I’m a casual fan. More College than NFL though, and I don’t know enough to pick apart a players abilities or lack of.
What specifically made him such a good college player that’s not transferring well to the NFL?
There is not a thing he does that is on the pro level as a (passing) QB. And I’m not trying to make a joke. His mechanics are a nightmare (which is interesting because he actually seemed to have made strides in that regard last year). His passes are almost always off target and they lack zip. He may be able to adequately read defenses pre-snap but I’ve only seen one play showing this (TD run against Miami). He absolutely can not read defenses post-snap.
I don’t have anything against him. I even said on these boards I thought he could develop into a serviceable NFL QB. Not the way he’s looked the last two games though.
In the NFL the defenses are much faster to react and there’s much less of a window of opportunity for success on the average play than in college. For a quarterback that means to be consistently successful you have to make a decision faster, get rid of the ball faster, and put the ball in smaller places with greater regularity than in college. Those are the areas he’s weak in - he has a very inefficient and inconsistent mechanical delivery when passing, which means he takes a long time to make a throw and he isn’t very accurate when he does. It also means that for an NFL quarterback, individual athleticism is less a game-changer than a kind of nice bonus. Tebow’s big and fast and strong, so even for an NFL quarterback he’s great running the ball, but in the passing game he really struggles to hurt defenses, so the defense doesn’t even worry about having to run him down on some eight yard runs.
The reason it wasn’t as big a problem in college is that at Florida he ran a spread option offense that forced defenses to account for multiple threats on any given play, including the giant threat of him running the ball, and frankly he was just too good and his teammates were too dangerous for there not to be one-on-one matchup problems all over the field against most college teams, whether it was Tebow against the linebackers or the receivers against the secondary. Since the offense had so much going on that the defense had to pay attention to, there was much less pressure on Tebow to make quick decisions and get rid of the ball immediately. Unless the defense had NFL-caliber athletes to go up against them, they had to overextend themselves to try to keep up with all the different threats Florida presented, and Tebow could pick out the vulnerabilities. An NFL team, obviously, has NFL-caliber athletes, so they can sit back and let Tebow try to exploit them rather than having to be reacting all the time.
Get sacked less.
His throwing motion is atrocious, and he never seems comfortable in the pocket. Look at this Drew Brees touchdown, or just about any throw Brees, Rodgers, or Brady make, really. They look calm, they look poised, and their throws are near-perfect with the correct velocity and position. Their arm motion is fluid.
Even when Tebow isn’t running around all crazy and throwing off his back foot, his throwing motion always seems too jerky, and he usually throws the ball too fast with not enough arc. This feels like a typical Tebow play.
Even when Tebow COMPLETES a pass (and when he doesn’t, he’s frequently waaaaay off target), his passes have looked wobbly.
In college, where there are only a few stellar cornerbacks, you can get away with that kind of delivery. But in the NFL, EVERY cornerback is fast, and if you can’t drill the ball right to a receiver, you’re just ASKING to be intercepted.
I’ve always questioned whether Tebow had the ability to succeed in the NFL… it’s becoming increasingly clear that the answer is no. In fairness, Kyle ORton and Brady Quinn aren’t the answer either- the Broncos are a bad team that’s not likely to succeed with ANY of the quarterbacks now on their roster.
Even so, Orton can make NFL throws. Tebow can’t make them now, and doesn’t give any indication that he’s going to be able to make them any time soon.
The Broncos stink, and they have no hope of making the playoffs. So, they may as well let Tebow start the rest of the year, if only to sell tickets and jerseys.
But even Tebow’s biggest fans must see now that he’s NOT the answer, and that Denver needs to start looking for a new quarterback (and a lot of new linemen, a lot of new receivers, a lot of new everything).
I think too much is made of his throwing mechanics. There have been other quarterbacks with odd motions who made it work. The key here is his results: Tebow just doesn’t get the ball where it needs to be. I honestly think their best bet would be to play him as running back and let him use his actual strengths. Then you can use a wildcat formation sometimes, snapping it to him, and have the option to run or pass. It feels like he’s got the tools to succeed in that position.
Uh, isn’t that the best reason to criticize his throwing mechanics? Philip Rivers has strange mechanics too, but nobody cares because he’s accurate. Or at least he used to be.
There is a difference between having an “odd” motion and one that simply takes too long. Tebow’s throwing motion at Florida could never, ever work in the NFL, it simply took way too long from his making his decision to throw, to the ball leaving his hand to getting to the receiver. Tebow even recognized that and overhauled his motion coming into the league. He still will regress to his old motion sometimes, and he’s clearly not completely comfortable with the new motion. And every millisecond he spends thinking about how he will throw the ball is a millisecond he’s not thinking about the defense and pressure coming. It was a bad idea, both for the team and for Tebow himself, that he should be the starter of the Broncos. He’s simply not ready.
It’s not either/or. He is inaccurate in addition to not having a developed, solid throwing motion. He’s got more than one flaw as a QB.
