Bob Jones University and the Bruins Foundation are hosting “An Evening with Tim Tebow”

Joel, can you train that out of a guy, or is the throwing motion too ingrained by the time he’s in high school or college? I have half a thought that a lot of coaches miss golden opportunities if they fail to say “Tim, I want you to take half the time you’re spending in the weight room, and spend it with the throwing coach to get your motion right.”

The second article I linked to posits that his high school and college coaches didn’t bother changing his throwing motion because they didn’t think they needed to—they used him as a running quarterback and did just fine with that approach.

I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the first article I linked to, which makes a strong case that the idea he couldn’t find any spot on a QB depth chart compared to some of the quarterbacks that have been on rosters since 2012 is ridiculous.

[Greg Long]

The second article I linked to posits that his high school and college coaches didn’t bother changing his throwing motion because they didn’t think they needed to—they used him as a running quarterback and did just fine with that approach.

I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the first article I linked to, which makes a strong case that the idea he couldn’t find any spot on a QB depth chart compared to some of the quarterbacks that have been on rosters since 2012 is ridiculous.

I read the first article. I actually am not sure that author is even being serious. However, if he is, he obviously has a huge bias and cherry picks stats to try to prove his point. For example, Tebow won one playoff game which he implies makes him better than Doug Flutie who won none. Seriously? That means nothing. 1 vs 0 is statistically insignificant. Second, quarterbacks don’t win playoffl games. Teams win playoff games and by the way, very often with bad quarterbacks. Third, Doug Flutie???

He also mentions that no one else has completed more than three 50+ yard passes in a game. That again is just a cherry-picked statistic that means very little. So is the stat about career passing completion percentages that go for touchdowns. I was expecting him to say next that Tebow has the most yards per completion for quarterbacks operating from their own 19 yard line with last names that are 5 or 6 characters long. With his approach, I am quite sure you can find statistics to show that Ryan Leaf was the GOAT. After all, Ryan threw more touchdowns after eating Tacos on the previous Tuesday than any other quarterback in history.

And then he gets all offended because owners around the league don’t engage him on his question as if they are obligated to explain that. I will say that he is right about the Browns. The Browns are not smarter than a lot of other teams about quarterbacks. Their relative stupidity does not mean they are engaged in a conspiracy against Christians and Tebow however. Nor does it mean that they can’t judge quarterback talent better than you or I or this author. I suspect they know quite a bit. They just are not New England and they also are a bit unlucky.

In summary, the article is not exactly what I would call a good objective defense of Tebow but rather some irrational ranting. Part of that is not his fault. He has little data to work with. Tebow simply did not play enough to build statistically significant stats.

PS: I did enjoy how some of his slams of existing quarterbacks turned out to be a bit premature, Matt Ryan and Nick Foles being two notable examples. And now I am going to play Madden with my sons which is where I got all my football expertise.

Greg,

I read the article a few times, and I disagree with most of it. First of all, he doesn’t really deal with any of the weaknesses of Tebow. His main arguments instead seem to be “all he does is win” (has more playoff wins than other NFL QB’s) he beat a really good Pittsburgh Steelers defense, therefore they should give him a chance. But lets look at his weaknesses.

Weakness #1: Tebow’s throwing motion. It takes forever for him to release the ball. His elongated throwing motion from down low makes it easier for defenses to get where the ball is going . There are other NFL QBs that throw from so low like him such as Aaron Rogers, but Rogers’ fast arm movement negates that weakness. Tebow lacks speed with his throwing motion and the speed of the NFL can catch up to him.

Weakness #2: He doesn’t trust his reads. Time and time again, he has shown to take a split-second hesitation with basic reads (especially with man-on-man converage) which has contributed to him being inaccurate. He even has a tough time trusting the right read when he runs the read option. The Patriots forced him into several bad decisions/fumbles when they destroyed Denver in that playoff game. And they even gave him 4 preseason games a couple years later. which they realized that the playoff game wasn’t just a fluke. He didn’t have it in the head, which is what separates great college QB’s from NFL QBs.

Weakness #3 He turns the ball over way too much both with interceptions and fumbles. Much of this is because of weakness #2.

