What showed me he is a good QB who is winning games for his team is the 95 yard drive he took the broncos on to win a couple weeks ago at the end of the game. That along with all the other high pressure situations he wins in mean a lot. Show me 20 qbs in the league who can do that.
I understand the psychological importance people put on last-minute drives, but you know it’s silly, right? If he could have made that same drive on the opening drive of the game, it counts for the same seven points.
Winning a close game by a touchdown scored in the last five minutes is more dramatic and tense than winning a close game by a touchdown scored in the first quarter with the last five minutes being a puntfest, but in every way that matters, it’s the same thing. The Broncos under Von Miller (with special guest star Tim Tebow) have been winning close games, which is cool, but if you want to evaluate the QB play, you can’t just say “he was great on this one drive of the game.” Few QBs aren’t.
Also, I think Blackadar is over-generous to what the Broncos’ wins prove. No, they don’t prove that you can win in the NFL with a strong defense and a good running game. They prove that you can beat BAD TEAMS with those things. They still got humiliated by the Lions. If they get into the playoffs, they’ll get humiliated there. As utterly, abominably horrible as the Patriots have been (according to Bostonians), it’s obvious they would destroy the Broncos.
Silly? Let’s ask Tyler Palko and the Chiefs how silly being able to score in the 4th quarter is. Let’s ask Norv Turner.
I think it weakens an argument to say a QB leading a team on a 95 yard drive at the end of a game they are losing is the same kind of score as if that drive happened at the beginning of the game. It’s simply not true.
The game is a game of human beings. This means psychology plays a large part. That’s why things like momentum can change the game. For a young, heavily criticized QB like Tebow to lead his team to a win like that it’s a hell of an accomplishment. That is the kind of thing that causes his teammates to overachieve and play better, because Tebow makes them believe he’ll come through for them before it’s all over. So their defense and OL try that much harder, as opposed to losing heart because the team is losing(as it was at 1-4 with Orton).
SlyFrog
4826
I’ve always thought the “fourth quarter quarterback” was a silly concept too. I would put it a different way - perhaps if a quarterback could actually do something for the first 3/4 of the game, the 4th quarter heroics wouldn’t even be necessary. I’d rather have someone that can score 21 points in the first half than 7 in the final five minutes.
Most modern NFL defenses aren’t capable of handling a smash-mouth running game. Denver’s commitment to the running game has defenses beaten down by the 4th quarter. This is what leads to extra time and huge holes on these 4th quarter drives.
A case in point was last night’s game. Denver gets the ball in favorable field position. Tebow - incomplete pass on 1st down. On 2nd down, he evades a tired DE and scrambles for 12. The next play McGahee runs for 24 up the gut when he breaks two arm tackles. Field goal, game over.
Denver’s 95 yard drive the other week? 60 of those 95 yards came on the ground. There were only 2 3rd downs in the entire drive - for 1 yard and 4 yards. Denver ran for both conversions. It was a relatively easy drive to manage. What no other QB in the league could do on that drive was run the ball himself, which Tebow did.
It’s a simple formula, but still effective in the NFL. You run the hell out of the ball, don’t commit turnovers and you win the close games late. The Steelers proved this for years and defenses are worse than ever at defending this type of attack. But that only gets you so far - eventually you have to be more balanced to win it all.
The credit due to Tebow is for his legs and his head (not making mistakes), not his arm. But if you’re going to give credit where it’s due, start with the Denver defense and the Denver OL. Both of those units have been playing lights out since the game plan changed.
EDIT:
I truly believe that something has been lost over the years in the concept of football and Denver just may be proving me right. I’ve always thought smash mouth football wins football games and that’s been lost in the pass-happy NFL. There are a lot of intangibles when your OL is always driving forward and hitting the opposing DL. Mentally, your whole offense is attacking (“running downhill” is mostly mental) and you keep the pressure on. Guys on the opposing side tend to get worn down. You tend to control the clock better AND the pace of the game. So long as you’re not fumbling, you tend to control field position better. Your defense can play with a long field, allowing them to bend but not break.
Denver is doing just that and they’re winning games. It’s not a coincidence.
“Momentum” is the most bullshit nonsensical concept in all of football. It’s easy to look back at a game and put a momentum-driven narrative on it, knowing as you do how it turned out, but that’s just the human brain’s desire to see patterns and create narratives, like the daily stock market reporting.
