, and I fear they've put themselves into an unwinnable situation. No, I'm not advocating that they pull Tebow now... why would you? The stadium is filling up and there's a buzz around the team. But ultimately you need to go another direction... probably in this upcoming off-season. Even John Elway admitted over the weekend that the Broncos are no closer to having their future starter than they were before Tebow began starting for them. Elway knows you can't sustain this style of offense and expect to compete at the highest level of the NFL.

And if John Elway knows it, then I see no reason to put any more energy into analyzing Tim Tebow as a viable long term starting QB in the NFL. He's not. And I'm done discussing it.