Tebow Gets Cut
Maybe this will convince the thousands of Tebow maniacs that maybe he’s not great at footbalahahahahahahahahaha nah if they haven’t figured it out yet they wont.
I was surprised and both excited and bummed Tebow got cut. After Barkley got traded I just didn’t see that happening, but they cut the Teebster. He didn’t have a great preseason, but he had a few nice drives against the distant depths known as 3rd stringers fighting for jobs. If any team was going to find a way to utilize him, I figured Chip Kelly and the Eagles could. But I guess not. It’s a shame, because Tebow is an entertaining presence on the field regardless of whether he’s pulling a miracle out of his butt or doing something incredibly badly, and it’s a bummer we wont get any Tebow antics. At the same time, hahahahahahahaha suck it Tebow nuts, keep crying.
The most common argument I hear for the Teebster these days is his record as a starter. He won some games (4 years ago) and that somehow qualifies him as good (His record as a starter is 9-7, by the way, a hair above average). Wins are the absolute worst way to evaluate an individual player. Football is a team sport, probably more reliant on everyone being in sync than any other sport, you simply cannot judge an individual by games won. Victories are a team stat. The Broncos won those 6 games in a row and beat the Steelers, not Tebow by himself. Nobody talks about how many games Peyton has won, because his games won isn’t what makes him good. It’s his accuracy, efficiency, QB rating, TDs, yards…individual stats. His throwing mechanics, his decision making… These are the metrics that individual QBs are and should be judged by, and all of these things are things Tebow is bad at. Tebow put up the worst passer rating of all starters in 2011 and his only good game was the Steelers game. Yeah, he threw a game winner in overtime, but people like to forget that he threw like a 7-8 yard quick pass and it was Thomas who turned on the jets and ran 70 yards. DT deserves the credit for that TD more than Tebow does.
You can cry unfairly treated all you want. He’s had his chances. More chances than someone like him would normally get. What sort of player flames out of the league after failing to make the 3rd QB slot and gets a chance 2 years later, out of football the whole time? No one gets that level of second chance. And he still couldn’t crack the final roster. Teebs needs to hang up his cleats and get used to his college ball broadcast job. He’s not going to make it in the NFL. He’s a QB from a different era. If he showed up anytime before 2000 when running the ball was still of utmost importance, he’d be a star. In the modern, pass-centric NFL? He’s a relic and his skillset doesn’t match how the game currently works.
“do you even realize how difficult it was to convince Kelly to sign you? he doesn’t worship me! he didn’t even listen when i appeared to him in his custom-made energy smoothie! he just sits there and scribbles all over a whiteboard until plays emerge from his febrile scrawls! and then he cuts half his team! i think he worships chaos.”
The water monster?
I probably hate the Eagles more than Dave does. I mean, I live right next to Philadelphia in New Jersey and all I see are a bunch of people brainwashed to like a team that doesn’t even represent their city. Oh well
Literally every football fan in New Jersey likes a team that doesn’t represent their city.
But at least for Giants and Jets fans, it’s the local team even if the name says otherwise.
Well I guess you’re right. C12, since technically no NJ NFL team exists, I don’t have anyone to truly root for. However my dad is a Giants fan.
Also, Anonymous, I believe there was talk about the Giants becoming New Jersey a long time ago! In fact the family that owned the franchise were from said state.
Dave lives in Oregon, which is why he sees Seattle fans as more obnoxious than Pats fans… and also why he doesn’t truly understand eagles hate because he never lived in an area where they reach critical mass.
People make such a big deal about that playoff game, forgetting that it was 90% Demaryius Thomas, and 10% Tebow. When you’re losing 7-3 to the Chiefs, or you need overtime to beat the Bears 10-7, you’re not a good QB, you’re a poor QB relying on defence to carry you.
I have a colleague who has such a horrible metaphorical boner for this guy (at least, I hope it’s metaphorical) and he would always comment when we first signed Peyton and got beaten in the divisional round that Tebow had more playoff wins in Denver than Manning…
Mind you, this is also the guy who said with a straight face that Flacco was one of the top 2 QBs in the league…
Dont forget the overtime win against the Chargers where their kicker missed TWO field goals in a 13-13 game.
I keep trying to forget that. Missed kicks make me sad.
I’d feel sorry for him, if not for the same reasons you did the Tebow-Pryor strip. Shoulda taken his TE bow, he might still be around. As a QB, he’s done.
Kelly didn’t even sign him to the Eagles’ practice squad – hell, we signed McLeod Bethel-Thompson to ours, and he’s sub-Henne in his quarterbackiness.
