Tim Tebow and the Eternal Experiment of Sports
“You will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of this season.”
Those are the words immortalized forever in the history of Florida Gators football. Uttered by Tim Tebow, then already a Heisman trophy winner, they were part of a promise that his college football team — one year removed from a disappointing finish and two years removed from a national championship — would not lose another game for the rest of the season. It was part of a press conference that came when the Gators did lose (by just one point) to Ole Miss, leaving many Gator fans concerned that Florida was headed for another season that wasted their generational quarterback’s talents. Yet, with some of the most impressive quarterback play (through the air and on the ground) ever seen in NCAA history, Tebow’s promise was fulfilled. The Gators never lost another game and they won another national championship, this time against Oklahoma in January 2009.
In many ways, those words have reverberated long past the career of Tebow. They’re etched into a plaque near to the Swamp, a stadium that has not had a trophy returned to it since that 2008–09 season. They’ve helped define the collegiate tenure of Tebow, who is undeniably one of the best to ever play college football.
Of course, these superlatives are much less true of Tebow’s tenure in the NFL. The majority of the league recognized (at a time when I was blinded by my massive fandom for the 2010 graduate) that Tebow would not actually be the guy to lead an NFL team to glory. (The other quarterbacks selected in the first three rounds of the 2010 NFL Draft were Sam Bradford, Jimmy Clausen, and Colt McCoy, so no one’s franchise was entirely revitalized during that selection process.) Just a kid at the time, I was confused why Tebow, again a Heisman winner, was falling all the way down the draft boards. That is, until Josh McDaniels, then the head coach of the Denver Broncos, veered from the common consensus and rolled some mile-wide dice on Tebow with the twenty-fifth pick of the draft (a first rounder!), just three positions after Denver drafted Demaryius Thomas, a young receiver out of Georgia Tech.
As a massive Tebow and Gators fan, I was ecstatic with the news and immediately adopted the Broncos as a secondary team to root for after my beloved New England Patriots. Unfortunately, the Broncos finished 4–12 in that first season with Tebow (vying for time at the helm with Kyle Orton and Brady Quinn), leading to the team’s firing of McDaniels. This meant it was up to the 2011–12 coach, John Fox, to declare it “Tebow Time” officially in Colorado.
It took a long while for anything of substance to happen with the team, which seemed directionless with Orton leading the charge. A 1–4 record punctuated the knowledge everyone innately harbored; Orton was never going to win a Super Bowl. You can just tell. Kirk Cousins, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Jared Goff. You can just tell with these guys. I will not comment on Nick Foles.
Was Tebow going to win a Super Bowl? Hell, was he even better than Kyle Orton? At the time, we had no idea! But Denver — and Fox — had to try something. And by week seven, Tebow was the starter. The rest of that season has been well-documented, including by me. It was magical, enchanting, impossible, straight from the movies, perhaps evidence that God really did exist. (If my faith was ever shaken that Tebow could hang as an NFL quarterback, his faith in the mysteries of the universe never wavered.) A miracle overtime win over the Dolphins to get things started, one-score pulls over the Chiefs and Jets, another overtime win against the Chargers, a comeback versus the Vikings, another impossible overtime victory over the Bears. It was just one divine miracle after another — enough to propel the Broncos into Wild Card weekend where Tebow (with Thomas and kicker Matt Prater in tow) led the Broncos to a massive upset over the Pittsburgh Steelers to advance to the next round.
They were promptly clobbered by the Patriots in the divisional round, but it would never change the impossibility of what Tebow had achieved — complete with a dropping arm on every pass and the sort of palpitations more frequently seen in one-run MLB playoff games with a shaky closer on the mound or in Safdie Brothers movies than average Sunday afternoon regular season football games. But that’s just what Tebow did. He was never the most talented quarterback on the field, but he was the best winner. He always found ways to win, even when the world shouted him down. It inspired my favorite Sports Illustrated cover of all-time; it still gives me chills to think about.
“Tim Tebow Demands That You Watch. But Do You Believe?” What a perfect fucking headline. After seeing what he could do, from the promise to the put-down of Pittsburgh, I believed in him with all that I was.
But that magical Broncos season is approaching its tenth anniversary later this year. It’s been a decade since Tebow had a genuine impact on a team. Just as I was baffled why a team didn’t want to draft Tebow number one overall, I didn’t understand why everything he proved in 2011 was not enough to convince teams to give him a shot.
That offseason, the Peyton Manning sweepstakes landed the Hall of Famer in Denver. This resulted in Tebow being flipped to the New York Jets for draft picks. Injures derailed any hope of Tebow usurping Mark Sanchez at the quarterback position and he was subsequently cut by the Jets. Then by the Patriots. Then by the Eagles.
It took a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that Tebow was done as an NFL quarterback. He said he wouldn’t give up on that dream and he had never been wrong before, so I was inclined to believe him. Even when he was scampering around the outfield for minor league affiliates with the New York Mets or covering games for the SEC Network, I thought there was still a chance for a Michael Jordan-esque re-pivot back to his original sport, the one he’d once dominated. It wasn’t until I saw Tebow hosting the Christmas Day parade at Disney World for ABC that I began to reconcile within myself that Tebow’s time as an athlete was over. After all, he hadn’t promised anything this time; he only vowed to try his best.
