I’m not sure they can keep it up either. But the fact is that they have been playing very well recently, and in the games the Broncos win, the defense has had the second best defense in the league. It’s that defense that is winning these games, not just Tim Tebow.
The best scoring defense over the last 5 weeks is actually going to provide a non-scientific mini-experiment in these terms. It’s been an interesting ride in Houston these last couple years, and we’ll get to see if a great scoring defense is sufficient to hold up a 5th round rookie QB.
Granted, Houston’s rushing is better than Denver’s, but it’ll still be interesting to see if the likely dropoff in PPG will matter if the defense continues playing lights out. And versus Atlanta this week, the defense will get a reasonable test.
Having sat down and done the math…wow.
In the past four games (i.e, since Fox installed his Tebow-friendly offense), the Broncos have 74 pass plays (70 actual attempts, plus 4 sacks), and 179 running plays. That’s 71% runs. (Note that some of those “runs” may have been scrambles / broken pass plays, but that’s still a huge disparity.)
it may be that the defenses are winning these games instead of tebow, but can the anti-tebowers concede that at least he’s not losing them any games?
whoever “highjacked” last page with the mention of palko makes a tangentially valid point. the gap between actual frauds and game managers, say the differences between a guy like palko or thigpen vs a game manager like trent dilfer and (possibly) Tebow is much greater than the game managers and the elite super bowl winners. you DO stand a chance to win if your qb is keeping TO’s down, moving the ball enough to score, and overall good enough to win when he’s playing within himself.
i’d say the greatest example of this would be terry bradshaw. he’s definitely not an all-time great passer but he was good enough that the steelers as a whole was able to win multiple championships. yeah yeah 2 super bowl mvp’s but how many time was he all-pro? once? maybe twice? he certainly wouldn’t crack the top 5 if he was playing today - even with the steel curtain behind him.
*and yeah, i mistyped when i said 14 games. big ben played 12 games in that '05 super bowl run. so tebow’s got similar similar but worse stats. so tebow with a good defense around him, no mistakes, and all the right bounces, the broncos can be good enough to possibly win in a bad division and get into a playoff game but Tebow won’t win the whole thing for you. doesn’t sound like much to bellyache about. the same could/is being said about sanchez, romo, vick, and flacco - and they’re GOOD qb’s.
What an odd thing to say. They’re not losing games, so how could Tebow be losing them games?
It’s a good thing I asked a question in a series of questions, instead of as a standalone question. I’ll wait for a response, though I have a feeling I’ll be waiting forever.
No, they don’t contribute exactly the same. Imagine a scenario where a team kicks off to start the game. However, on the kickoff, the receiving team fumbles the ball trying to make the catch, giving it to the opposing offense. The offense then goes three-and-out and kicks a FG. On the ensuing kick-off, the same thing happens, with the receiver fumbling the ball, the kicking team recovering, promptly going three-and-out and kicking a FG. If this happened all game, regardless of how well the defense plays, they would not increase their team’s TOP, as the offense never gets onto the field. That’s an extreme example, and unlikely to happen, but you get the point.
So, as I said prior, your argument essentially comes down to the defense playing better at the exact same time Tebow was not only instilled as the starter, but the offense was tailored to Tim Tebow. That seems a fairly convenient coincidence for you, don’t you think?
You’re right, though. The defense playing better has nothing to do with the fact that the defense is on the field less, due in part to fewer turnovers and the offense being on the field for longer, since Tebow became the starter and the offense was suited to his playstyle.
Interesting how you cherry pick games that suit you. You know what happened after the bye? John Fox simplified the Denver offense, and the offense went from pass first to run first (Denver is executing about 46 run plays per game over the last few games). But that’s just another one of those coincidences though, right? It’s also just a coincidence that when Tebow threw it up 39 times (against Detroit), the defense crapped the bed, right?
Because he no longer has a choice?
There is nothing convenient about winning when the defense gives up less than 14 points. It’s what all teams want their defense to do. What is convenient is your constant confusion between correlation and causation.
