On Dual Phenomena

The NFL is so strange. The Giants lose and everybody’s deliriously happy because they only lost by 3 points. Tebow wins again and everybody shakes their head. And a fellow named TJ Yates comes in for the Texans and makes the Falcons defense look like the rookies. Oakland does nothing against a Dolphins team that couldn’t do anything right for the first half of the season. And now they’ve won 4 out of the last 5.

Oh, and there’s more. How about Urlacher’s Bears losing to the Chiefs on a decently-blocked Hail Mary? How about Cam Newton having himself a career day in Tampa? And then there was the Bills C.J. Spiller fumbling at full speed at about the 15-yard line and then just barely recovering the ball in the endzone.

You can’t makes this……oh just yada yada….

But sometimes you get an inkling that something weird’s about to unfold. Take the Giants game. A lot of observers seemed to think the Giants could indeed beat the undefeated (and Super Bowl Champions) Packers. And I myself had a similar vision of Cam Newton having a monster day in Tampa. Sometimes there’s just something in the air.

There’s a different energy in the air too inside a football stadium. Some players latch on to it and use it to make plays. And nobody captures that something in the air as does Tim Tebow. The interesting thing to me is that Tebow hasn’t really had to do anything impossible while winning all these games for his Broncos. He’s just made the plays that he’s had to, um, every time.

Now some may say that there aren’t many quarterbacks who could have avoided that stupid Jets blitz of a couple games ago. But that’s not really true. Any QB with reasonable speed could have done that. Everyone comments on his size and his speed that he’s used on seemingly endless quarterback draws and sweeps and, well, just about anything else a quarterback could do with a football. And that is true.

But, all that stuff (the running skills) only works in an offense that maximizes the potential of a guy such as Tebow. No other team in the NFL uses that run-option stuff. It’s ironic that the guy who’s directing all the unusual stuff (head coach John Fox) has his background as a defensive coordinator. But it’s not so ironic at all really when you consider how difficult it is to stop that offense.

You have to guard against the run at all times, not so much the running of McGahee, which can be prodigious in itself, but the running of Tebow, and not just his runs down the field (which can also be prodigious by themselves) but his knack for buying time to get that ball to a receiver. It’s that infuriating elusivensess in the pocket and out of it too. Fran Tarkenton had it. Joe Kapp had it. Ben Roethlisberger sorta has it too as does Drew Brees. And each of those fellows has certainly had his impact on the game. But none of them presented the running down the field danger of Tebow.

Tebow can take it all the way. He’s a fullback-type runner with enough speed to get to the outside. He can score anytime he has the room. Defenses have to guard against the pass too, and, thus far, it seems as if the opposition has decided to take their chances against Tebow passing the ball. But they’re finding that, alas, Tebow can pass the ball a little too.

There’s something else too that Tebow brings to the table though. And that is fear, that visualization of your upcoming loss. Other quarterbacks have that too, of course. But their names are ones like Brady, Brees and Rodgers. All those names give a defense that expectation of imminent loss. Heady stuff.

While Tebow brings unusual talents to the table, it’s not as if other QB’s haven’t had the same skills to both run and pass the ball. Michael Vick comes most readily to mind. But Michael Vick has always been the round peg in a square hole. Every coach he’s had has tried to standardize Vick to the NFL, to make him run an offense for which the coach is most comfortable.

And Vick gets hurt a lot. Vick always seems to take some of the most formidable hits you’ve ever seen. Tebow, as much as he runs the ball, never seems to really get clobbered. Even as big as he is, he’d get hurt more often if he didn’t have a knack for absorbing the hits.

But the thing that’s really unique about this Tebow phenomenon is the offense itself. It’s not Tebow per se; rather it’s Tebow in an offense designed specifically to mazimize his skills. I give almost as much credit to Elway and John Fox as to Tebow.

It took a lot of moxie to take the steps they’ve taken. And, game by game, nobody’s handled Tebow as well as has his coach, whose direction has been most decidedly conservative, only asking his QB to do those things that Tebow most decidedly can do, and only when those things have needed to be done.

Okay, that’s enough about Tebow and the Broncos. His game is so much fun though, if only because the naysayers say it’s impossible, or now, that it can’t last, that NFL defenses will catch up. And I do think that defenses will indeed catch up but they’ll be defenses like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, with names like Polamalu and Suggs.

Another phenomenon though is leaving our fair town. His name of course is Jose Reyes. Our terrific Mets shortstop will be taking his fun game to Florida. And, while I can cry in my beer about it, I can be happy the Mets didn’t spend 17 mill per year for the next 6 years, which is what Jose got from the Marlins.

You had some bad luck, Jose, but you were aces.