I said this in that strip also: Tebow isn’t fast or athletic enough to be a receiving TE, and isn’t thick enough to be a blocking TE. His fast and agile for a QB, but not nearly enough for any of the other “skill” positions. We’re not talking about Steve Young or Michael Vick level athleticism here.
Tebow is not eligible for the practice squad. That might be why he didn’t get signed to the Eagles’.
Why is he not eligible?
He has been active for too many regular season games.
How dare you speak ill of McLeod John Balthazar Bethel-Thompson.
Tebow was a sideshow in Philly. Never has so much been made about “Who’s going to be 3rd choice QB” in any team. How many people actually know the name of their 3rd choice QB these days, or chant his name when the team is doing badly, or have his name on their shirts.
The whole thing was a ridiculous media scrum, and thank god its over and we can get back to whats important.
Kicking the shit out of the Cowboys and the Giants on our way to another Divisional title.
Guess what, Pryor made the cut for the Browns.
Watch Pryor become the best Browns receiver since ozzie Newsome (yes, I know Newsome was a TE).
As a Tebow apologist, Tim is to me what Rex is to The Draw Play. He’s fun. You root for him in spite of him being bad at the position because he might beat logic. I hope he goes to the CFL and works his way back. The league is more fun with Tebowmania.
Tebow is a moneymaker. He is a good busines investment. While with the Bronkos, his games were fought over by the networks and they even changed scheduled games to cover Tebow. I would keep Tebow even if I had to put him in PR and give him an office. No one has lost money on him. The NFL claims to be a business in entertainment, Tebow is a good business decision. The Pope will meet him!
For the most part I agree with what you’re saying – albeit begrudgingly because Tebow was fun to watch – but I have to take issue with the “stats are what a QB should be judged by and stats alone” argument. Stats, without context, aren’t worth a whole lot. For example, Andy Dalton has a career rating of 85 or so, and a respectable average of about 25 TDs per year. I think most of us would agree though that both of those are a product of being paired with a target like AJ Green his entire career.
There’s also a lot of value in leadership that’s tough to quantify, but you know it when it’s there. 2013 was one of the greatest performances of Tom Brady’s career in spite of a dip in his numbers across the board, because he managed to get a team that had no right being there to the AFC Championship by making the players around him better than they are. Contrast that to Jay Cutler, who’s turnover prone but otherwise alright statistically(Career rating above 85, including two seasons approaching 90 the last two years, 20 TDs a season, including nearly 30 last year) yet has failed to take Chicago to the playoffs since 2010 in spite of having Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall and Martellus Bennett and Matt Forte and plenty of other talent around him.
Things like this become important off-field too. Look at how the Drew Brees contract saga bit the Saints in the ass, both short-term and long-term. The intangibles(“He’s a winner/a leader/a team player/clutch/etc.”) are just as important as anything onfield, even if it’s difficult to measure exactly.
I’m a stats nerd, don’t get me wrong, they’re important and helpful. But they need context, and they’re far from the only measure of a quarterback.
You are basically arguing for intangibles here. That’s fine, but Tebow’s intangibles have never been in doubt. He is loaded up on intangibles, which is a paradoxical thing to say.
It’s his tangibles that have always been bad, and tangibles are more important to actually playing the game. Tebow’s stats aren’t everything, but they are rather important. He can be a leader all he wants, if he doesn’t produce, it means very little.
That’s 100% fair. I just get very wary of people arguing for judging a quarterback purely on stats. Again, I love them and I’m a massive stat nerd myself, but intangibles are important enough to me that I’d rather have an average QB who has those intangibles to lead a locker room and be clutch when it counts like Eli or Flacco than a great QB who can’t galvanize a locker room or come through in crunchtime like Romo or Ryan. Tebow, sadly, has all the intangibles of those four combined, but got them by trading away any semblance of NFL quarterbacking ability.
All I want is for Tebow to do horrible, and yet somehow win games as a starter. Like I wanted him to win in the most batshit crazy reasons possible.
Tebow is good at one thing: making plays. Is he a good quarterback? LOLno. But, he found a way to extend drives. This is something that takes a lot of talent and for that alone it made him an okay QB. When you talked about the Broncos, you were dead accurate. The Broncos defense won most of the games alone. Tebow put one or two drives for TD and that was enough to win games.
I’m gonna go ahead and make an argument for Tebow, which I feel is more logical than most of the arguments made for him. I’ve liked him since his days in Denver, but since I’m an Eagles fan, I really looked into him these past couple of months and I’ve become convinced that he is a “good” quarterback of sorts. This is a sparknotes version of the argument but I can get into any part of it in more Tebow.