I’ve already chided you for misrepresenting my position, and here you are, at it again. I suggest you use the search function before once again trumpeting your ignorance to the world. It’s quite tedious having to correct you all the time.
I picked the games that the Broncos won. Wins that you attribute to Tebow and his overwhelming effect on the defense playing better and I attribute to … well the defense playing better.
Boiling the issue down, you think Tebow is much more important to the defensive playing well than the defense. I understand that his excellent ball protection certainly helps the defense, but that the actual play of the defensive players matters much more than the QB’s play. As long as you stop misrepresenting my position, we can agree to disagree on that issue.
Are you interested in a wager on Tebow’s long term success?
Unless you asked the questions and then got into a time machine, it’s not even possible for you to wait for the answers for ten seconds, O M G, much less forever. They’ve been sitting there awaiting your pleasure. But here they are again.
It didn’t include DJ Williams, Dumervil and Champ Bailey before. Now it does.
Kiddy-proofed.
Players were hurt.
It was OK. Shit happens. The Lions are good; 376 yards is a middling performance for that offense. The offense turned it over three times and the Lions scored two defensive touchdowns, so the score got out of hand, but that’s on your guy. Champ Bailey wasn’t there to intercept Tebow’s pass before Chris Houston did.
Players were hurt. They came back.
No, I’m still correct. In that case the offense isn’t responsible for the lopsided TOP, the special teams are.
To expand a little bit, had the Broncos defense been average (say the 16th rated defense out of the 32 teams), they would have given up 21 points per game, which would have resulted in the Broncos being 1-5 with Tebow as their starting QB.
That and they got rid of their best wide receiver, who was traded immediately before Tebow’s first start but played in Orton’s starts.
Tim Tebow with Brandon Lloyd: 210 yards passing average in 2010 starts
Kyle Orton with Brandon Lloyd: 196 yards passing average in 2011 starts
Tebow, of course, hasn’t started a game with Lloyd this year.
But it is a coincidence. Well, mostly. Not turning over the ball sure does help and Tebow deserves credit for playing within his limitations here.
Is this anywhere close to any recent Super Bowl participant? No? The '85 Bears and '00 Ravens are irrelevant.
Sure (not that I’d consider myself an “anti-tebower”). But he’s not winning them games either. Can you win long term with a “do-no-harm” QB? I suppose. But let’s not start calling Tebow a great QB. OR a good QB. Or a “winner”. And pointing out that he’s better than Orton? So fucking what? Is that the QB goal for Denver fans?
As I noted in post #220, no, it’s not anywhere close. Since the '85 Bears, only 6 Super Bowl winners have run on more than 50% of their offensive plays, and none of them ran on more than than 57% of their plays.
Even, say, the '72 Dolphins, who had two 1000-yard rushers (plus a 500-yard rusher) only ran 69% of the time. Even the 1978 Chiefs, which I mentioned upthread because Marv Levy ran a 1940s offensive scheme (the Wing-T) because he had running backs but no quarterback, only ran the ball 63% of the time.
One of the ironies of this is that if you could ask Tebow about all of this and get him to answer honestly, I don’t think he would tell you he’s been amazing and the Broncos are winning because he’s doing a great job and has inspired the defense to play better. I would think he is pretty well aware of the situation: he’s taking care of the ball, the offense suits his strengths and minimizes his weaknesses, and the defense has been excellent.
There’s a very interesting article on Tebow, by the folks at Cold Hard Football Facts, on SI.com today:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/kerry_byrne/11/29/tim.tebow/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t11_a2
Their points:
-
Tebow’s “Real Quarterback Rating” (a CHFF stat, which takes into account QB rushing and sacks as well as passing, and which correlates strongly with winning ballgames) has been better than that for the opposing QB in all four of his wins. (Part of that is Tebow’s play, part of that is undoubtedly the effect of Denver’s defense on the opposition.)
-
When you take into account his rushing TDs as well as his passing TDs, he produces more TDs per “touch” than any other active QB.
