Ox 51
Musclechemistry Guru
DENVER – He planted his right foot on his own 15-yard line and went into the looping, deliberate wind-up that, like so much of what Tim Tebow does, seems to defy the conventions of quarterbacking at the highest level.
We waited. And waited. And then, in one furious and glorious thrust, Tebow’s left hand released the pass that would wind up rebranding him as a passer and rocking the football world.
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Tim Tebow joyously exits the field after the Broncos oust the Steelers from the playoffs.
(Getty Images)
This, salty cynics, was no miracle.
This, Tebowphiles, was not tangible proof of divine intervention.
This, football fans, was a quarterback, a dude simultaneously calm, commanding and cocksure – the kind of classic gunslinger many of us doubted Tebow could ever be.
Suddenly, emphatically and irrevocably, mania had morphed into manhood. As Demaryius Thomas snatched Tebow’s sublime spiral out of the Mile High sky and ripped into the open field, on his way to the unforgettable 80-yard touchdown that would give the Denver Broncos a 29-23 overtime victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in an AFC wild-card playoff game at Sports Authority Field, the debate over football’s most polarizing player had ended.
It’s official: Tebow wins; those of us who doubted him must reassess in a hurry, as rapidly as Thomas outran cornerback Ike Taylor and safety Ryan Mundy to render the NFL’s newly revamped postseason overtime rule moot.
As 75,970 fans lapsed into a euphoric frenzy, a man in a dark overcoat on the Broncos’ sidelines also celebrated with unfettered abandon. That’s right: Even John Elway had no choice but to embrace Tebow, literally and figuratively, for now and possibly forever.
It wasn’t just the pass to Thomas that earned the Hall of Famer’s adulation; it was the way Tebow (10 for 21, 316 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions) had taken Elway’s advice and taken shots downfield, right into the heart of All-Pro safety Troy Polamulu’s domain.
Staring down the defending AFC champions and their top-ranked defense – and, very possibly, an uncertain football future – Tebow threw caution to the chilly mountain breeze and made his legendary predecessor proud. He also carried the Broncos into a divisional-round showdown with the top-seeded New England Patriots next Saturday night in Foxborough, Mass., where for the second time in a month he’ll go up against the gold standard of his profession.
For what it’s worth, Tom Brady was just as captivated by Tebow’s systematic slaying of the Steelers as the millions who tuned in around the globe to witness the spectacle. As Brady wrote via email Sunday night, “Glad you enjoyed it! I did too. …”
If that doesn’t make the second-year quarterback smile, perhaps this will: Watching from the basement of his offseason residence in Miami, Terrell Suggs – the Baltimore Ravens’ All-Pro pass rusher and the league’s most overt Tebow-basher, a guy who’d told me last week that “to say this is a phenomenon, I think of it as an insult to the rest of the other quarterbacks” – was in the midst of an attitude adjustment.
“I’m shocked,” Suggs texted Sunday night. “Jaw is on the floor!!!!!!! He shocked us all.”
The shock wasn’t merely because Tebow had led the AFC West champion Broncos, who were 8 ½-point underdogs, to a victory over the Steelers. And it wasn’t simply that he’d shaken off a three-game losing streak to end the regular season, one which included an atrocious effort in a 7-3 defeat to the last-place Kansas City Chiefs in the same stadium seven days earlier.
What was truly stunning was that Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and brainy defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau had essentially dared Tebow to air it out by loading up to stop the run – a smart strategy, on paper – and were made to pay for their insolence.
Tim Tebow escapes a Steelers defender as Pittsburgh failed to register a sack the entire game.
(Getty Images)
“Football is an aggressive game, a combative game,” Broncos coach John Fox said more than an hour after the game as he mingled with family members outside the locker room. “You can’t play it careful. You can’t play it hesitant. You’ve got to pull the trigger.”
Ah, yes, pull the trigger. Those were the same three words Elway, the Broncos’ first-year executive vice president of football operations, had chosen to impart to Tebow in an interview with the Denver Post last Tuesday.
He knew what he was saying, and he saw no reason for the message to be a subtle one. To Elway – the most accomplished and beloved player in franchise history, a master of the magical finish, and one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time – it was time for Tebow to sling it; to run the offense, rather than running at the first sign of pressure; and to trust his receivers to go up and get the ball.
“That’s one of the greatest quarterbacks that ever played the game,” Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey said after Sunday’s contest. “Anything he says you better listen and take it to heart because he knows what he’s talking about. He hasn’t won two championships and been in three other [Super Bowls] for no reason. The guy knows the game.”
