What becomes a legend most? (Elway lands Manning)

ESPN.com ^ | 3/20/12 | Rick Reilly

[GSWarrior]

At a Super Bowl dinner this year, I couldn't help but ask John Elway why he'd never done The Tebow, the one-knee mini-prayer popularized worldwide by his quarterback.

Elway is fairly religious, so he thought about it and then said, "How about this? I'll Tebow when he wins us a championship."

Add that to your list of Things You'll Never See. Right below "Lenny Dykstra, President of the United States."

Tebow is trade meat this morning after Elway used a combination of stones, guile, risk, friendship and legend to land the biggest free-agent whale in NFL history: Peyton Manning.

Manning, of course, has no business picking Denver. Cold-weather town? Green receivers? Thin backfield? Tennessee made much more sense (disregard all previous dispatches).

The reason Manning is about to become a Bronco has everything to do with one man, Elway

[A.A. Cunningham]

Said the guy named "AA".

It's actually A.A., genius. An abbreviation of Alfred Austell which is something that the public education system that whelped you never exposed you to.

Elway had no mobility.

With an assinine statement like that you have no business questioning anyone else's abuse of alcohol, gomer.

under a system set up for what he brings to the table.

How many option teams have made it to let alone won a Super Bowl? Tebow is a disaster as a quarterback and he won't be a long term successful one in the NFL. Just look at how he was defensed in the final three regular season games last year. Games in which the Broncos were 0-3.

In Tebow, you combine a 1000 yard a season rusher,

For how many seasons? He won't survive physically for very long if he's running the ball that much. Look at the beating he took against New England in January. If he keeps trying to take on 300 pound lineman and 275 pound linebackers his career will last about as long as Gale Sayers' did.

with a guy who has a great arm

Great arm? Put that crack pipe down.

and has shown he can put the ball where he wants to deep downfield--as Pittsburgh found out.

Tebow can throw downfield inconsistently at best as he repeatedly demonstrated last season. He also wouldn't be throwing against a sieve like Ike Taylor every week either.

That opinion is more an indicator of an inflexible mindset.

That's a reality based on Tebow's lack of ability as a drop back pocket passer.

Elway never wanted to figure out a way to make that work, because he can't see beyond his comfort zone.

The fact that they benched Orton and cobbled together an option/spread offense that Tebow could crudely manage; that teams eventually figured out how to defend - rewatch the final three ganmes of the season to refresh your memory - instead of giving the nod to Quinn proves you wrong. Tebow was a novelty and that became fairly evident as the season wore on. Denver was extremely fortunate to win seven games in the regular season with Tebow as QB, despite his ineptness. He's long on heart but short on skills.

The nattering nabobs of the NFL don't like Tebow for the same reason that the elites hate Sarah Palin,

That's absurd. The proof is in Tebow's numbers and his overall performance. Again, where are all the teams clamoring for Tebow's services if he's such a catch?

Other coaches who adapted well to their QBs were Andy Reid with Michael Vick, and Rex Ryan with Sanchez.

How many Super Bowls have the Jets and the Eagles won with Ryan/Sanchez and Reid/Vick?

Quit drinking the Tebow kool-aid, kid. You emote like a liberal.

[Vinnie]

Manning takes the snap, Tebow drifts left, Rback drifts right.
Manning can pass downfield or lateral it to Tebow who then has the option, or flips it to the Rback on the opposite side of the field.

Ball is snapped to Tebow, fakes handoff to Rback, either runs, passes or laterals to Manning who then throws a pass.

The defensive end can rush Manning or Tebow, can’t do both.
Cornerback can play Tebow run, then Tebow passes or vice versa.
One way or the other either Tebow /Manning can take advantage of 1. open receiver or 2. open rushing lane.

[DaveyB]

Elway was a great QB.
Manning was a great QB and may still be.
Tebow is still unproven, he has great heart that you cannot teach, he may prove to be great one day.

For Elway though, many and I am one, think this personnel decision is at least as much personal as it is about football.

[discostu]

Manning takes the snap, Tebow drifts left, Rback drifts right. Manning can pass downfield or lateral it to Tebow who then has the option, or flips it to the Rback on the opposite side of the field except by that point the offense has had the ball on the wrong side of the offensive line for 10 seconds out numbered because Manning can't block, so they've either crushed Tebow or tipped the ball to run it back to a TD.

Ball is snapped to Tebow, fakes handoff to Rback, either runs, passes or laterals to Manning who then throws a pass. And if Tebow passes there's a 50-50 shot it fall incomplete. And if he does get it back to Manning who is a pure timing passer Manning is stuck trying to make a pass 4 seconds after the snap when his average snap to pass time is 1.8 seconds, now he's standing there like the Statue of Liberty with the defense 2 seconds closer to creaming him.

These are slow developing plays, the defense can rush both, especially because when Tebow has the ball he'll have one less blocker/ receiver on the field than normal because Manning is there too. They sound great on paper, but the reality is this is not the combo of players you want for that type of play. Put him in Pittsburgh teamed up with a QB that also likes to hold the ball too long and can scramble and block it might work. Teamed up with a pure timing passer that's never thrown a good block in his career it's a recipe for disaster.

[VeniVidiVici]

A 46.5% completion rate for the season, a 40.4% completion rate in the playoffs and a career QB rating of 75.1 is not indicative of a "rocket for an arm". Obviously you didn't spend too much time watching the Jekyll and Hyde performance in the 13 games Tebow started in 2011

Care to wager whether or not Manning can get the Broncos into the playoffs?

