I have made enough Tebow jokes over the last few years to last several lifetimes.
And not “overweight Philly resident living on cheeseteaks and beer” lifetimes. I am talking “small Mediterranean fishing village” lifetimes.
Recently, I have tried to be better about it – no more weekly ‘enough already with the hype’ posts. No more reactions to local writers pandering to readers by touting Tebow. I am already on the record as to the biggest hurdle to his success in the NFL. I already mocked his writing of a book. I am finished.
Ok, I may occasionally write something about actual football performance.
And maybe once in awhile make an off-color joke about him that is meant purely in good fun.
Other than that, I am done, no more piling on. That was my goal.
But that will have to wait until tomorrow.
After reading Woody Paige’s interview with Tebow in today’s Denver Post I have a whole new set of concerns I must get off my chest.
The Tebow portrayed in Paige’s article comes across as immature and entitled – not the confident, mature leader that an NFL quarterback needs to be.
I always thought the biggest hurdle to Tebow succeeding was being able to sit in the pocket and read a defense. Now I am afraid, what was his perceived greatest strength (all of his success in college) may be his greatest weakness.
Tebow isn’t accustomed to failure and criticism and it is clearly affecting him.
“My dream, since I was a young boy, of being a starting quarterback in the NFL seemed to be coming true,”…”Then, I felt like it was grabbed back away. . . .”
The above quote isn’t something said by a player fighting for a starting position. It is the words of someone that thinks they are owed a starting position.
The NFL is a business with a goal of winning games. You don’t receive starting jobs just because you sell a lot of jerseys. You earn a starting job with your play on the field.
We all know that from a marketing/public relations standpoint the Broncos would LOVE Tebow to be the starting quarterback. It’s what the media wants. It’s what the fans want.
But John Fox and John Elway want the player that gives them the best chance to win on the field. And all indications are that player is Kyle Orton.
If Tebow wants to complain about his dream being ‘grabbed back away’ there is one easy way to remedy the situation: play better. This doesn’t have to do with Tebow getting tricked or lied to. Another player is playing better than him.
But it is scary that it seems Tebow expects a starting job to be handed to him. He has succeeded all through his life and one has to wonder, now that he isn’t succeeding how is he going to handle it? He says the right things about working twice as hard but deep down, I worry he is incapable of accepting failure and is instead finding a way to blame others.
“I’m trying to insulate myself from what people in the media are saying, but I’ve seen some of it, and it hurts because it’s coming from people who haven’t seen me practice, haven’t seen me play, haven’t seen what I can do…My family and my friends have been bothered by what’s gone on, and I tell them to pay no attention to it”
The media’s love affair with Tebow has been a running joke here and pretty much everywhere else on the internet. During his college career, Gary Danielson all but declared that Tebow could cure cancer given an hour of time in a lab and that any opposing player that tackled him was probably a member of Al Qaeda.
When Brian Billick had the audacity to question Tebow’s pro prospects during the Sugar Bowl, one would have thought he was stabbing his announcing partner in the leg with a pen at the same time.
And now Tebow is in the spotlight because Merrill Hoge severely criticized the possibility of him being a success the other day. For the record, I do think Hoge went too far in his critcism, going well beyond analyzing Tebow, instead making broad, disparaging, judgmental comments with little basis.
That is veering a little too close to my area of expertise – Merrill better back off!
When you have received nothing but praise and adoration throughout your entire youth, it can be painful to receive criticism for the first time. Especially when you don’t seem capable of proving the criticism wrong.
But again, like the possibility of being a back-up, the quote above seems to imply that he isn’t to blame – it is all others.
It is with more than a little bit of irony that the first person to jump to Tebow’s defense when Merrill Hoge went overboard in criticizing him was LeBron James. James has dealt with the same harsh reality that Tim now faces – after a youth of being anointed as ‘The Chosen One’, James faced enormous criticism for his actions last year and struggled with how to respond to his chorus of critics. Even after an entire year in a negative spotlight, James is still struggling to find his way.
Tebow is still young. He is just now facing the first struggles of his entire athletic life. How he reacts is still to be determined – whether he works his way through and proves us all wrong, accepts his limitations and embraces a back-up role, or mentally gives up, becomes embittered and blames everyone else for his failures.
I just hope his interview with Paige was a momentary expression of frustration rather than the first signs that Tebow isn’t mature enough to succeed.
It would be ironic and sad if the biggest impediment to his success in the NFL is all the success he already achieved.
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