So Orton’s been waived, looks like Tebow’s job is pretty secure.
Wonder where he’ll go? I hear Chicago is looking for a QB to finish them off…I mean, finish off their season. But I coulda swore I heard Denver AND Chicago warn, “No give backs!” a couple years ago.
Reminds me of the comedian Larry Miller, talking about couples who get divorced, and then marry one another again later on.
“It’s like taking a milk carton out of the refrigerator, sniffing it, saying, ‘eeeew, that’s gone bad’, then putting it back into the fridge, hoping it’ll be better later.”
Now THAT was funny!
Orton to Chicago? I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
He knows the system. I have no idea who the backup is, so he’s probably a young guy with no experience, or a journeyman.
Orton could come cheap, give him a chance to show other teams how “good” he is, and maybe use it to springboard to a new team next year.
Caleb Hanie. He’s been with them for a few years and played most of the second half of the NFC Championship game, but doesn’t have much other experience.
Except that he doesn’t. Orton was traded to the Broncos after the 2008 season. Mike Martz, who runs a fairly unique offensive scheme, came in as the Bears’ offensive coordinator for 2010.
I just want to throw in an objective assessment of Tebow as a fan of neither the broncos, anyone in their division, or of a team that he has recently defeated.
-He’s not just a RB taking snaps under C. He can make reads, and he can make throws. He’s not lighting it up, but he’s on pace in his 5 starts to have a 300+ attempt season which is pretty decent.
-Leadership may be hard to quantify and explain but you can’t deny the effect of winning on a team. Either consciously or subconsciously, winning lifts everyone’s spirits even if it’s against cupcakes. Now the defense may not think directly “oh tebow is starting. oh we’re winning. we should play better now” but somewhere along the lines, the causation between winning and the defense playing better does become a real thing. this is not to say that Tebow inspired the defense, but i don’t think the broncos would be on the win-streak if Orton was still at the helm. at the very least they wouldn’t have beaten the jets.
-Why wouldn’t have Orton beaten the jets? Tebow’s rushing is the front of every defensive coordinator’s mind. However, the fact that he is still in fact a QB resides in the back of their minds. With the time running out and 95 yards to go, defenses go Prevent. The DB’s back off, the safeties line up 5 yards deeper and you don’t blitz. ever. Well, no blitzing and deep safeties mean lots of running room for Tebow. What happens when you do stack the box and bring up safeties? You run the risk that a TE or slot receiver going down the seam, or you chance 1-on-1 jump-ball situations on the outside for a big gain. A huge gain. A 56 yard TD pass type of gain. Well screw that, if I were a DC, I wouldn’t let Tim Tebow go over the top on me. I’d let him run.
Well shoot, that’s the lesser of 2 evils, but giving Tebow open space to run, no pressure and time to think? That’s just throwing him back to his spread days back in gainesville where he has wide hash marks and he’ll zone-read your DE all day long to march down the field - no huddle just like he’s used to.
Point is, there’s a reason why Tebow is successful even though he won’t be able to thread that tire with a football 7 times out of 8. Hating on it one way or the other is a tad irrational. Me personally? I’m just seeing it for what it is. The NFL is a highly specialized and fine tuned league. You hit it with an irregularity like the wildcat or a spread QB and it’ll need time to react. If it’s impossible to react, then you’ll see copycats as every team tries to cash in on that exploit. West Coast Offenses. Tall Jumpball-winning WR’s. Platooning RB’s. Sending TE’s down field. Tebow’s exploiting traditional prevent defenses right now as 8-12 yard runs on no-huddle works as effectively as 6-12 yard dump-offs in a 2 minute drill. Will it catch on? maybe. probably not. it doesn’t make him a charlatan nor does it make him a messiah. it just is.
Did you watch the game? That’s a reasonable enough narrative to describe what could happen with a quarterback who runs a lot; it just isn’t a description of what happened with Tebow in that particular game. The Jets were up in a cover one or zero on almost every down, not sitting their safeties deep, and they were mostly rushing five and/or spying. On four or five different plays, in fact, a safety in the box either missed a tackle outright or overran the ball, and that’s where the running room came from. I mean, if Jim Leonhard’s in a deep prevent, he isn’t missing a tackle on Eddie Royal in the end zone on a screen play. If you watch the whole drive, you can find #33 or #36 down around the line of scrimmage getting beat more often than not. And on the touchdown run it was Smith, 33, who crashed down inside and left Tebow his whole front-side to run in. Both safeties blitzed on that play.
The lesson is don’t lose contain and don’t run past your tackles, not that the wise choice is to just let him run. He’s a good runner and he broke some tackles, and that’s how he beat them. It’s an overreaction to say that one drive is representative of some conundrum where defenses have to paradoxically try to take away the thing Tebow doesn’t do well, and give him free rein to do what he does well.
Those are attempts. His completion percentage is an abysmal 44.58 and is dead last in the NFL. The only other QB below 50% is Gabbert of the Jaguars at 48.9. You are correct that “he can make throws”, it’s just that nobody’s catching them.
No, he can make throws, just not very accurate throws. Anyone can throw a ball.