[Defiant]

Dear Alfred Austell Cunningham, namesake of esteemed Marine Corpse (heheheh) aviator:

You are stupid, vulgar, uninformed, probably drunk and high, crazy, lazy, and I doubt you ever played a down of football in your life. You sure know very little about it, aside from perhaps yelling from the stands at real coaches in drunken fits of rage. Moron, cretin, dung beetle. Pusilanimous pile of putrid pustules.

In your last post I was "whelped" by a "public education", "assinine", named "gomer", have a "crack pipe", "drinking the kool-aid" and "emoting like a liberal".

In your first post to me, you wondered what I had been smoking, which is why you got the response about your clearly alcohol-induced delusions.

The rapidity with which you descend into insults and vulgarity is surpassed only by the depth of your lack of knowledge about football. Now that the insults have been dispensed with, let me just say that I disagree with all that you have to say as well as the manner in which you say it. I am not a fan of Tebow's because of his religious views, although I think it makes him a better person than you and pretty much everyone in the NFL. I enjoy watching him because of his ability to bring the running game back to the QB position, and I think it is something that just might work, if given a chance. I am not talking about running the option, although some of the plays would have options and reads. I think the criticism of his throwing is overblown, as is the reliance on stats instead of watching the games. I have seen many young QBs come into the league who miss a lot of throws and don't look good early on. Some get better and make it; some don't. None of them, with the exceptions fo Cam Newton and Michael Vick, could run like Tebow. Few of them have his heart, and his infectious spirit.

For those factors, and more, it disturbs me when he is subjected to ridicule, criticisms and outright hatred that I have not seen dispensed towards other young QBs just starting out. I try to look for the source of that antagonism. In most cases, it is a world view that is offended by the existence of someone who thinks like Tebow. In yours, assuming you are in fact a conservative and not an operative here to sow discord, it must be because you simply don't understand football well enough to see what could be. You only know what you hear and are told. In that, you are like those who get their opinions by reading the daily paper and catching the hourly news updates on the radio. Ill-informed.

Now, AA, if you have more vulgarities,names, put-downs, etc., please feel free to express them together with your non-substantive response. I so enjoy a virtual marine's colorful use of our language.

[Defiant]

You are wrong, it would work. It would work better with 2 QBs who are mobile, and Manning is not, but you could still make it work. I would have the snaps come to Manning, I wouldn't want to have to pass it off to Manning. And if you lateral to him, he is too close to Tebow, the rush could come at both of them. But if Tebow is away from the ball, he can serve as an outlet for a double pass. If they rush a man to Tebow, that is like a block that he didn't even have to throw. And if they don't, it extends the play. What that does is let 3 or 4 receivers have time to get deep downfield. Instead of "1,2, 3, here's the rush, throw", it gives them time to set up very deep routes which in turn opens up the middle for someone else if no one is open deep.

Vinnie is right to think outside the box. Athletes change and improve, and strategies do, too. The game is unbelievably more complex than it was just 20 years ago, and it is good to come up with new ideas that then become what everyone is doing 10 years later. People made fun of the west coast offense, too, and said you had to run to set up the pass. Now the conventional wisdom is you have to be Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. But then you get guys like Cam Newton and Tebow, and a new style might be called for. Just wait til that guy from Michigan gets there, that will be interesting.

[discostu]

No it wouldn’t, not with a timing guy like Manning and an inaccurate passer like Tebow. Every time one of Tebow’s passes clunked on the ground the team would get frustrated, and every time a snap to Tebow lateraled to Manning got Manning killed the team would get more frustrated.

Great Tebow does a pass after a lateral, with his 47.3% pass completion most of them hit the ground. You’re not sending 4 receivers deep with two QBs screwing around in the back field. That would account for 6 of your 11 guys, leaving only 5 to block for this slow to develop play. The usual lateral then pass play sends ONE guy deep, you keep everybody else in close to block for the guy running.

This isn’t actually making the game more complex, it’s making it less complex. Basically it’s an option play with a pre-option lateral, which is still in high school, and worked for a little for Tebow but eventually defenses figured it out. It would be OK to do once in a while, but like all gadget plays it relies on being unexpected, if it’s your primary offense it becomes expected, expected gadget plays fall apart because they take too long to develop. Just look at what happened with the Wild Cat, while it was unexpected it worked, then too many teams went to the well too often and it became a way to lose 4 yards.

Cam Newton doesn’t need gadgets, he needs a defense. His team lost 7 games they scored 20+ points in. Cam’s got the core essentials, 60% completions, 5 fumbles, needs to work on those INTs but still managed a lot of TDs and passing yards. Classic timing passing yards.

Tebow’s success didn’t come with a “new style”, the option is one of the oldest styles in the book. The problem the option has now is the game is so fast. The average QB has the ball for 2.4 seconds snap to pass, the average sack takes a little over 3 seconds, there’s no time in there for option. That’s why even with “throwback” QBs they need to master the 3 step drop pass to a spot, something Tebow is horrible at.

[Tupelo]

Shanahan was the offensive coordinator at the time. He and Elway changed the plays that the Reeves the head coach had approved for the games. They were running plays out of sequence.
As for Phillips, You might think he was a disaster, but I do not. IMO he would have had a much better record in Denver if he had had a quarterback that wanted to play for him. Reeves, Phillips, Tebow, and Bill McCartney, four fine moral men chased out of Denver. In McCartney's case Boulder. Not because they were losers. Denver does not like moral men, they prefer the Gangsta types. That is just a fact of life anymore.

[chessplayer]

I like Peyton Manning and he was undoubtedly a great player but I think the operative term is “was”.

---

Yup. ‘Was’ is the key word. He might surprise everyone and have another good season left in him, but so many great ones just don’t know when to hang it up. Unitas finished his career a beat up old man sitting on the bench. Favre ended his career looking like a fool. And it happens in every sport, not just football.