Let me briefly address his “all does is win” argument. Playoff wins as a football barometer of how good a QB is one of the worst, worst, worst ways to evaluate how good a QB really is. In football as a QB, you need everyone around you to be consistently good. You need a consistently good offensive line to protect the QB (Denver had that during the Tebow and Manning years), you need several consistently good skill position players around you that can make plays, and you need a consistently good defense doing their job to put the offense in a position to win. And you need a really good coach and coaching staff. QBs are depending on everyone to do their job well for them to do well. No other sport depends so much on your teammates for your own personal success. Tebow was very blessed to have everything around him working so that he could win a playoff game. The best QB in this generation (Tom Brady) has been blessed to have all of these areas going well so that he could be in so many Superbowls. Add to the fact that he almost always makes the right reads, gets the ball out really fast, and doesn’t make hardly any turnovers has made him arguably the GOAT QB. However, if you put Tom Brady on the Detroit Lions over these past 17 years, he wouldn’t have made the Superbowl nor would he have won many playoff games. Why? Because the players around him lacked all the necessary pieces: consistently good O-line, coaching, defense, and skill players. And the author of this article would’ve been making crazy claims that Tom Brady doesn’t really know how to win the way that Tebow did during his brief time as the Denver QB.

As for the game against Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh made it easy for him to make the reads. They took away alot of the short and medium routes and consistently dared him to go long and he did. In football, the coaches and the QB (and to a lesser extent the rest of the team) have to adjust to what the defense is throwing at you. Pittsburgh gave Tebow relatively easy reads because they underestimated his throwing arm. Tim Tebow doesn’t have a weak arm. In the next game, New England forced Tebow to make more difficult reads both with his arm and his feet and he couldn’t make them. They made it more difficult for him to make the long throw, which is why John Fox didn’t do plays where Tebow would just launch the ball way down the field. New England took away what worked well against Pittsburgh. However, arm-chair fans like the author don’t see what’s going on and make surface-level judgments. In fact, the only time Tebow looked good was later in the 4th QB when the Patriot’s defense backed off and played a prevent defense against the Broncos. In preseason games over the next two years with both a mediocre team (New York Jets) and a really good team (New England Patriots) he couldn’t cut it as QB because of the combination of the 3 weaknesses that I mentioned above.

To me, the author of this article is an arm-chair football stats guy with surface-level football knowledge, but who really loves Tebow. And again I do believe that Tebow was definitely strong enough and athletic enough to play in the NFL, but not as a QB but rather as a Fullback, Tight End, or an H-Back. I actually think that with his strength, athleticism and having a strong arm (where he would occasionally throw the ball) he would’ve been a potent skill weapon for a team.

I ran cross country and track, so my knowledge of “concussion-ball” is low, but I did look up things like Tebow’s time to throw, and it does turn out that his time to throw has been about 0.6 seconds from high school to 2013, with a brief blip when he entered the pros and modified his throw to .54 seconds. Average for NFL QBs is .4 seconds. Combine that with average speed for a QB (4.71 s 40) and hesitancy to act on a read, and he’s basically giving away a few steps to the defenders, which is why he got sacked a lot despite excellent strength, OK speed, and a good OL.

Put gently, he’s a fairly slow running QB in a league that distrusts running QBs for a very simple reason; they tend to get hurt, and that matters a lot more when you want 10 years out of a player than it does when you’re looking for 3-4 years in college. Your classic running QB has running back or even WR speed and a quicker release—and hence does not tend to get himself, or his receivers, hurt as much.

I’d guess that Elway drafted him thinking he could fix the mechanics, and the same with the Jets and Patriots, and when he kept reverting, they cut him loose.

By the way, if BJU ever does this again with a fundraiser, I would suggest Kirk Cousins. He’s just as outspoken of a believer in Christ, yet he doesn’t have the “celebrity baggage” that has followed Tebow, and he’s a successful QB in the NFL (might possibly become the highest paid QB in the NFL this next year).

I heard him speak in chapel at my son’s high school 3 years ago and he did a really good job.

[Jim]

http://www.startribune.com/does-god-have-a-hand-in-the-super-bowl-minnes…

One of the most well-known Christian athletes, former Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, is speaking at Emmanuel Christian Center in Spring Lake Park on Super Bowl Sunday. As its website proclaims: “Come early wearing your favorite players jersey, enjoy food off the grill, and play some games.”

http://emmanuelcc.org/events/supersunday

Super Sunday is like no church experience you’ve ever had. We’re bringing the stadium experience to Emmanuel and this year we have special guest Tim Tebow in the house! Come early wearing your favorite players jersey, enjoy food off the grill, and play some games. This event is FREE and a perfect opportunity to invite a co-worker or a friend - so bring someone with you to experience this epic Sunday at Emmanuel!

