Mass layoffs at ESPN

[Oz-iz-God]

The above is clearly nonsense. What you're saying is that NFL teams make player decisions exclusively on the basis of talent. Uh, no. Controversy, character, scandal, etc. etc. all play a factor in those decisions. This goes doubly so for a backup player, and double that again for a backup QB on an NFL team. To deny it is simply dumb. D.GOOCH

Eh, Tebow's a bad backup fit for the same reason Kaepernick is.

Tebow has one system he can operate in and it has to be specifically tailored for his very limited skill-set. He can't read defenses, his arm us way below average, his footwork is abysmal, his throwing motion is erratic and incredibly long. Nothing he does is repeatable so he has no earthly idea where the ball is going. Every single thing he does as a quarterback is counter to long-term success.

With the death of the read-option as a primary offensive staple in the NFL (frankly, it never had much life to begin with), there isn't a single team in the NFL that runs an offense that Tebow fits directly into. I guess they could further dumb down the neanderthal offense they run in Carolina and play truly ground and pound football if they wanted to, but while Rivera's offense isn't complicated, it DOES rely on the threat of Newton's strong arm to keep safeties back. Tebow doesn't have that so safeties would stack the box and Tebow would probably fail even in Carolina.

No, Tebow's a miserable backup option because the moment your starter went down, you'd have to scrap your offense and install a new one for him to be effective. And ultimately, the ceiling of 'effective' wouldn't be terribly high. Peak Tebow efficiency would be a bottom 1/3 offense in terms of productivity. I watched Tebow in person in Arrowhead and the only reason he wasn't picked off a half dozen times is because he was literally too inaccurate to even be in the neighborhood of defensive backs. He was the single worse pure passer I have ever seen and I've seen a bunch of them by now. Nobody is even in the ballpark.

That kid can't play quarterback in the NFL. He can't even come close. You need a backup that can run your offense for 2-3 weeks. Or if you're willing to invest in a long-term option that could REPLACE your present starter in the event that he goes down, you do that and tailor the offense for the new guy. But you don't bring in someone as a pure backup option with no path to starting who needs his own offense to be able to succeed.

Tebow sucked. He's not in the NFL anymore because he sucked. He won a few games because the Broncos defense was just turning into the fire breathing monster it became and because the AFC West was a cesspool that year. If he took the reigns of an NFL team, he'd be the worst quarterback, starting or backing up, in the entire NFL and by a pretty significant amount.

[GOOCH]

As usual, Oz, you go too far. It's not that your one-sided and hyperbolic take on Tebow doesn't state some essential truths about his limitations, it's just that it completely ignores the positives. Read any scout's take on a player's strengths, and you'll wonder why they aren't all-pro, read any take on the player's weaknesses, and you'll wonder how they made it as a starter on their college team.

As the more measured folks in this thread have noted, in weighing in on Tebow, no one disputes that Tebow was limited as an NFL QB. With a career 47.9% completion percentage, his accuracy was a serious flaw, that I agree was unlikely to get better due to flawed mechanics and physical limitations. On the other hand, with a 2 to 1 TD to INT ratio, clearly he had the arm strength to get the ball to receivers. And he rushed for 47.1 yards per game in his season as a starter with the Broncos - you can't ignore that as a contribution to the offense. He posted 6 rushing touchdowns in that season. To put that in perspective, the 2nd most rushing TDs in the NFL last season was 11 - posted by four players. Not bad.

But the most significant flaw in Oz's argument isn't that he ignores Tebows strengths as a player, it isn't even that he ignores context (the read option might be on the outs now, but it was the new hotness when Tebow was looking for a position as a backup in 2012-14). It's that he ignores the fact that quality QB play is the scarcest resource in the NFL. 2/3rds of the teams in the league get middling to bad QB play. And we are talking about a BACKUP QB. Look at some of the backups that had jobs in the league in 2015: Jimmy Clausen (Bears - ugh), T.J. Yates, Ryan Nassib, Bruce Gradkowski, Chad Henne, Brandon Weeden, Scott Tolzien, Ryan Mallet, Kellen Clemens...the list goes on and on. TERRIBLE. To say, as Oz does, that Tebow would be the worst of them "by a significant amount" is stark hyperbole. It assumes an NFL that doesn't exist -one where most of the backup QBs can start 2-3 weeks a season and give their teams a reasonable change to win. There aren't enough *starters* in the league who can do that.

So to say that Tebow "sucks" as a backup QB ignores the fact that MOST backup QBs suck and pretty close to half the STARTERS in the league suck too!

Of course, all this is a complete distraction from the point - which was that teams shied away from Tebow, not just because of his limitations as a QB (which were considerable), but because of the inordinate amount of media attention he drew DESPITE being a middling-to-below-average option as a backup QB - players that generally get page D-20 coverage, if they get any at all. OF COURSE that was a factor in teams deciding they didn't want to have anything to do with Tebow. Teams don't want distractions at their backup QB position - particularly when that distraction is so big that it dwarfs the coverage of their starter - indeed, their whole team!

The media rooted hard for Tebow to fail, heaped negative analysis and coverage on him as an NFL prospect and as a quarterback, and turned every place he tried to sign on to into a circus. It was wholly out of proportion to Tebow's actual flaws as a player, and entirely motivated by liberal bias - their angst at him being openly conservative and out and proud in his conservative Christian beliefs. Beliefs, by the way, shared by half to two-thirds of the country.

That's how Tebow got a raw deal. Not because his limitations as a player weren't real - but because his positives couldn't outweigh the massive media distraction the media made out of his bid for NFL jobs. In a world where that didn't happen, Tebow undoubtedly would have enjoyed a couple seasons holding a clip board on a sideline and coming in for the occasional special play or two, particularly in goal-line situations. Or he might have made it on to a team in a position switch - likely to tight end. That didn't happen because of the media. And those are the simple facts. D.GOOCH

[barnbird]

Does David Ross work for ESPN ? I am sick of hearing from him