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| Photo by Edward DeVita/The Savannah Sports Monthly |
By Edward DeVita
What a week it has been for NFL fans.
If you had asked anyone a year ago where
the league would be today, they would have the same odds of getting these recent
roster moves right as they would if they had filled out a perfect NCAA
tournament bracket.
Impossible.
Now, within a week, Peyton Manning has
been jettisoned from the Indianapolis Colts and has subsequently signed on to
be the new quarterback of the Denver Broncos and last season’s hero Tim Tebow
has been traded to above all places, the New York Jets.
For Manning to head west was a surprise
in itself, especially when the Tennessee Titans began to woo the quarterback
like a high school junior would attempt to convince the Homecoming Queen to be
his date for the prom. With Titans fans, coaches and ownership promising
everything from pancakes for life to an ownership stake in the team after he
retired, the stage seemed set for Manning to return to his college roots and in
a sense “come back home” to Tennessee.
But he politely said no.
Observers thought that the Arizona
Cardinals, Miami Dolphins or the San Francisco 49ers were in the mix ahead of the
Broncos who had evident pluses and minuses to their case. On the positive side,
Denver had a winning tradition, a great running game and defense and Hall of
Famer John Elway at the helm as the team’s president. On the negative side,
they had Tim Tebow. One day after signing Manning, Elway took care of the
“negative” element by trading the former University of Florida quarterback to
the New York Jets for a fourth round draft pick.
Tebow a negative? That still stuns me.
It’s like in the movie The Princess
Bride where Diego Montoya says, “I don’t think that word means what you think
it means.” All Tebow did was rescued a doomed 1-5 season to lead the Broncos to
the playoffs and win a game in the postseason. He brought the locker room
together. He sold a staggering number of jerseys. He was popular. Specifically,
he suddenly became more popular in Denver than the legendary John Elway. Elway
never liked Tebow’s style of play, even though it produced wins. Somehow, this
humble kid from Florida had come into Elway’s town and become the new hero.
Fans demanded that Tebow play with passion that had never been seen before. No
matter what he did, Tebow was the guy that Broncos fans wanted to see. What’s
negative about that? Don’t you want to have players on your roster that are
popular? When you think of a negative element on a football team you can say
names like Pacman Jones and Albert Haynesworth and maybe even Terrell Owens or
Chad Ocho Cinco but Tim Tebow? All he did was remain positive and win games.
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| Photo by Patricia Huisinga/The Savannah Sports Monthly |
And that led to him being shipped to the
Jets.
If Elway wanted to divest himself of
this problem, he had to bring in a big fish or face a historic backlash and
Peyton Manning is the mother of all big fish. By bringing in someone of
Manning’s stature, Elway could cut ties with Tebow and still not look bad. In
fact, he could take a step back towards being Denver’s favorite son. At his
introductory press conference, Manning stated that if Tebow were on the team
that he would be a “great teammate to him” and that he respected Tebow as a
person and a player. That remark would seem to indicate that the team was still
unsure of what they would do with Tebow a few who were there noticed that all
of the action photos of Tebow that adorned the Broncos facility had already
been taken down, even though the quarterback would not be traded until the next
day.
That brings us to Tebow. Through no
fault of his own, he walks into perhaps the biggest powder keg in all of sports
as a newest member of the brash New York Jets. This environment is hardly a
walk in the park. Head coach Rex Ryan is at the top of his class when it comes
to the colorful use of profanity and he wields it within a divided locker room
that melted down at the end of last season. Tebow’s arrival could potentially
make that locker room division even worse. Jets defensive back Antonio
Cromartie tweeted hours before the Jets acquired Tebow that the team “didn’t
need him” and that they should leave Tebow alone. Now they are teammates.
That should make the newest Jet feel
welcome.
This scene gets even worse. The Jets
have a quarterback in Mark Sanchez who is not exactly beloved in New York
despite leading the Jets to the AFC title game in two of his first three
seasons in the NFL (interestingly neither Peyton nor Eli Manning did that). Now
the moment that Sanchez happens to throw back to back incompletions next
season, Sanchez will have the thrill of hearing the bloodthirsty cry of rabid Jets
fans clamoring for Tebow to take his place under center. Talk about adding even
more pressure on Sanchez and the Jets. All he has done, like Tebow ironically, is
conduct himself with class and win football games.
It seems like a no-win situation for everyone
involved and it’s a shame. As a lifetime Jets fan, I am glad the team picked up
Tebow. I think that he can help them win some games. As a fan of Tim Tebow, I
am sad for him to end up in New York. I would have liked to have seen him come
to Jacksonville, where hard working local heroes can be appropriately appreciated
within a sold out stadium of teal wearing Jaguars fans.
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