Are you arguing that Tebow personally took a bat to the knees of the entire defense in order to cause the team to lose and get himself the starting job?
Because otherwise, I think a rash of injuries decimating the defense, leading to a season + 5 games of being the worst defense in the entire NFL, followed by gaining full health when Tebow became the starter, can be accurately called a coincidence.
If Fox wanted Tebow to fail, why the hell has he modified the offense to play to Tebow’s strengths? Seems to me he should have insisted Tim play a straight pro set offense. Instead he’s installed something damn near to the Gators’ offensive scheme. Now it may be that Fox does dislike Tebow and would prefer that he fail, but he’s giving the kid every possible chance to succeed.
Guys, Champ Bailey is only a 10 time pro-bowler and the best CB of the past decade. Clearly the defense is playing great because of their quarterback.
Also, 1985 being comparable to the modern game… wow.
Not saying that at all. I thought, from the tone of your response, that you were incredulous that the defensive turnaround was a coincidence at all and putting more of the credit on Tebow. Tone is kind of hard to judge online.
And there was a bunch of other stuff from other posters indicating they are willing to downplay the recent dominance of the defense in favor of mystical Tebow powers.
I think we were agreeing but somehow not quite getting there.
Exactly. Which is why people claiming that their defense if playing great because of Tebow are misguided.
Tebow’s averaging 98 in the air and 50 on the ground. it extrapolates to roughly 2300 yards in the air over a 16 game season.
in '05, big ben took the stillers to a championship with only 2400 yards passing in 14 games.
and if you want to talk about teams that don’t need qb’s to win? redskins won 3 super bowls with 4 qb’s
It’s damned hard to not have more passing yards than rushing yards, simply because the average passing play (even when you take into account incompletions) nets more yards than the average running play. In the NFL in 2010, the average pass attempt netted 7.2 yards; the average running play averaged 4.3 yards. (Source: pro-football-reference.com )
The 2000 Ravens ran the ball on 48% of their plays, in a year when the average NFL team ran on 44% of their plays. Not a huge difference, but it’s there. Between the Ravens’ two halfbacks (Jamal Lewis and Priest Holmes), they ran for nearly 2000 yards. Meanwhile, neither of the Ravens’ QBs (Tony Banks and Trent Dilfer) had a QB rating over 77, they threw one more TD than INT, and Dilfer is generally felt to be one of the weakest QBs to ever win a Super Bowl.
The 1985 Bears ran on 56% of their plays (league average was 46%). Walter Payton and Matt Suhey combined for 2000 yards, and the Bears ran for over 2700 in total. Jim McMahon was a good (but certainly not great) QB, but he was injury-prone, and they suffered even more when he wasn’t in (he only started 11 games, and missed 3 games entirely). Like the Ravens, they threw one more TD than INT (and it’s dead even if you take out Payton’s one TD pass).
In both cases, you had a team with a dominating defense, a very strong running game, and a QB who was good enough to not lose games (and, frankly, with them playing with the least most of the time, those QBs weren’t being asked to do much). Now, with the Broncos, the run / pass mix is currently even more extreme than these other examples, true, but both teams are still held up as examples of being able to win without a strong passing game. In answer to your exact quote: “They’ve got a great defense and can run the ball well. Can that strategy win championships? In the modern era, the answer appears to be no.”, the answer definitely is not no. If the question is, “can the Broncos win a championship with what they’re doing now (especially when they keep having to come from behind to win)?”, then the jury is out.
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Tebow has helped the defense some, or rather Orton not throwing multiple interceptions per game has helped the defense some. “Leadership” may count for a little.
But none of that comes close to explaining how the worst defense in the NFL for a very prolonged period could suddenly become world beaters. The explanation must be that they were world beaters all along, but were hamstrung by injuries and incompetent coaches until Tebow became the starter.
Either that, or a large helping of pure luck. Is Tebow Irish?
Too late to edit: that should be, “playing with the lead most of the time”. 
Yup; the family changed the spelling of the name from O’Teeb. 
Wow. So to make this excruciatingly clear, 5 of Denver’s best defensive players are:
DJ Williams, who didn’t play this year until week 4.
Elvis Dumervil, who in week 4 took his first snaps since 2009, when he led the league in sacks (and when Denver was 7th in the NFL in total defense). No sacks before week 9; five and a half since.
Champ Bailey, who missed weeks 2, 3 and 4 with an injury.
Von Miller, who’s a rookie but has been producing all year.
Brian Dawkins, who has been in every game but hurt his neck in the preseason and again in week 5.
Tebow took over in the middle of the game in week 5.
Roethlisberger threw for 2,621 yards in his rookie season, not 2,400. So if you extrapolate that over 16 games, it’s a hair under 3,000 yards. Add in his rushing yards (about 10 per game) and he has 3,159 yards to 2,323 for Tebow… which is 36 percent more yards. So no, he’s not producing about as many yards as Roethlisberger did his rookie year.