He’s not fast enough to play running back. He ran a 4.72 at the combine, which is fine for a QB. For an NFL running back? Not so much. He could rely on his size and power, in addition to his speed, to break tackles in college. He can’t do that in the pros.
Tebow maybe, possibly, if given a couple years to develop and some great coaching, be a solid NFL quarterback. He needed to completely revamp his throwing motion, learn a new way to play QB, and learn to read more complex defenses. It’s a helluva lot to do in just a couple years. He really shouldn’t be starting at this point in his career.
Sportscenter showed a representative highlight of Sunday’s disaster this morning. It showed a play where Tebow had a receiver open coming across the center of the field above five yard downfield. The play (apparently a pass all the way) was open with a zippy pass and should have been an easy five yard gain (barring any YAC). Instead Tebow waited too long and by the time he threw the ball, the receiver was covered and the pass was slow and off target and fell for an incompletion anyway.
So, basically a microcosm of why Tebow had a 3.4 rating (ESPN “QBR”) Sunday.
And quick. Even if his throwing plane or where his elbow is positioned may not be by the book, he gets the ball out relatively quickly after he makes a decision.
Why exactly was this guy touted like the next coming of Red Grange or something?
Here’s the thing … I don’t follow college football at all, so I’d never really heard of Tebow until he got drafted, and ever since it’s been the neverending, “When Will Tebow Save The Broncos Show.” And when he finally gets in there … he sucks.
If the only thing wrong with him is that he’s too slow, he can’t throw for shit, he can’t read defenses, he can’t pick up complex patterns, and he needs intensive coaching for the next several years to get him on a par with any other QB in the league … then why bother?
Seriously. I don’t get the hype on this guy. He won a Heisman Trophy, right? I guess that’s something, but as a pro he’s pathetic.
He was very successful in college. His flaws were also much-discussed and most people agreed the Broncos were stupid to draft him in the first round.
The jump from college to pro is a big one. Tebow probably never faced more than five NFL-quality defenders in any single game in college. That gave him more room for error: there were always defenders on the field who weren’t able to stop him, despite his flaws. Once you move to the NFL, there are 11 NFL-quality defenders on the field, and rarely anyone who can’t keep up with him.
The hype is that he won the Heisman. But if you look at the list of Heisman winners, it’s not a good predictor of NFL success, especially for QBs.
However, a lot of college football fans don’t really know football; they only notice that a team is winning (ignoring that most major programs fatten their records by setting up games with cupcake teams that give them blowout victories). And fans of a particular school are especially rabid and hype their best players. Getting into bowl games adds to the hype.
Tebow had won the Heisman. He was a big name in college, and fans figured he’d be a big name in the NFL. But the scouts and coaches knew he had many problems.
In addition, he’s a born-again Christian, and has been visible and vocal about his faith (remember the anti-abortion ad he did with his mother, which ran during the Super Bowl?) A good chunk of his ardent supporters appear to be fellow fundamentalist Christians.
Not born again, as far as i know he was always christian.
It’s not that Tebow’s mechanics are simply odd; it’s that his wind-up takes forever. This was illustrated with the stripped ball, tipped passes and sacks yesterday. He takes way too long to get the ball out of his hand. Throw in Tebow’s unspectacular accuracy and you’ve got yourself a pretty crappy NFL QB.
Rivers has an unorthodox delivery, too, but he’s at least quick and accurate.
I actually took a look at how Heisman Trophy winning QBs did in the NFL. Two – Roger Staubach and Paul Horning – made it to the NFL Hall of Fame (though Horning did not play QB in the NFL). Vinnie Testaverde had an extremely long and successful career. Jim Plunkett won a Superbowl. Cam Newton and Sam Bradford show promise (but it is far too early to be sure). Doug Flutie put in some good years.
That leaves 21 Heisman QBs who had journeyman careers at best; most only caught on as backups and some never played at all. Even among the good ones, Plunkett was considered a flop and reduced to backup duty until he took the helm in Oakland at age 33 after an injury to their regular QB. Testaverde took years to find his groove.
Yet college football fans tend to believe that Heisman winner will become a great NFL QB. Denver fans – and not just the Christians – clamor for Tebow because of his college career and haven’t yet caught on that it doesn’t translate.
Semantically, as conservative Christians use the term, a “born-again” Christian is not a Christian who has come to the faith later in life (or returned to the faith), but one who has actively and specifically accepted Jesus as his or her personal savior. The term comes from John 3:3 – “Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.’”
Even if one has been raised as a conservative or fundamentalist Christian (as Tebow was), such individuals always will have had a specific moment in which they make that decision, and that is what makes them “born again”.
In doing a tiny bit of Googling, I couldn’t find a specific quote from Tebow discussing that particular event in his life, but I’d be very, very surprised if he hadn’t done so, or that he does not consider himself “born again”.
Because he dominated college football like nobody in the past 20 years.