My point is simply that I believe there was some kind of bad blood there. I don’t know what it was. I do know that it was odd for Elway to badmouth his own quarterback after his 4th straight win and say he was looking for a qb. Elway kept it up, questioned his skillset in public, and pretty well undercut the guy.
That would NEVER have happened in an awful lot of NFL cities even if the owner wanted to dump a player. They would have just kept quiet and made a trade.
Elway was a classless jerk while Tebow was winning games for them after a miserable start to that season. As you say, Elway criticized and even badmouthed Tebow during the season when the always useful: "we'll evaluate all our players at the end of the season", was readily available to him.
Elway often said, "not my kind of quarterback" and he was never able to even be objective with Tebow. He just didn't want a QB with Tebow's skill set and acted a jerk about it.
And Tebow's popularity with the fans probably irked him.
Bad blood happens. And given how regularly the team won in spite of Tebow’s terrible performance nothing wrong with saying they were looking for a QB. There was no question of Tim’s skill set, he stinks.
Actually it happens A LOT in sports. Heck just 2 days ago the coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning said his team played so horribly Detroit probably didn’t even need to put a goalie on the ice and they better get it together. Calling your players out in the press is a common practice. Sometimes it even works. And Elway got a pretty good trade for Tebow considering he was terrible and everybody in the league knew they wanted to dump him... though that could be because the Jets were stupid and actually willing to give up draft picks for a guy that was going to be on the waiver wire in a couple of weeks.
Very good points. Also, Fox was a passing offense coach. Kubiac is more balanced so I see a better fit now for Tebow. Heck, just putting him on the roster would make up for some of the lost ticket and merchandise sales from Manning leaving.
Of one thing I'm sure, the Patriots couldn't fit him in as a back up, and I really thought they would. With his old coach pushing him, I don't think Belichick would have let him go if he thought there was talent that he could work with.
When Elway got Manning, Denver fans forgave him fast.