1-4 in his last five. Please explain why?
Glad you asked. I spend so much time defending Tebow (and other players) from the "NFL player xyz SUUUUCKKS!" crowd that I rarely get to criticize him.
Tebow is inept in a traditional NFL playbook & struggles with short timing passes, and is a basically nervous player at this phase of his career. I think the constant crush of criticism and jeering affect him more than he lets on. And as a Bronco he played like a first-year starter.
Once they changed the playbook and made him comfortable he was often great. All those "terrible first 3 quarters" he supposedly had are largely a myth. He was consistently grinding out rushing yards and keeping the games close.
But the Broncos put in the read-option playbook on the fly, in mid-season. This was unprecedented. (Imagine if a power-run, play-action, Joe Gibbs-ish NFL team put the West Coast Offense in mid-season!) As Grantland.com recently pointed out, defenses adjusted to the simple/seat-of-the-pants option playbook the Broncos had put in. The 49ers Pistol it was not.
The defense, buoyed by the ground game and lack of TOs, was still basically inconsistent and the offense, already a mediocre group, suffered injuries. So when Tom Brady passed for 900 yards in the first loss of the 5 games in ?, Tebow couldn't keep up. He did make a game of it though.
Then he started turning the ball over. People forget that even the second KC game looked like a typical low-scoring Tebow win until he fumbled at an inopportune time in the 4th quarter. That was on Timmy. You can't win w/ a run-heavy strategy if you fumble.
The playoff games were a microcosm of the good/bad of Tebow. He gutted the Steelers with great option reads and long bombs, in fact, that game should never have gone to OT as the Broncos were screwed on the backward lateral/fumble by Big Rape.
But the Pats schemed brilliantly and blew out an inferior group of athletes at home. Tebow is no miracle man and will never be able to beat teams that can score at will. He also got hurt in the first half and had a terrible passing day, as pure option QBs sometimes do when outclassed.
A 12-year old kid I know pointed out something that nobody else did, the Pats had young LB's and DE's out of college who weren't confused or intimidated by the option play like the Steelers were. Like all other playbooks, the Spread-O has its strengths and weaknesses.
Tebow may go down in history as similar to the chess player Nimzowitsch, who changed the game forever but was surpassed by others who copied his style. But he is still the greatest Spread Option QB in history at this point, based on his record in college and professional football. He's a nervous, quirky, specialized QB but if any team has the guts to put him in, let him run the option, throw deep & otherwise do his thing, the ignorant aping laughter could be replaced by bitter crow-eating once again.