-
He doesn’t turn the ball over; his career INT percentage is lower than any other active QB.
Tebow could be losing games for the Broncos if he played like Tyler Palko played for the Chiefs on Sunday night. Again, the difference between Tebow and Palko is the difference between “mediocre” and “awful.” And, again, KC’s defense played probably the best game I’ve seen all year–better than Denver, better than anyone. Don’t ask me what got into them, I know they shipped 41 and 48 against Buffalo and Oakland but believe me, they had their hands around the Steelers’ throats all night. But Palko’s three terrible, unforced turnovers led directly to 10 points for Pittsburgh when they got to start on the KC 38, the KC 7, and the KC 24 (and the fact they only got 10 points out of those drives tells you something about how great the defense was!) Take those out and KC walks out of there with a 9-3 victory.
This is an example of why it’s hard to compare his stats against other QBs. You can try to correlate his runs with other QBs checkdown throws, or somehow with their handoffs, but I’m not sure there’s really a clean way to do it.
Fun stat, that I’m sure has been mentioned: In Tebow’s six starts, the Broncos are 5-1, and their total point differential is -4. 
And part of it is that it’s not a very impressive group of QBs- particularly not with Rivers playing like he has this year. The author also fudged the truth about the defense: he said their improvement was due to either coincidence of because Tebow doesn’t turn the ball over. He didn’t mention guys getting healthy, which didn’t have anything to do with Tebow. He said it’s either you give some credit to Tebow or you have no explanation.
I found this very unimpressive. Points are not a rate stat: OK, he produces a lot of TDs “per touch,” but he doesn’t actually produce a lot of freaking TDs. Manning and Rodgers and Brady are very good QBs who have adequate running backs, so they hardly ever run the ball and those touchdowns are scored by another player. Tebow is doing the job of a poor QB and a decent running back, so I would expect his “per touch” stats to look different. While I kept checking the numbers for part 3 I see borschevsky got in and mentioned this.
The fact that he’s not committing turnovers is definitely a plus, but you can’t get a legit comparison that way. Tebow has thrown 225 passes total. Averaging over their careers, Manning and Brady throw that many passes every 7 games and Rodgers does it every 8 games. Manning has aruond 7,200 attempts, Brady has 5,100, and Rodgers is coming up on 2,000.
It’s worse than that. He’s basically using that point #2 to lie about his ultimate conclusion. Nothing against your posting it, kenobi, but that thing makes me wish I had my own Fire Joe Morgan style website to make fun of it on. Is he somebody that people listen to? I don’t know anything about him either way, and some of the numbers are interesting, definitely, but that is some seriously half-assed analysis. “Consistently the best and most productive quarterback on the field” based on those numbers?
is enough not to trust anything else the guy says. Funny that he put that career in there, isn’t it? Four of Tebow’s career touchdowns came last year when he was basically a goal-line running back. That’s 18% of his career touchdowns on only 13 touches, which came when he wasn’t a starting quarterback. Totally a fair comparison to Rodgers’ and Manning’s entire careers. It’s like saying LaDainian Tomlinson was a better quarterback than Philip Rivers.
Tebow’s touchdown percentage this year, which this asshole made me go and calculate as if it were an important number, is 4.6%, which there goes your historicity.
PS - it isn’t an important number. The more the quarterback has primary responsibility for moving the offense, the fewer of his plays go for touchdowns on a percentage basis. Roethlisberger’s TDs/touch his first two years – before he came into his own as a great passer, and when he primarily was tasked with not fucking up – was 7.02. Now that it’s his offense and he’s a much better player, that number is well below that. It’s an awful way to measure a quarterback.
(edit: I forgot to add - the other things about including last year’s numbers for the TD percentage, both when he was a goal-line guy and when he started, are that 1. Tebow turned the ball over last year and 2. the Broncos lost with Tebow last year. So Tebow’s “historic” touchdown ability includes last year’s number, but for his special ball-protection skills and winning percentage, we’ll just look at this year. That’s why I called it a lie.)