Game Eleven: “He’s going intangibalistic, Mav!”

Editor’s note: I didn’t watch yesterday’s game, so what follows is merely a rumination.  And sadly, I suspect it can be cut-and-pasted to any post-game post from here till infinity.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I love Tim Tebow.  Like, a lot.  Totally unlikely, too, because I was the typical person who couldn’t stand him when he was at Florida.  But now, he’s at the head of my all-time favorite sports team (really my first love in life) as it makes an improbable run to the playoffs, and I’m hooked.  He’s helped make watching the Broncos fun again and I love him for it.  I yell at the meathead analysts who say he doesn’t do one thing particularly well or can’t do another thing all together.  “It doesn’t matter,” I say.  “He wins games and who gives a poop how?”  Because, really, who gives a poop how?  The whole point of the game is to win the thing, so what does it matter if Tebow wins it by throwing for 300 yards and five touchdowns, by only completing two passes, or by bouncing the ball on his head the whole way down the field for the winning score?  A win’s a win, and Tebow’s pretty awesome at being a quarterback on a winning team.  There’s just something about him, you might say.  Something about him that makes his team win even though it shouldn’t.  Something that inspires the rest of the guys to pull off the improbable, to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat, to be better than they really are.  Intangibles, some people call them.  Unmeasurables.  Things that don’t show up on a stat sheet, but things you know are there nonetheless.  Things like heart and guts and want-to and grit.  Yep; there’s just something about him that makes 52 of the most finely-tuned athletes in the world play way awesome, when they’d otherwise play way sucky (or at least way mediocre).  Yessir.  One guy’s got all that power.  Inspiring, really.  I mean, Champ Bailey’s probably in the top five of all people in world history who have ever worked his current job, and he needs to be inspired to play great.  Von Miller?  He’s your basic second coming of Derrick Thomas and he needs that same inspiration.  An offensive line that’s built specifically to run block fifty times a game?  A head coach who’s already coached one Super Bowl team?  Two wide recievers standing over six foot, three inches?  A Hall of Fame safety and a kicker with a 70-yard leg?  Same thing.  They need the crap out of that inspiration.

But upon reflection, I’m pretty sure I’d take Peyton Manning over Tim Tebow every day of the week and nine billion times on Sunday.  Because you know why?  In a sport played by talented and well-trained athletes, things like heart and guts and want-to and grit?  They don’t mean shit.  If they did, we’d all still be playing sports. 

Go Zags.  And free Guy Landry Edi.