During a game, it’s really fun to watch the announcers declare momentum shifts all the time. The Bears stopped the Packers on a key drive, and then scored a touchdown! Here it is, the big Momentum Shift! Until the Packers come out and score on the next drive, at which point it was in retrospect not a Momentum Shift at all. But of course if the Packers hadn’t scored on that next drive, and the Bears had, then it would keep its Official Momentum Shift status, and would be written up in all the post-game recaps that way.
I’m not going to say that football is simply a game of discrete drives, each having no connection to anything going before, because that’s not true. But it’s a lot more like that than the narrativist approach would have you think.
I’m going to disagree with this - and note that I really only note “Momentum” when I actually attend the games.
Watching the players between plays, in TV timeouts, and being able to study the sideline attitude - you can easily see momentum - particularly when a smashmouth offense is wearing the other team down.
In particular, the DL - when you have every member of the DL with hands on hips and a few of them lying down every TV timeout . . . you just know that the downhill running will continue, heh.
I thinks this plays a lot into it. When you’ve got a seasoned vet like Champ Bailey saying he believes the team can win with Tebow, you use that to help motivate the rest of the team to play 100%. Is it going to last? Not forever (see the other responses above), but for right now the formula seems to be working.
Also, is it just me or did Elway look like a wrestling manager on the sidelines?
It’ll work until you come up to a defense that is disciplined enough. Most defensive players in the NFL haven’t seen an option-based offense since at least college (any maybe high school). Defending the option requires everyone knowing who they’re reading, and in this case (as Warren Sapp noted) knocking the hell out of the quarterback on every play. Prepping for an offense that is very different from what you normally come up against is very hard to do; I would have thought the Jets would have the personnel and scheme to stop it, but apparently not.
Shmtur
4832
And if the SD kicker hits that field goal none of this matters.
Lorini
4833
The story of the Chargers season. They seem to always be a play away from victory.
I think what Denver is showing is that a run-based game still works very well in the NFL.
However, Denver’s pseudo-option offense? I entirely agree with you and Sapp. Someone is quickly going to have one of their ILBs shadow Tebow and beat him up on every possible play. It’s the primary reason the Wildcat isn’t anything more than gimmick and you don’t see the run-and-shoot anymore. The QB gets killed. While Tebow may be bigger than the average bear, he’s still going to take a pounding in that offense.
What’s maddening is when (not if) he does get hurt, people will cry “conspiracy” about Elway/Fox wanting to get Tebow hurt.
Whereas Denver always seems to be one play towards victory.
Hey, I won’t argue that having a QB who can play lights out all 3 quarters is better than one that can only play lights out on the 4th quarter. But some of you seem to be propositioning that you get a choice of only those two options. There’s a third option, a QB who isn’t reliably showing up in any given quarter, and there are still plenty of those QBs in the league and they are losing to Tebow and the Broncos this season. This season, Philip Rivers is one of those QBs.
I think that by next season, early on in fact, the Broncos will be in serious trouble if they don’t evolve their offense back into something more traditional. Tebow seems to be throwing the ball better when he throws, but obviously he’s still not throwing it enough. That has to change by next season, it isn’t likely to this season and of course that will be what leads to an early playoff exit if they even get that far.
http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?tabSeq=0&statisticCategory=PASSING&season=2011&seasonType=REG
I’ll take Tebow over Sanchez, and all the guys below him. Note Tebow doesn’t show up on the list because he doesn’t throw enough passes per game to qualify for a QB rating.
Shadarr
4837
If you truly believe smash mouth football is gone from the NFL, you need to watch the Niner-Raven game on NFL Replay. There are still teams that run the ball and stop the run, and do it better than Denver. Denver just isn’t playing any of them.
Lorini
4838
Sure this year. But after coordinators have had a season to study him, not so much. Same as what’s happened to Sanchez. Clearly you want to put Sanchez in situations where he has to make a quick critical decision and defenses have figured out how to do that. I’m sure they’ll cook up something similar for Tebow.
I agree; a full camp, in pads for defenses to get at least prepped for playing a read-option is going to put a damper on both Tebow and to an extent Cam. I think Cam’s in a much better long-term position, because he’s shown he can air the ball out.
I also expect a lot of middle-tier read-option QB’s to be signed to practice squads in the off season.
Um, okay. So Tebow is better than Rivers, Freeman, Bradford, McCoy and Vick based on 65 completed passes? That’s some mighty strong Kool-Aid you’re drinking there.
