I, Mysterious Man, do solemnly swear that I will not write another post about Tim Tebow after this one until he does something of note on the gridiron. After the conclusion of this post, the name of this ridiculously over-hyped athlete shall not appear in these pages again until he performs some feat of either remarkable skill or ineptitude at the sport he is paid to play. I have already spent too much time writing about him, but I just had to say this.
While reading about the Tebow to New York trade, I have observed that people seem to feel one of two ways about him. Either they think he is a sanctimonious jerk with a cult of insane followers who is not fit to play professional football, or else they think he is a Great American and an inspiration to children everywhere whom John Elway and the liberal media have cruelly mistreated–dare I say “martyred”.
The anti-Tebow forces believe his fans will destroy the Jets by clamoring for him to play. The pro-Tebow people think he will win the starting job and go on to win 15 championships.
These views are both wrong. First, let me deal with the anti-Tebow group.
Yes, I think Tebow is sanctimonious. Yes, I think Tebow loves being a celebrity. He is not so different from guys like Chad Ochocinco or, to use a Jets example, “Broadway Joe” Namath, although he goes about building his brand in a different way. That’s my assessment of him, although I can’t be sure. I’ve never met the man.
But it doesn’t matter; I don’t want him to be my friend, I wanted him to play quarterback for my team. His personality isn’t that relevant.
People keep saying that his rabid fans demanding he play now will make Sanchez uncomfortable. So what? If Sanchez can’t play well enough to shut those people up, that’s his problem. And like I thought when my fellow Buffalo fans said Tebow’s apostles would put pressure on Fitzpatrick: the coaches make the decision; not the fans. Coaches are supposed to be smart enough to make decisions based on a calculation of what’s good for the team, not emotional stuff. The fans always want the backup quarterback to go in unless the starter is already an all-star. Coaches know to ignore that.
On the face of it, it looks like madness on Denver’s part to trade a second-year quarterback who turned a team around, won the division, and won a playoff game. The only reason people can excuse it is because Tebow has the most abysmally bad throwing motion that has been seen in the pro game in years. In terms of almost all other factors, he looks like a good prospect.
Personally, I would have rather had Tebow than Manning at quarterback. Obviously, Manning was once great, but he’s getting old and injury-prone. Tebow has a lot of potential and is still young.
As for you Tebow fans: quit acting like your hero has been punished and humiliated by the Denver organization. He’s being paid millions of dollars to play a sport and live in New York City. That’s not really a terribly bad situation for a young man starting out in his career. I am not feeling sorry for him. If anything, the Denver fans are who you should feel sorry for.
Furthermore, there is not a media conspiracy against him. I know many of you somehow believe he is being persecuted for his religion, but the fact is that he was endlessly hyped coming out of college. And if he is perhaps being unfairly criticized for his lousy throwing mechanics now, it’s only because nobody dared criticize him for it in college. I remember in the SEC title game in 2009, he threw one of his dreadful passes into the endzone, where a defender intercepted it. And his receiver was open on the play; it was entirely due to his inability to throw properly. But no one at the time said, “that was an awful pass”.
Tebow is a pretty good runner and a lousy passer who has the potential to become a pretty good starter. There have actually been lots of guys like that throughout the sport; it’s not that unusual. The rest is just kind of a proxy battle in the alleged culture war.