Tee-Bow's Big Adventure

Chick Ludwig of the esteemed "Typing Away with Chick" lecture series declares that Bengals fans should not be surprised to see the "Blessed One" Tim Tebow selected in the 2nd or, sit down for this one, the 1st round. His basis for the argument is twofold: that Tebow is the greatest college football player of all time (obviously he did not tune in for The Express: The Ernie Davis story) and that the Bengals blew the hair off Mel Kiper's head once before selecting David Klingler with the 6th overall pick despite having Boomer Esiason entering his 9th NFL season. He's right in some respects. Tebow may arguably be the greatest college football player of all time and the Bengals do need a backup quarterback as bad as Jim Lippincott's shorts need an extra 3 inches in length. However, Tebow is NOT the answer as our backup and definitely not in the 1st round. I'll go ahead and let the Jaguars make that mistake. They love long loopy deliveries from their quarterback (yep, that's an uncalled for jab at Byron Leftwich).

The truth of the matter is that there are a lot of average quarterbacks in this draft and even the supposed good ones have questions. Bradford has the shoulder, Claussen has the toe, terrible haircut, and questions about his leadership, and McCoy has the massive amount of victories but paucity of good games. These guys will go ahead of Tebow. I am a diehard best available player proponent so there is no good reason to reach that early for a player without a position. Zach Robinson, Jarret Brown, and Tony Pike would all be available in later rounds and probably have greater quarterback potential than Tebow.

Articles abound of his strong physical testing at the combine. The speed with which a quarterback runs around 3 cones or the height of his vertical jump don't tell us a thing about his ability to play the position. Josh McCown had the highest vertical jump and he is a horror show. Brian Billick in his book "More than a Game" describes how the combine messed his head up with Kyle Boller. He saw him throw 50 yards on a knee and fell in love with that big arm deciding to look past his 53% completion percentage in college. The combine plays with our hearts and minds. Did you all notice how dominant Vernon Gholston was in the Jets top rated D this year? Oh wait, he didn't play. This jumble of ideas gets to one point: the ability of a player to do things in his underwear has no bearing on his ability to play quarterback especially when those things don't involve throwing the ball to receivers (I just channeled my inner Marvin Lewis with that line).

More importantly, Tebow failed to change his delivery and footwork in college when Urban Meyer brought in NFL coaches to work with him. What will happen in pressure situations? He will revert to his animalistic instincts to throw a ball like a windmill. Can he be groomed? Sure. But we need a backup who can actually fill in adequately if the brittle boned Palmer gets dinged up.

I will never question Tebow's work ethic, desire, or passion. Can he be a great player? Maybe. He just won't be one in Stripes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-qodBTlMtA