Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Is Tim Tebow Guided by the "Lord"?









I fairly cringed when Nick Novak of the San Diego Chargers missed a 53-yd. field goal in overtime, because I knew if it got to "Tebow time" and the Xtian maniac managed to pull yet another last minute win out, we'd never here the end of how the "Lawd" was "guiding his arm" and his team ....to destiny! Sure enough, Tebow did his thing, and the Denver Broncos prevailed 16-13 making it a 5-1 straight record for Saint Tim and a 6-5 overall record for the Broncos.

And the following day, all the odious religious bloviating began and continues..... For example, we learned that just prior to the game Tebow led his compatriots in a prayer and invoked the passages in Proverbs 27:17, which began:

"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another....."

Very interesting, that. Because Jim Harbaugh, coach of the San Francisco 49'ers, after his team was defeated by the Baltimore Ravens 16-6 on Thanksgiving night, said:

"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another....as my brother John has sharpened me....and John is the sharpest..."

This was acknowledging John, the head coach of the Ravens, as this was the first ever matchup in NFL history in which brother faced brother. (Hence the game had been nicknamed "the Har-Bowl")


So, one wonders if Tim had watched the Ravens- SF game - which I believe he did- and found the words intriguing, then googled them to get the full Proverbs quote before citing it and delivering it to his enraptured team mates. Just a theory!

We then learned from Denver Post sports columnist Mike Kiszla ('Old Testament Lesson Resonates with Broncos', Sunday Denver Post, p. 4BB) that Tebow had actually been praying for the Chargers to miss a potential game-winning field goal, which would have been the one from Novak. According to Kiszla's quotation from Tebow:

"I was kind of praying the whole time..."

Kiszla then observed that "Tebow praised the Lord for everything that happened....."

Really?

So, are we then to believe the "Lawd" intervened from his sublime rafters and caused the ball to veer off? Maybe the Almighty also stepped in and helped Tebow sustain all those punishing defensive blows, including when - on a 2nd and 9 at the Charger 39, the San Diego outside linebacker Travis LaBoy grabbed Tebow's facemask and yanked it down while defensive end Corey Liuget grabbed Tebow's shoulder pads and pulled him down before defensive tackle and 300-pounder Vaughn Martin barreled into him under a full head of steam - by one account "pounding Tebow like a veal cutlet".

But hey! I guess the Lawd was in there somewhere to absorb some of that punishment. Eh?

Horse pockey!

Let's dispense at once, for starters, that a putative Being or entity that would have (arguably) been responsible for the cosmos' inception (I am using this as a working assumption, not that I buy it) would have any remote interest in a game played by over-sized mammalian bipeds on a dust speck planet of an ordinary star two-thirds out to the rim of an ordinary spiral galaxy. The very notion is totally laughable!

The other notion that's laughable is that said Being would not only have an abiding interest in following this game, but following (and aiding) one player when called upon to do so! The notion that he'd even deign to think of interfering in a making a field goal go awry would be enough to make any serious believer reject the entity as comical.

So if it isn't any supernatural being behind Tebow's success, what is it? Simple: Because Tebow couldn't conduct a normal NFL offense (as seen in the Miami game he barely won with the Dolphins' help when they muffed an onside kick from Denver) John Fox, the Denver Head Coach, bent the offense to conform to Tebow's abilities (or lack of them). This meant running the so-called "option" in much the same way Tebow ran it while at the University of Florida.

The Denver-UF option system can be reduced thusly:

1) Tebow hands off the ball to a running back

2) Tebow pretends to give the ball to a RB, but throws it instead

3) Tebow pretends to give the ball to a RB, but runs it himself.

There you have it! That's it. The problem is that just like the Miami Dolphins' "Wildcat" which emerged in 2008, it will only be a matter of time before defenses catch on, and then the question will become: How long before such a defense breaks every bone in the guy's body?

We will see, but in the meantime Tebow would do well to give as many kudos to Broncos' strong side linebacker Von Miller, as to his god. It was Miller who, at a key point, sped into the SD offense and dropped RB Michael Tolbert for a critical 4 yard loss - making a fairly certain game winning Charger field goal into a dicey one.

Meanwhile, I predict Tebow will meet his comeuppance as early as this Sunday when he faces the Minnesota Vikings of the NFC's 'black and blue' division, with their astounding LB Jared Allen ready and waiting for any Tebow-time tricks.

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