Essentially, the argument for Tebow is a “he just wins” argument but not a “look at his winning record” argument. It’s true that win-loss record is terrible to evaluate a QB by. The reason we think Tebow is bad is because we look at him as if he was a normal QB. We grade him on that curve. He’s slow to read defenses and bad at most passes, and since we assume QBs need to be good at those things to win, we say that Tebow is a bad QB. In reality, he can lead a team to wins in an unconventional way, and I’m going to try and explain why.
The first thing is obviously his ability to run. However, he’s not a speedy and agile guy like most mobile QB’s (think Vick or RG3). He’s big and strong while still being decently quick, which means that he can take damage. With most mobile QBs, injuries end up being what hold them back (again, think Vick and RG3). There’s not as much fear of that with Tebow, meaning that you can run the ball up the middle with him and still get yards. When he rushes, it gives you the same advantage that made the Wildcat successful for a while: you have 11 vs 11 instead of 10 vs 11. All else equal, running the ball is easier with Tim Tebow than with any other QB, at least until defenses stuff the box to stop the run. That is why a mediocre Denver OLine and old-man Willis McGahee managed to lead the league in rushing in 2011. They ran the ball often and they ran the ball effectively, something they could not do with Orton that year.
The second is how Tebow limits his turnovers. He does have a problem with fumbling. He doesn’t fumble the ball an insane amount, but he fumbles it more than most QBs, which would be expected since he keeps the ball and gets hit more than most QBs. When it comes to interceptions, Tebow throws very few of them (he was ranked 9th in the league in INT% in 2011), one of his few strengths as a passer. A low turnover rate does not make him a good QB, but it does mean that he does not put his defense in bad situations. People say that Denver’s wins were because of the defense, and that is certainly a valid statement, but that same defense was terrible with Kyle Orton. Tebow runs the ball, which keeps his defense off the field and lets them rest, and he does not turn it over, which prevents his defense from getting in bad situations. His particular skillset puts his defense in a situation where they can have more success. A QB who is “better” than Tebow but does not have the same skillset may score more points, but because of turnovers, his defense will allow more points. Despite not being the most talented QB, Tebow puts his team in positions where they can win.
Third, we obviously have to consider his passing skills. It’s not pretty. He has an ugly throwing motion, and while it looked infinitely better this preseason, it’s still among the worst in the league. He takes too long to read defenses and he struggles with short passes. We all know about his 47% career completion percentage. However, that number is misleading. In Denver, the one thing he had going besides his INT% were his deep throws. John Fox understandably did not trust Tebow’s ability on simple passes, so he had Tebow do the one thing he was good at. He led the league in 2011 with 33.9% of his pass attempts being beyond 15 yards. He threw deep 5% more of the time than second place Vince Young, and he through deep nearly 14% more of the time than the median QB. It’s not like he suddenly became Aaron Rodgers when he threw it deep, but he was a pretty good QB at it. The problem is that even for QBs who are good at it, deep throws have a far lower completion rate than normal throws. His completion percentage would be far closer to league average if the playcalling hadn’t made him throw deep more than any other QB in the league. It still wouldn’t have been good, but it would have been acceptable. Another element to his deep throws is the defensive attempts to stop him. They load the box to stop the run, which allows him to beat them deep. It’s a formula catering to his skillset. It is unconventional, and it results in terrible games some times (such as the playoff game against New England), but it leads to more wins than most traditional QBs could get. All of this is based on how he did in Denver, but this preseason, he did show that he has improved. He’s still not good at passing, but his motion is faster and his intermediate throws are a lot better. He still struggles with making reads, but if Tebow was a terrible passer before, now he is simply below average.
Tebow generates wins through variance. A journeyman QB may be better than Tebow, but their mediocrity delivers predictable results. You know that Josh McCown will be passable, but you also know that he will not be good enough to have a successful team. It is better to take a risk than to guarantee mediocrity.
If we were tallying up his skills and giving him a Madden rating, the verdict would be that Tebow sucks. He has very few skills. However, the particular combination of those skills allows him to have success where a more talented but more generic QB would not. It’s good that he’s gone from Philadelphia. Chip’s scheme relies on a particular set of skills which Tebow does not have at all. However, I would love to see him go somewhere else. Houston and Buffalo have good teams at every position besides QB. They would be ideal fits for Tebow (Buffalo is essentially doing the same thing by going with Tyrod Taylor). Teams like that should bring in Tebow. He gives them a chance at real success, something they don’t have when they decide to go with mediocre QBs, but he also runs the risk of crashing and burning. I’d rather see JJ Watt’s career have a chance at meaning something than having him waste amazing year after amazing year going 7-9.
God treats the Browns like Job.
Made me laugh so hard. It hurts because it’s true.