For most of his storied, 16-year career, Elway faced defenses designed to stop him from unleashing his prolific passes with impunity. Often, he burned them anyway. Only once did I see an opposing coach blatantly challenge Elway to throw downfield, as if it were an act of defiance. And that happened in the quarterback’s very last game.
As the Falcons prepared to face the Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII, Atlanta coach Dan Reeves – who’d previously coached in Denver and had frequently clashed with Elway – crafted a game plan that loaded up the box to stop All-Pro halfback Terrell Davis. The result? Elway threw for 336 yards in a 34-19 victory, earned Super Bowl MVP honors and told me all about it while smoking a cigar on the balcony of his Ft. Lauderdale hotel room, gazing into the rainy South Florida night.
No, that moment did not suck.
Yes, I’ve had some pretty cool experiences while doing this “job,” and you’d best believe watching Tebow seize the moment on Sunday was one of them.
Part of my enjoyment stemmed from the knowledge of just how much was on the line. In the aftermath of his dreadful, 6-for-22, 60-yard outing against the Chiefs, Tebow’s bosses – Elway, Fox and other powerbrokers in the organization – were in full-fledged panic mode. A couple of weeks earlier, they’d considered him their unquestioned starter heading into the 2012 season. Now, even that was open for reassessment.
Last Monday, as preparations began for the Steelers game, some radical short-term alternatives were considered. One, according to two organizational sources, involved playing Tebow only on first downs and inserting his backup, Brady Quinn, for second- and third-down plays. Another plan called for Tebow to be benched in favor of Quinn if he were to struggle early.
Ultimately, Fox decided against such maneuvers. Quinn, in fact, was not informed of either possibility, and he received only eight practice repetitions the entire week.
“It wasn’t anything different for me in terms of preparation,” Quinn said afterward. “No extra reps. If there was ever [consideration of] a plan, I was never told.”
No, it was Tebow’s show – and after an ignominious start, it turned out to be a scintillating one.
The first quarter was a washout, with Tebow misfiring on his only two passing attempts, the Broncos gaining just seven yards and Pittsburgh taking a 6-0 lead. The first play of the second quarter was even worse: Tebow hung a pass to wideout Eric Decker that, in addition to being ruled an incompletion (on a replay reversal), resulted in the receiver sustaining what Fox called a “significant” left knee injury after absorbing a low hit from linebacker James Harrison.
And then, as if he’d decided to charge headlong at his demons, Tebow changed everything: He threw a 51-yard pass to Thomas (four receptions, 204 yards) down the left sideline and, two plays later, found wideout Eddie Royal in the right corner of the end zone for a 30-yard score. By halftime, the Broncos had a 20-6 lead, and Tebow looked like the best quarterback on the field.
Ben Roethlisberger faced pressure most of the afternoon, ultimately getting sacked five times.
(Getty Images)
That changed in the second half as the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, a two-time Super Bowl winner well-versed in the art of dramatic comebacks, showed his class, ultimately tying the game on a typical flurry of improvisational brilliance: With 3:48 remaining, Roethlisberger (22-of-40, 289 yards, one TD, one interception), limited by a left ankle sprain, scrambled to his right, kept the play alive and fired a gorgeous, 31-yard pass to Jericho Cotchery in the back of the end zone. Nobody does that better, and perhaps only Elway ever has.
Roethlisberger had a chance to win in regulation, driving the Steelers into Denver territory with 29 seconds remaining, but the Broncos’ defense snuffed the threat with a pair of sacks – two of its three on the drive, and of its five overall.
After winning the toss in overtime – and given the new rules requiring a first-possession touchdown to end the game, rather than merely a field goal – Fox and offensive coordinator Mike McCoy decided to go for the kill.
“We had some pretty good stats of running the ball a lot on first down,” Fox said. “We saw the coverage and we were able to execute.”
The Steelers were in a “blitz zero” coverage in which each defensive back is responsible for a receiver and stopping a ball-carrier – either the halfback or quarterback – is paramount. With one receiver motioned to the line (a run cue) and a stacked formation that featured Thomas split to the left as the lone wideout, the play had run-option written all over it.
“It was the perfect call for the perfect defense,” Quinn said.
Tebow, after receiving the shotgun snap, faked a handoff to halfback Willis McGahee. Sure enough, safeties Polamalu and Mundy (playing for leading tackler Ryan Clark, who sat out because of a blood condition exacerbated at high altitude) bit, drifting toward the line before trying to recover. It was too late. Tebow wound up and delivered the perfect strike to Thomas, who caught it in stride, shed Taylor with a stiff-arm and could have kept running all the way to Foxborough.
At that moment, Tebow, too, had officially relocated, to the rarefied air of playoff-tested gunslingers.