This is part of why I was truly stunned last week when it was announced that the Jacksonville Jaguars (who just drafted phenom Trevor Lawrence to play quarterback for them) were signing Tebow — to play tight end. (I’d long believed Tebow would crush as a tight end or fullback, but he was committed to quarterback for an unbelievably long time. Just think of how Bill Belichick would’ve used him, man.) Yes, Tebow has a friend in Urban Meyer (the former coach of the Gators and current coach of the Jaguars; check out USA Today’s piece on Meyer’s past wrongdoings and why he probably should have never received the benefit of the doubt, which is a separate story from Tebow Mania 4.0, but still worth mentioning, of course). But still, he hasn’t played a meaningful NFL game since that win over the Steelers and he hasn’t been in the league since 2015. I couldn’t believe he was actually coming back. But with Tebow, he’s proven many times over that anything is possible. Perhaps believing it even more faithfully than Kevin Garnett does.
Is anything possible? Is the most famous journeyman in sports returning to the league he once set ablaze to play a position he’s never played before after over half a decade away and actually then succeeding possible? I don’t know. Every sports analyst, from hardcore ones like Mina Kimes to casual ones like Bill Simmons, can only speculate on something like this because we don’t really have any one-to-one parallels. The likeliest outcome? He’ll probably wash out before the preseason. But he could be a quality blocker and a solid backup tight end. Or a motivational locker room presence. Or a guide for players who are down or players who are young or players who succeeded at college and might think the pros are guaranteed to them. Or he might start at tight end and prove yet another thing is possible in the endless experiment that has been Tim Tebow’s career.
That is only from the on-the-field perspective, though. It’s important to consider everything else. Not only the disturbing Urban Meyer element of it all, but also the Colin Kaepernick of it all. Kaepernick and Tebow are both quarterbacks who were better with their legs than their arms, but the similarities pretty much end there. Tebow faded from the position because he was perennially at the bottom of most statistical measures (and certainly below Kaepernick in many categories, too, even if their peak seasons don’t quite align). Kaepernick never faded from the position, but was instead blackballed from the league because he dared to take a knee during the national anthem to protest the systemic oppression of black people in the United States.
The same people who would later celebrate with fervor when Jack Nicklaus endorsed Donald Trump were immediately the ones to warp Kaepernick’s protest and demand that they somehow knew what he was actually protesting. The flag or the anthem or the red, white, and blue or whatever patriotic dogma they needed to concoct so they could justify their fury at the idea of someone not standing for a song that represents racism, hatred, and state-sanctioned murder two hundred and forty-one times a year.
It’s hard not to think of Kaepernick, who was practically ignored by the league after his time with the San Francisco 49ers came to an end and remains unsigned to date, after this Tebow news. Tebow, white and frequently considered a model Christian, seems to be able to secure another opportunity whenever he wants it. Kaepernick hasn’t sat idly by; he’s become a prominent advocate of police and prison abolition and started his own publishing company. He’s stated multiple times that he wants to play football again, but no one wants to give him a shot because he’s too “controversial” or would inspire too much “backlash.” Yet, the Jacksonville Jaguars are more than happy to invite a media circus into TIAA Bank Field for a player who is demonstrably less talented than Kaepernick and has been away from the game for much longer.
Some may say that Tebow was willing to shift positions, while Kaepernick may still be holding out for a quarterback call. Some may say that a pre-existing friendship with Meyer gave Tebow another shot and no other team would want to bring him in even for just a workout. Putting aside Kaepernick’s skill as a runner and his own past working relationship with Vic Fangio (now coach of the Broncos, but formerly a defensive coordinator for the 49ers), there’s at least one element of Colin Kaepernick’s NFL legacy that the conservative “stick to sports” crowd can never prop up again. Tebow’s signing shuts up the argument that Kaep’s been away from the league for too long to hang with anyone anymore. In giving Tebow another opportunity, the NFL has proved on a massive scale how mythological the concept of meritocracy is in the U.S. It doesn’t make what happened to Kaep right and it certainly doesn’t eliminate all that he’s protested for. But maybe it makes a few more people aware of how talent alone is not what the NFL cares about completely. There’s just as much politics at play in the league with a sizable fanbase chunk that demands they “stick to sports.” They never have.
From an NFL perspective, this kind of thing pisses me off. And I promise to write the same treatment for Kaep if he ever comes back to the NFL. God, he fucking should. Drew Lock and Sam Darnold will continue to start games. Clayton Thorson is currently signed to a team. Kaep went to a Super Bowl and can’t get someone to return his calls? Until he does, we can continue to support all that he does. Here’s the latest:
Should be a worthwhile read.
I must also not deny the massive Tim Tebow fan within me. None of the above is Tebow’s fault. The issue is much bigger than any one player and everyone should have the right to follow their dreams and secure their bags when they have the chance to do so. It’s just damning to see such a clear delineation of someone getting a shot when someone else has been blackballed beyond reason — as if there was ever a reason in the first place.
But as someone who has never stopped being a Tebow devotee, I’m overjoyed. It reminds me of why I looked up to him when I was a child. Because he showed me the value of never giving up, turning something that was so cliche into something tangible. He still impacts me today when I roll over in bed and see his SI covers framed on my wall. I still refuse to quit, whether that’s in something stupid like a game of Rocket League with a massive deficit or something sincere like my career dream of becoming an English teacher when it seems like there are millions of hurdles in front of me. A huge part of me has been shaped by Tebow and I’ll never be able to fully shake it. It’s why I’m happy to make like Jason Mendoza and take the Jaguars in as my secondary team for the 2021–22 season. I’m heartened to see that when Tebow was cut by the Mets and he said he’d never stop trying to succeed that he meant it. As if, maybe, that was another promise he was making — thirteen years after his first and most famous. He hasn’t broken a promise yet.
