The Tebowites Try to Cope With Their Loss

As we are seeing the likely end of Tim Tebow’s football career, with the inevitable right-wing political career to follow, Tebow defenders are trying to figure out their lord and savior is so bad at football. Rather than admit that they have been wrong about his NFL abilities from day one, they’ve come up with the idea that Tebow was good but has suffered a sudden loss in skills. Mike Freeman:

Tebow’s skills have eroded so quickly, so shockingly fast—think heavy boulder dropped from low orbit—that it has actually stunned several scouts who have watched him closely for years.

Note that these scouts will remain unnamed.

And, I’ll be damned. It’s clear. Tebow’s career as anything but a blocking fullback is over.

The reason why is speed. Speed doesn’t just kill; speed is currency in football. It’s the dollar, the deutsche mark. A player without a basic modicum of it is a brontosaurus in a league of tyrannosaurus rex.

That lack of speed is evident in three critical phases of Tebow’s game: His throwing motion, his mental acuity and his ability to avoid tacklers.

It’s not simply that he can’t do these things now. We knew that. What’s stunning, upon closer examination, is the rapidity with which these skills have been lost.

Precisely what physical speed has to do with Tebow’s throwing motion and mental acuity remain unknown. Tebow does have a slow throwing motion but that’s irrelevant to any discussion of his legs. Now on to the one part of this that might make sense, Tebow’s ability to avoid tacklers.

My suspicion is that the physical punishment he endured starting at Florida and continuing through the NFL has taken its toll in ways we may not have noticed before.

Look at Tebow at Florida versus Tebow now. He didn’t blast by some of the best defenses in the SEC on his good looks and charisma. He did have speed. And he did have skill.

Scouts say they don’t recognize the Tebow they saw in college. His regression has been so steep that I don’t believe there is a league he can now play in.

You mean an athlete who could blow by the mighty defenses of Mississippi State and Kentucky can’t therefore blow by the defenses of the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers? I know SEC fans believe their teams are the equivalent of NFL teams, but no they are not.

Tebow’s story is entirely predictable outside of the media hype. You have a great athlete, but not by NFL standards, who finds himself unable to play the game of football on the highest level. This happens to hundreds of people every year. Even if Tebow has slowed a bit, and I have no idea if this is true, that’s not his problem. I don’t quite remember Drew Bledsoe as a burner, but he had a long career in the NFL. Tebow’s problem is the same as it has always been, a complete inability to throw the ball. The one thing Tebow can do is huck it far downfield. That served him well in that Broncos playoff win a couple of years ago against the Steelers, but while the media story was that Tebow Wins Games (TM), the real winner of that game was Denver’s defense behind Elvis Dumervil, Von Miller, Champ Bailey, and others. Combine that with one long throw (and a couple of other lengthy throws to be fair) and I guess it is all Tebow and none of the other players did anything.

But Tebow’s ability to operate an NFL offense is a joke and everyone in football knows it.