“You can’t really judge a guy just off the regular season,” Bailey said. “When they get to the playoffs, where it’s win or go home, you judge him off of that. You play that well in a playoff game and you put yourself on a different level.”
Tebow pulled it off – with a nice assist from Elway. And, as a result, it looks like they’ll be together for a long, long time.
We waited. And waited. And then, in one furious and glorious thrust, Tebow’s left hand released the pass that would wind up rebranding him as a passer and rocking the football world.
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(Getty Images)
This, salty cynics, was no miracle.
This, Tebowphiles, was not tangible proof of divine intervention.
This, football fans, was a quarterback, a dude simultaneously calm, commanding and cocksure – the kind of classic gunslinger many of us doubted Tebow could ever be.
Suddenly, emphatically and irrevocably, mania had morphed into manhood. As Demaryius Thomas snatched Tebow’s sublime spiral out of the Mile High sky and ripped into the open field, on his way to the unforgettable 80-yard touchdown that would give the Denver Broncos a 29-23 overtime victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in an AFC wild-card playoff game at Sports Authority Field, the debate over football’s most polarizing player had ended.
It’s official: Tebow wins; those of us who doubted him must reassess in a hurry, as rapidly as Thomas outran cornerback Ike Taylor and safety Ryan Mundy to render the NFL’s newly revamped postseason overtime rule moot.
As 75,970 fans lapsed into a euphoric frenzy, a man in a dark overcoat on the Broncos’ sidelines also celebrated with unfettered abandon. That’s right: Even John Elway had no choice but to embrace Tebow, literally and figuratively, for now and possibly forever.
It wasn’t just the pass to Thomas that earned the Hall of Famer’s adulation; it was the way Tebow (10 for 21, 316 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions) had taken Elway’s advice and taken shots downfield, right into the heart of All-Pro safety Troy Polamulu’s domain.
Staring down the defending AFC champions and their top-ranked defense – and, very possibly, an uncertain football future – Tebow threw caution to the chilly mountain breeze and made his legendary predecessor proud. He also carried the Broncos into a divisional-round showdown with the top-seeded New England Patriots next Saturday night in Foxborough, Mass., where for the second time in a month he’ll go up against the gold standard of his profession.
For what it’s worth, Tom Brady was just as captivated by Tebow’s systematic slaying of the Steelers as the millions who tuned in around the globe to witness the spectacle. As Brady wrote via email Sunday night, “Glad you enjoyed it! I did too. …”
If that doesn’t make the second-year quarterback smile, perhaps this will: Watching from the basement of his offseason residence in Miami, Terrell Suggs – the Baltimore Ravens’ All-Pro pass rusher and the league’s most overt Tebow-basher, a guy who’d told me last week that “to say this is a phenomenon, I think of it as an insult to the rest of the other quarterbacks” – was in the midst of an attitude adjustment.
“I’m shocked,” Suggs texted Sunday night. “Jaw is on the floor!!!!!!! He shocked us all.”
The shock wasn’t merely because Tebow had led the AFC West champion Broncos, who were 8 ½-point underdogs, to a victory over the Steelers. And it wasn’t simply that he’d shaken off a three-game losing streak to end the regular season, one which included an atrocious effort in a 7-3 defeat to the last-place Kansas City Chiefs in the same stadium seven days earlier.
What was truly stunning was that Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and brainy defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau had essentially dared Tebow to air it out by loading up to stop the run – a smart strategy, on paper – and were made to pay for their insolence.
(Getty Images)
“Football is an aggressive game, a combative game,” Broncos coach John Fox said more than an hour after the game as he mingled with family members outside the locker room. “You can’t play it careful. You can’t play it hesitant. You’ve got to pull the trigger.”
Ah, yes, pull the trigger. Those were the same three words Elway, the Broncos’ first-year executive vice president of football operations, had chosen to impart to Tebow in an interview with the Denver Post last Tuesday.
He knew what he was saying, and he saw no reason for the message to be a subtle one. To Elway – the most accomplished and beloved player in franchise history, a master of the magical finish, and one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time – it was time for Tebow to sling it; to run the offense, rather than running at the first sign of pressure; and to trust his receivers to go up and get the ball.
“That’s one of the greatest quarterbacks that ever played the game,” Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey said after Sunday’s contest. “Anything he says you better listen and take it to heart because he knows what he’s talking about. He hasn’t won two championships and been in three other [Super Bowls] for no reason. The guy knows the game.”
For most of his storied, 16-year career, Elway faced defenses designed to stop him from unleashing his prolific passes with impunity. Often, he burned them anyway. Only once did I see an opposing coach blatantly challenge Elway to throw downfield, as if it were an act of defiance. And that happened in the quarterback’s very last game.
