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Tonight, I got in a very long Facebook argument about Tim Tebow with some football players from my school. Let me note that the argument wasn't a very good one, both sides were stubborn and they kept insisting that I have no idea what I'm talking about because I don't play the game of football. They're right, I don't play football, never have, but does that make my views on it completely irrelevant? No. Maybe this is my undoing, but I don't think this whole Tebow argument is a matter of experience or magic that only football players could understand, I think it's something you have to take an extremely level head into. Again, lots of people probably disagree with that, and I can understand why. One of the greatest things about sports is the mystery and the "anything can happen" element, so taking a really logical, statistical mindset into everything kind of kills it for those people. That's not true for me though, but again, there are all kinds of different opinions about this stuff, and none of them are necessarily completely wrong.
Anyways, Tim Tebow got crushed by the New England Patriots today. Before that, he was 6-1 as a starter and nobody could really figure out how. "He's a winner." That's how people explained it.
I'm sorry, but I have an issue with that. That's an extremely shallow, easy route to an explanation. Why did the Broncos win 6 of 7 games? Because one of their 22 starters has an unexplainable knack for winning that nobody on the other team ever has. What?
Football is a team game, but the player that has the biggest correlation to team wins is the quarterback. Sure, Tim Tebow led his team to six wins and just one loss before today, but was it actually him that had the biggest impact in it? No, it absolutely was not. You can't argue that Tebow had the biggest hand in the Broncos winning those games, because he didn't. You win games with points, not with some magical power, and Tebow did not contribute as many points to his team than the defense or running game did.
That's a factual argument above. The next part isn't so factual. You really can't measure the intangibles that Tebow has. The calmness, the ability to execute when it means most, and the pure leadership qualities he possesses. He certainly has an edge on most other quarterbacks in those categories, but are they really more important than actually having quarterback skills? Again, I don't have a way to prove this, but it just seems ridiculous to me to even consider it.
Tim Tebow is very good in late and close game situations. But the only teams he gets in those situations with seem to be very poor teams. He has yet to win a game easily, something that a very good quarterback should do with some regularity (as Tom Brady did today), and the two teams that have had good performances against them absolutely spanked the Broncos.
The fact that the Broncos are 6-2 with Tebow as a starter does not seem to predict success in the future for the team. A win is a win no matter how you get it, but that's when you look at the past. Once a game is won, it's over with. However, if you want to try and figure out if Tebow should be the starter for the Broncos down the road, you have to look at more than just the team's win-loss percentage when he was under center. Tebow had very little to do with those wins. His numbers (the thing that predicts how he will perform in the future) were not good. That's what's important. Six wins is six wins regardless of the numbers, but would you really want Tebow as your quarterback just because his defense and running game along with his leadership ability won his team some games? That would seem like a pretty rash decision to me.
Same goes for baseball. Last year, everybody thought Kevin Correia was a good pitcher because the Pirates were winning games when he was on the mound. Heck, he even went to the all-star game because of it. But were the Pirates winning because of Correia? No, they were winning because the offense and bullpen randomly performed markedly better on days he pitched. It was a small sample size, and in these situations, you can't take anything from a small sample size. At the end of the year, Correia was not a great pitcher and the Pirates stopped winning more games than they lost when he was on the mound. That was because of his individual performance, when the team gravitated back to its normal state and all the positive factors surrounding Correia evened out, the true level of the team was displayed.
Football is certainly more of a mental and will-powered game than baseball, and Tebow's intangibles do take him a good ways, but until he becomes a better quarterback, the Broncos don't have much of a chance. The defense and running game aren't always going to play out of their minds, as we saw today. When days like today occur and they play average or below average games, there's going to be more pressure on Tebow than his throwing arm can handle, and the Broncos are going to stop winning games so frequently.
I'm not a Tebow-hater, I have more respect for the guy than any other athlete, and I hope he succeeds. There's a very good chance he's going to get much better just because of his attitude and work ethic, and I can't say if that's going to be enough or not. I'm not going to make any predictions for Tebow's future, but I just want people to start being a little more intelligent when they talk about him.
If you want me to stop talking about football completely, send me a mean e-mail.