Not really. TOP is more a function of the offense than defense. It’s a far more meaningful stat to the offense than the defense, as a good offense can both increase their teams TOP while limiting the other team’s TOP, while the defense can only limit the other team’s TOP.
Yes, you can. Tell me; how has Denver’s overall defensive scheming changed from Week 1 to now? Now tell me; how has Denver’s overall offensive scheming changed from Week 1 to now? Point being is that only one of things have changed, and it’s not defensive scheming. Your position necessitates that one believes that Denver’s defense got better when Tebow became the starting QB, and coincidentally only when Fox tailored the offense to fit Tebow’s playing style. Those are two very big assumptions to make and that is the biggest problem you, and others, in this thread have.
Why wasn’t the defense good to start season? Why wasn’t the defense good in the Detroit game, where Fox had Tebow running a “traditional” offense? Why has the defense played lights out since the Oakland game which, conveniently, is the first game where the offense was tailored to Tebow? I can give you a plausible explanation with the statistics to back up why this is so, while you cannot, except to continue to recite about how “bad” Tebow is.
What has happened to the world?
Pithy. And mostly useless (though I do like Holmes as fiction).
Unless we can run the experiment a few more times, with both Orton and Tebow playing the same games (and maybe even toss in Brady Quinn), it’s not possible to say that Tebow helped the defense at all. Maybe Orton stays in, the defense stays healthy, and they blow out opponents in each game. Maybe not. But it’s ridiculous to say that the introduction of Tebow eliminates even most of the other “impossibles” when there was another variable introduced (defense getting healthy about then).
Well, they’re not exactly “world beaters” yet, but injuries and bad coaching are enough of an explanation. 2010 saw bad coaching and Dumervil out with his injury. The start of 2011 saw a tough schedule and even more injuries. And John Fox was always known as a good defensive coach.
So, luck does seem to play at least some factor.
Fair enough. I’ll still question '85 as being “modern” but the 2000 Ravens are a good case. It still shows that it’s not the easiest strategy.
And whether a team can actually run more than pass and win a championship is still an open question.
Wow, seriously? Look like 2 friggin’ postsabove yours.
Time of possession is a zero sum game. For most people I wouldn’t have to explain this more, but…
If you limit the other team’s TOP, you automatically increasing your own. If you increase your TOP, you automatically decrease your opponent’s. Offense and defense exactly contribute the same amount to TOP.
This is not a fair statement. We can say that Tebow’s ball protection has helped the defense for the same reason we can say that Tebow is not a good quarterback. Not throwing interceptions helps the defense. Throwing bad passes is being a bad quarterback.
Quite true. As I said, nothing Tebow has done “comes close to explaining” the transformation.
What I meant by luck is that I am still not totally convinced they really are world beaters. The defense could be playing over their heads right now. If they can keep this up I will be convinced they have a genuinely great defense.
Do you even watch football? You do realize that teams, especially teams with injured players coming back and new rookies, do need some time to gel, especially when they have a new defensive coordinator, a new head coach, and a new scheme and even more so when there was no offseason for the new staff to work with their team. Not to mention the caliber of teams and how those teams play when they meet the Broncos, or even the changes from game to game that are rampant in the NFL.
It’s really quite simple. In the games the Broncos have won since the bye, their defense has given up 15, 24, 10, 13, and 13 points for an average of 15 points per game. That makes them the second best defense in scoring in the entire NFL over those 5 games. Even in the game they gave up 24, the defense got 3 interceptions off Carson Palmer. When the defense is the second best defense in the league, the Broncos win.
The Broncos first round draft pick is a special player, with outstanding skills, a can-do attitude, and a penchant for making big plays when they are needed. He’s made a huge impact on the defense, helping them develop into the second best defense in the league right now.
Unfortunately for you, his name is Von Miller and not Tim Tebow.
While the West Coast offense was just beginning to gain prominence in '85 (embodied by the 49ers), I’ve often seen the “modern era” defined as starting in the mid-to-late 1970s, due to rule changes at that time which opened up the passing game.
At any rate, I agree, you need to have that dominating defense, as well as running backs and an offensive line which can move the chains and eat up the clock when you have the lead.
It’s not as uncommon as I thought it was, though it’s very rare to see a team which runs significantly more than it passes. After the Bears in '85, the Giants did it in '86 (52%) and '90 (56%), the Redskins did it in '91 (54%), the Broncos did it (just barely) in '98 (50.4%), the Patriots did it in '04 (51%), and the Steelers did it in '05 (57%). Note that, for the year, the Broncos are currently at 53% runs, but that includes Orton’s games.