As the Falcons prepared to face the Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII, Atlanta coach Dan Reeves – who’d previously coached in Denver and had frequently clashed with Elway – crafted a game plan that loaded up the box to stop All-Pro halfback Terrell Davis. The result? Elway threw for 336 yards in a 34-19 victory, earned Super Bowl MVP honors and told me all about it while smoking a cigar on the balcony of his Ft. Lauderdale hotel room, gazing into the rainy South Florida night.
No, that moment did not suck.
Yes, I’ve had some pretty cool experiences while doing this “job,” and you’d best believe watching Tebow seize the moment on Sunday was one of them.
Part of my enjoyment stemmed from the knowledge of just how much was on the line. In the aftermath of his dreadful, 6-for-22, 60-yard outing against the Chiefs, Tebow’s bosses – Elway, Fox and other powerbrokers in the organization – were in full-fledged panic mode. A couple of weeks earlier, they’d considered him their unquestioned starter heading into the 2012 season. Now, even that was open for reassessment.
Last Monday, as preparations began for the Steelers game, some radical short-term alternatives were considered. One, according to two organizational sources, involved playing Tebow only on first downs and inserting his backup, Brady Quinn, for second- and third-down plays. Another plan called for Tebow to be benched in favor of Quinn if he were to struggle early.
Ultimately, Fox decided against such maneuvers. Quinn, in fact, was not informed of either possibility, and he received only eight practice repetitions the entire week.
“It wasn’t anything different for me in terms of preparation,” Quinn said afterward. “No extra reps. If there was ever [consideration of] a plan, I was never told.”
No, it was Tebow’s show – and after an ignominious start, it turned out to be a scintillating one.
The first quarter was a washout, with Tebow misfiring on his only two passing attempts, the Broncos gaining just seven yards and Pittsburgh taking a 6-0 lead. The first play of the second quarter was even worse: Tebow hung a pass to wideout Eric Decker that, in addition to being ruled an incompletion (on a replay reversal), resulted in the receiver sustaining what Fox called a “significant” left knee injury after absorbing a low hit from linebacker James Harrison.
And then, as if he’d decided to charge headlong at his demons, Tebow changed everything: He threw a 51-yard pass to Thomas (four receptions, 204 yards) down the left sideline and, two plays later, found wideout Eddie Royal in the right corner of the end zone for a 30-yard score. By halftime, the Broncos had a 20-6 lead, and Tebow looked like the best quarterback on the field.
(Getty Images)
That changed in the second half as the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, a two-time Super Bowl winner well-versed in the art of dramatic comebacks, showed his class, ultimately tying the game on a typical flurry of improvisational brilliance: With 3:48 remaining, Roethlisberger (22-of-40, 289 yards, one TD, one interception), limited by a left ankle sprain, scrambled to his right, kept the play alive and fired a gorgeous, 31-yard pass to Jericho Cotchery in the back of the end zone. Nobody does that better, and perhaps only Elway ever has.
Roethlisberger had a chance to win in regulation, driving the Steelers into Denver territory with 29 seconds remaining, but the Broncos’ defense snuffed the threat with a pair of sacks – two of its three on the drive, and of its five overall.
After winning the toss in overtime – and given the new rules requiring a first-possession touchdown to end the game, rather than merely a field goal – Fox and offensive coordinator Mike McCoy decided to go for the kill.
“We had some pretty good stats of running the ball a lot on first down,” Fox said. “We saw the coverage and we were able to execute.”
The Steelers were in a “blitz zero” coverage in which each defensive back is responsible for a receiver and stopping a ball-carrier – either the halfback or quarterback – is paramount. With one receiver motioned to the line (a run cue) and a stacked formation that featured Thomas split to the left as the lone wideout, the play had run-option written all over it.
“It was the perfect call for the perfect defense,” Quinn said.
Tebow, after receiving the shotgun snap, faked a handoff to halfback Willis McGahee. Sure enough, safeties Polamalu and Mundy (playing for leading tackler Ryan Clark, who sat out because of a blood condition exacerbated at high altitude) bit, drifting toward the line before trying to recover. It was too late. Tebow wound up and delivered the perfect strike to Thomas, who caught it in stride, shed Taylor with a stiff-arm and could have kept running all the way to Foxborough.
At that moment, Tebow, too, had officially relocated, to the rarefied air of playoff-tested gunslingers.
“You can’t really judge a guy just off the regular season,” Bailey said. “When they get to the playoffs, where it’s win or go home, you judge him off of that. You play that well in a playoff game and you put yourself on a different level.”
Tebow pulled it off – with a nice assist from Elway. And, as a result, it looks like they’ll be together for a long, long time.