That was the joke I was getting at.
Great point. I forgot that Martz is the new OC.
Thanks for pointing that out.
However, the subject is dead, as Orton was grabbed by KC on waivers (that had to be a HUGE boost to Tyler Palko’s confidence). Interesting note is that the Bears also put a claim on him, but KC got first dibs since they had the worse record.
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Watching Tyler Palko against the Patriots last week truly makes one wonder how hard it is to be an NFL QB. The dropoff in talent from starter to backup is almost vertical on some teams.
For those that don’t know (or care), Palko started at Pitt for all 4 of his years there (I think) and believe it or not, he broke quite a few of Dan Marino’s records. That fact boggles the mind after watching him play. Boy, was he bad.
[/end hijack]
I’ll take a crack at replying to some of your points
This is highly debatable. The idea that he can make reads is NOT true. If the first read isn’t there, Tebow rabbits. It’s what he does. It’s who he is. He’s not a pocket QB that goes through his progressions. Any unbiased viewing of Tebow ***has ***to see this as part of his game. And it’s a weakness. He’s not the only one to do this in recent years… Vince Young is probably the last guy to come into the league and underwhelm the league with his QB ability. Running skill? You bet. Both of them are great athletes. But neither one of them set the world on fire with their arms, even in college.
There may be something to this… you can’t discount the idea that players like playing for/with Tebow. And a change from Orton was not a bad thing. A victory can and does have a positive psychological impact on a team. No question about it. And when a QB (like Orton) was having predictable results (bad), a defense might not have that extra zip, knowing no matter how hard they try, Orton won’t reward them with a touchdown or a win.
I’m not sure I understand what you were trying to get at, but I’ll say this… the fact that any DC is playing prevent like Tebow IS an actual QB is their misjudgement, not any sort of praise of Tebow’s QB’ing ability. Look at the last game… 7 straight 3 and outs. So, with only time for one more drive, with the Broncos 95 yards away from a touchdown, what the Jets did was indefensible (no pun intended). Go into the prevent on Tebow? What for? He’s not beating anyone deep, and if he does, it’s a fluke. So instead of playing defense like they did the entire game, the Jets go into the prevent, as if they are playing against a QB that could actually beat them with the pass. The fact that Tebow was given any room to run was the big mistake on the last drive. Anyone playing against the Broncos is going to have to put 8 men in the box and force Tebow to beat them with his arm. For the entire game. I will wager that he cannot do it. Your last sentence tells me that if you were a DC, you’d probably be fired. No question about it, you don’t want Tebow beating you deep. But the odds of that happening are so low compared to him running 10-15 yards on each snap. Tebow beating a defense over the top? I say “name that tune.”
You are right about hating on Tebow’s success. It IS irrational. It is also an incredible waste of energy. Tebow will come back to earth, as will the Broncos.
I think you have the causation backwards. The better defense is causing the wins, not the other way around.
Where you really went wrong with this is with the suggestion that the Prevent is ever justifiable. Maybe when the game is down to the last play and they need a 60-yard Hail Mary, but otherwise you give up soft yardage in the middle, and three quick 20-yard completions/runs out of bounds has the same result as one far more unlikely 60-yard completion.
You stick with the defense that got you there. Every time a team goes into the Prevent they either lose or make the game far more interesting than it deserved to be.
I’m not sure where I did that, but I actually agree with you. I hate the prevent defense. It is a defense that is designed to trade yardage for time, but it fails entirely too much
It’s what I call playing not to lose instead of playing to win.
In other words, I agree with you.
There is a significant difference between the prevent and a standard “dime” defense, right? Because I don’t have a problem with playing the same defense you play the rest of the game on passing downs. Prevent defenses seem to fail because you only rush 3 guys and give the quarterback and his 3-4 receivers all day to find an opening down the field.
Anti-Tebow late-game defense seems like it should be 4 pass rushers, one LB to spy the QB, and 6 DBs to cover the receivers.
I’m going to fucking cockpunch the first person who says “He just wins”.
The defense holds the Chargers to 13, get a huge sack at the end of regulation, make two stops in OT, get a huge tackle for loss to make it a tougher field goal, and McGahee makes the big run to get into field goal range, and it’s all about Tebow.
St. Tebow works in mysterious ways.
A thought I had near the end of regulation was why isn’t Denver calling their 3 time outs so they can get the ball back with 30 secs or so to go for a FG? And I figured it was because they couldn’t use Tebow’s throwing to get them in range with a couple of pass plays. So, they played for OT. Ended up working, tho, so I’m gonna hold my tongue for now.
Funny, watching with my wife, an old Elway fan, she kept LAUGHING at Tebow. “What the heck is he DOING? Ha ha ha!”
As for my Bronco fanerry, I say: GO DENVER! WIN!
Well, I’m a’scratchin’ my head and thinking, “The Broncos just win.”
And they didn’t with Orton. The O-line was looking really good today, I thought. They gave their QB a lot more time than I’ve seen in a while. Honestly, though, Tebow strikes me as having mediocre talent and really good judgment. Which shouldn’t be enough. Maybe it’s Fox?