Tebow Time in Denver
Thank you sweet, baby Jesus! NFL Football is back!
Now I can stop pretending like I care about baseball, or that I am excited about women's soccer and our 2nd place World Cup team (thanks for killing soccer in America, Japan! That's a good step towards gaining our forgiveness for Pearl Harbor, and all those Toyota recalls).
College football media days? Starting to get excited...
NFL Lockout is over? HELL YES!!!! SIGN FREE AGENTS AND ROOKIES!!! LET ME DRAFT MY FANTASY TEAM!!! HAS ANYONE DRAFTED JAVON RINGER?? I NEED TO HANDCUFF MY CHRIS JOHNSON PICK!!!!
Whoa.
In Denver (and Gainesville, Florida), NFL football being back means one thing... It's Tebow Time baby!!!
According to just about every person who gets paid to talk about football, the Broncos will trade Kyle Orton and hand the reigns to one Timothy Richard "Tim" Tebow and I'm pretty confident that half of Gainesville has already bought plane tickets to Denver for the Monday Night Football home opener vs. the Raiders during the last two hours.
While I'm worried that trading Orton will put a serious damper on my drunk Kyle Orton twitter exploits, here's why trading Orton and giving the ball to Tebow makes sense for the Broncos:
1. With Orton at QB the best scenario is probably 6 or 7 wins.
Orton isn't the kind of player who'll throw a team on his back and carry them to a few wins they shouldn't get. Orton's a good QB, but only when he has talent around him and doesn't have to do too much. His downfall is that he has repeatedly shown that he can't lead a 4th quarter comeback, which doesn't sit well with fans who are all still looking for "the next Elway." It shouldn't be too surprising to anyone that Orton crumbles in the big moments.
He is a Big 10 guy afterall.
2. With a weak free-agent QB class, Orton's value will never be higher.
I'm hearing they can get at least a 2nd or 3rd round pick, or a starting defensive lineman for Orton. Both drastic needs for a team that is a.) rebuilding and b.) has a God-awful defense.
3. With Tebow, the ceiling on the season for the Broncos rises, it also drastically drops the floor.
Say what you want about Tebow's throwing motion, arm strenth, or general ability to throw a football successfully, but he has been a proven leader, and throughout his career his teammates have constantly rallied around him. He provides hope. Hope can be a bad thing, just ask the folks who gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, but it can also inspire people to overachieve. Maybe Tebow can lead his teammates to overachieve and make the playoffs. That said, the more popular opinion is he will fail spectacularly. Which leads me to my next point.
4. People will expect Tebow to fail.
Elway and the new Broncos staff will have a one year grace period in which the fan base won't be expecting too much. They just came off the worst season in Broncos history, and the Josh McDaniels debacle is still fresh in fans minds. Expectations are at an all-time low. If Tebow can somehow get them to the playoffs, Elway looks like a genius. If not, they end up with the worst record in the NFL and....
5. There's always Andrew Luck.
Elway wants to give the reigns to Tebow for these two reasons. a.) As I said earlier, Tebow ends up a great player and Elway looks like a genius. b.) Tebow turns out to be bad. Like, Rebbeca Black bad. Eight games into the season the fans are calling for Brady Quinn... BRADY QUINN!!! They don't win another game and the Broncos end up with the #1 pick in next year's draft, selecting Elway's wet dream in Andrew Luck. Elway made it clear that if Luck was in this year's draft he would have done whatever it took to get him. He's a fellow Stanford guy who's been labeled the next Elway. Elway tutoring the future Elway to lead the Broncos back to Super Bowl glory? I think millions of Broncos fans just creamed their trousers!
Personally, I'm excited for the Tebow era in Denver. As much as I love making fun of the guy, he has won me over. I was at Tebow's first home start in Denver against the Houston Texans, and I had never seen a more boring first half of football. The Broncos couldn't move the ball, Tebow looked like a poor man's Joey Harrington, and the Broncos were down 17-0. The stadium emptied and disappointed fans were leaving in droves for the parking lot. Then Tebow came out in the second half refusing to give up. He led a 4th quarter comeback and on the final drive, with a half-full Mile High Stadium chanting his name, he capped the game with this game-winning run. He had me sold. It was the most exciting game I'd seen in that stadium in years, and Kyle Orton had never led a comeback like that in two seasons. Of course Tebow has never done this, so my loyalties are torn.
NFL football is back my friends, and a week from now teams will be set, we will all start to prepare for our fantasy football drafts, and the most popular NFL team in the state of Florida will be playing their home games in Denver, Colorado.
It's time for Denver, as Clay says, to get Tebow'd.