With a 45-10 loss to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, October 30, 2011, extremely popular Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow improved to 4-0 in the intangible-heavy and unorthodox alternate universe where a large minority of his fan base appears to reside.
Bowling in the Dark’s sports correspondent recently met with the Ambassador to the United States from Tebow Nation—this unusual universe’s densest populated country—to discuss the differences between their reality and our more mundane and conventional one. While we didn’t catch his name, which was spoken too quickly and excitedly to be understood, he showed a heartwarming disdain for formality by suggesting we call him by his nickname, #TBo_4EVA_GoGatorsGo:
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Q: In Tebow’s first game of the season, against the San Diego Chargers, he replaced an ineffective Kyle Orton after halftime and led the Broncos to fourteen fourth-quarter points, but still lost 29-24. Doesn’t that count as a loss?
A: Tim Tebow won that game because he’s a winner. Kyle Orton lost it. There’s no way the Broncos lose that one if Tebow plays the whole game, I guarantee it.
Q: What?
A: I personally guarantee that Tebow would have won that game.
Q: If I understand you correctly, you’re personally guaranteeing something that’s not only very, very unlikely but, in fact—having already not happened—can’t ever actually happen?
A: What kind of fan would I be if I couldn’t guarantee something like that? We do it on message boards all the time.
[long pause as interviewer collects himself]
Q: Official statistics indicate that Tebow missed on sixty percent of his passes against the Chargers, and passed for less than eighty yards. Aren’t those the kind of numbers one would expect from a quarterback who’s not ready to play at the professional level, where a good quarterback generally completes around 60% of his passes?
A: Well, you see, the NFL is a league built on passing, so the ability to throw is overrated. Think about it—how many times did “great passers” like Joe Montana, John Elway, Jim Kelly, or Tom Brady lead their teams to the Super Bowl?
Q: Eighteen. They went to eighteen Super Bowls.
A: Actually, what I asked was how many Heisman Trophies they won.
Q: Well, you’ve got me there. But don’t Heisman-winning quarterbacks usually struggle to succeed in the NFL, if they even make it into the league in the first place? I’m thinking here of Charlie Ward, Andre Ware, Gino Torretta, Jason White, Eric Crouch, Chris Weinke, Danny Wuerffel, Ty Detmer, and Matt Leinart, to name a few.
A: I’m pretty sure none of these guys actually existed.
Q: Well, that kind of supports my point.
A: Simply put, Tim Tebow is the most successful Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback since Cam Newton.
Q: But didn’t Cam Newton win the Heisman after Tebow?
A: Next question please.
Q: After the 24-29, er, win against San Diego, the Broncos announced Tebow as their starter. The team then had a bye week. [For those of you unfamiliar with football or even basic sporting terminology, that means they didn’t play at all.] Our sources say that you’re counting that Sunday off as another win.
A: Indeed we are. If Kyle Orton had been the starter that didn’t play that week, he would have found a way to lose the game that didn’t happen. So Tim Tebow, who is a winner, won that game that didn’t get played, by preventing Kyle Orton from not losing it. Tim Tebow is a winner. He wins games.
Q: Even games he doesn’t play?
A: Especially those games. Tim Tebow went 1,378-3 at Florida in games he didn’t play.
Q: Moving on to the Miami game, then . . . in this case, we all can agree that the Denver Broncos scored a legitimate win, 18-15 in Miami.
A: Yes. We’re thinking about counting that one twice.
Q: It’s been observed—for example, by us—that for the vast majority of that game, the Broncos’ offense looked awful, with Tebow going 4-for-14 for 40 yards. His comeback was impressive, of course, but it’s hard to believe the Broncos would have needed such a thrilling and improbable last-second comeback if their offense had been even marginally competent in some of the game’s earlier seconds.
A: He would have looked better if the play-calling hadn’t been so conservative.
Q: So he missed ten of his first fourteen passes—some of them very badly—because the plays called were too rudimentary?
A: Well when you put it that way, it sounds bad. The problem is that Elway is jealous of Tebow’s popularity, and doesn’t want to see him succeed.
Q: What about the wide-open receivers that he didn’t see in the first fifty-five minutes of the game? Was Elway hiding them?
A: He didn’t need to see them until Tebow Time. You’re not clutch if you bother to succeed early on. That’d be like Scotty fixing the Enterprise only as fast as he said he could.
Q: And isn’t Miami one of the worst teams in the league? Shouldn’t even a young, raw, inexperienced quarterback have had a better overall showing against some of the weakest competition to be found?
A: If Miami were such a bad team, why were they in the lead for most of the game?
Q: Well—
A: We had to go into overtime to beat them, so they're clearly much better than you think. It was great to see Matt Tebow kick the game-winning field goal after missing the two earlier ones.
Q: Matt Prater?
A: I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.
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| To be fair, many other Denver Broncos looked bad today too. |
Q: Never mind. I’d say that one of Tebow’s obvious tangible strengths is his running ability.
A: Yep, he’s much more mobile than Kyle Orton. A quarterback with a questionable offensive line need the ability to move in the pocket to avoid sacks.
Q: Agreed. But Orton was sacked nine times in five games, whereas Tebow was sacked six times by the Dolphins, and then another seven by the Lions. Doesn’t that suggest that Tebow’s slow release and poor field vision are as problematic as Orton’s immobility, perhaps even more so?
A: No, you don’t get it. Tim Tebow’s mobility allows him to escape sacks. Plus, he has intangibles.
Q: But—
A: [Plugging ears with fingers] Intangibles! Intangibles! INTANGIBLES! INTANGIBLES!
[several minutes later]
A: Clearly you’re just a hater.
Q: So you’d call objective analysis of a player’s strengths and weaknesses “hating”?
A: What would you call it?
Q: Offhand, probably “objective analysis of a player’s strengths and weaknesses.”
A: Hater. Go drink some Haterade, hater.
Q: Be honest, did you even follow the Denver Broncos before they drafted Tim Tebow?
A: I would have, if they’d even existed back then.
At this point our intrepid interviewer suddenly developed a piercing headache, and decided to go home.
Nobody knows how long—or why—the enthusiasm for Denver’s newest quarterback will continue, but we do know for sure that Tebow Nation looks forward to next week’s certain victory against the Island of the Misfit Toys.
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| Don't let the rosy cheeks fool you—Charlie-in-the-Box is a ruthless pass rusher and one mean son of a bitch. |
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