I suppose this illustrates my uneasiness with the Christian celebrity du jour being the spokesperson for the new identity of Bob Jones University. Can a Christian institution at any level, whether a mega-church in greater Minneapolis or a Fundamental college in South Carolina, expect to practice pure religion and remain “unspotted from the world” when, to make their spiritual outreaches successful (“epic” according to this website), they feel the need to incorporate the current societal idolatry to do so? I think Scripture is very clear that you cannot tolerate idolatry at any level if your mission is remaining biblically undefiled.

I sincerely doubt that Tebow would conscientiously and deliberately throw a stumbling block in anybody’s path. But whether it is Tebow, Carrie Prejean, or any number of other Christian celebrities who purposely seek/maintain celebrity status in order to “do good”, their efforts are little more than those of Balaam—saying all the right things, but in essence teaching “…the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed unto idols….” It is not even a debatable point that our society worships at the feet of the idol of celebrity, especially in sports and entertainment. And whether or not the idol looks like a cow or like Beyonce’, an idol is an idol.

[Jim]

http://www.startribune.com/does-god-have-a-hand-in-the-super-bowl-minnes…

One of the most well-known Christian athletes, former Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, is speaking at Emmanuel Christian Center in Spring Lake Park on Super Bowl Sunday. As its website proclaims: “Come early wearing your favorite players jersey, enjoy food off the grill, and play some games.”

http://emmanuelcc.org/events/supersunday

Super Sunday is like no church experience you’ve ever had. We’re bringing the stadium experience to Emmanuel and this year we have special guest Tim Tebow in the house! Come early wearing your favorite players jersey, enjoy food off the grill, and play some games. This event is FREE and a perfect opportunity to invite a co-worker or a friend - so bring someone with you to experience this epic Sunday at Emmanuel!

Here is Tebow at Emmanuel Christian Center yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sUNM6ejt0M

Note: this is an Assemblies of God church.

Many thanks to Joel for his comments on what kinds of things separate great QBs from good or also-rans; made watching the game last night quite a bit of fun.

Well, that, and the fact that the Patriots lost. :^)

Who would have thought a Super Bowl would be decided by which quarterback was the best wide receiver?

[Bert Perry]

Many thanks to Joel for his comments on what kinds of things separate great QBs from good or also-rans; made watching the game last night quite a bit of fun.

Well, that, and the fact that the Patriots lost. :^)

After the Super Bowl may I suggest that the BJU Bruins invite either Nick Foles or Frank Reich to speak next year. Are there any objections? Reich even has an MDiv and has served as a a pastor and president of RTS Charlotte campus.

Whoa I didn’t know that about Reich. Thanks Ron that’s really interesting.

“Bob Jones University and the Bruins Foundation are hosting “An Evening with Tim Tebow”, presented by PlanFIRST, Thursday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Founder’s Memorial Amphitorium on the BJU campus.”

https://blogs.bju.edu/pr/2018/01/23/timtebow/

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Will any SI members be there? if so, please give us a recap/report. Otherwise, please post anything you might run across following the event.

Hi Larry,

I was there at the event and it was a real blessing on a number of fronts. First, to open the event, Steve Pettit asked how many people in the audience had never been to the campus before. Hundreds of hands were raised around the FMA. While the evening featured Tim Tebow, we were able to share the mission of BJU with promotional materials before the event and of course in Steve and others from BJU speaking.

Tim was introduced and gave his testimony as well as presented an explicitly clear Gospel message. To close his message, Tim gave an invitation and we praise the Lord that at least 10 people responded to accept Christ during the invitation.

Since the event, we have heard numerous stories from faculty, alumni and others who were able to bring unsaved friends, coworkers, and relatives to the event which has since sparked continued conversations and opportunities for witness. Some even remarked that Tim’s message reminded them of sitting in a Bible conference service. Each has been very appreciative of Tim’s testimony as he shared how God has allowed him to bring people to Jesus through his sports career and in his work and experiences serving on mission fields around the globe.

On a side note, the event was also very successful as a fundraiser for the University. I had read through this thread before, but since you had asked, I thought I would respond and let you know. Thanks!