Tim Tebow is a reactionary counter-revolutionary force in opposition to the progressive hypermodern passing game of Drew Brees
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Evolution, revolution
Last Saturday night Drew Brees threw 41 passes, completing nearly eighty percent of them for 466 yards while leading the New Orleans Saints, who possess the most prolific of the NFL’s postmodern offenses, to a fireworks-filled 45-28 win over the visiting Detroit Lions.
Last Sunday night, Tim Tebow threw 21 passes, completing less than fifty percent of them for just over 300 yards while leading the Denver Broncos, who run a modified version of offenses that have not been used fulltime in the NFL since about the Eisenhower Administration, to a 29-23 win over the visiting Pittsburgh Steelers.
Something is wonky in professional football right now, and it’s not because Jesus has money on Denver.
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Drew Brees, over the course of sixteen 2011 games, passed for 5476 yards, the most ever in a NFL season by more than the average quarterback manages in a full game. In fact, Brees broke the previous record, held by Dan Marino, with a full game to spare, beneath the lights of and before the human-made roars held within the vast-ceilinged confines of the Superdome in New Orleans. His Saints set so many offensive records in 2011 that they may also have set a record for most records broken; they did so because Brees and the coach that brought him to New Orleans, Sean Payton, have built a machine of football there, constructed it from an array of weapons scavenged from everywhere and then put onto the gridiron under the influence of themes and concepts taken from the best offenses of seasons past—Air Coryell, the West Coast Offense, the Greatest Show on Turf—which they evolved and perfected, so that they can be used in complex, terminology-ridden, intellectual fashion, deployed in so many different shapes and formations, with so many different variations and options, that no defense seems capable of keeping up.
What the Saints are doing (and, to slightly lesser extents, what teams like the Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots, and some others do) is a radical evolution of the sport. Taking advantage of modified rules with new personnel who seemed naturally selected to do said (see: Graham; see: Gronkowski), they’ve advanced the game by what feels like a great leap. They are doing things that have never been done before.
They have led a revolution.
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The Wildcat is kind of like an out-of-place link in a chain that represents the march of sporting progress
When I still argued with people who were wrong on the internet in the places responsible for producing the majority of the wrong opinions on the internet (you know: message boards) I once wrestled with someone over the Wildcat offense unleashed in the NFL by the Miami Dolphins when they had Ronnie Brown, Ricky Williams, and several quarterbacks who were not Drew Brees. The Wildcat, he assured me, was a mere gimmick destined for the trash bin; it was of minimal use and less legitimacy, a crutch for football’s weak, and it’d very soon disappear forever.
I countered with what seemed obvious: the Wildcat as run by the Miami Dolphins was likely only a passing fad, but the principles upon which it was based would likely have more lasting impact. It was in effect an option offense utilizing techniques about as old as American football itself, and while the uneducated among we fans and commentators might not notice its presence, that wouldn’t change the fact that there was such a presence. (Fans and commentators started to screw up even while the Wildcat was at its 2008ish peak, calling any play in which a running back or wide receiver lined up at quarterback the Wildcat whether it was actually the Wildcat or not; in that case, every team in the NFL had been running the Wildcat as a trick play for years, as at some point or another everyone runs a direct snap to the halfback, at least.)
At its heart, the Wildcat was a modified single wing attack based on motion priciples, misdirection, and on the fact that by not reserving the quarterback for mere handoff-to-the-runner duties, it was effectively creating an additional blocker, meaning, in theory, ten of eleven defenders should be eliminated by one on one matchups rather than the usual nine of eleven.
The Wildcat as run by the Miami Dolphins (and by numerous imitators), of course, exlusively used running backs or receivers as quarterbacks, meaning the option to pass from the formation was limited by the physical attritbutes of the player line up behind center. But when, back in the pre-merger (and especially pre-WWII) NFL a quarterback lined up in a sort of short shotgun behind center and either kept the ball and ran or handed the ball to another runner, there was the legitimate chance that—ten, fifteen times a game—he might heave a pass downfield to a streaking end.
These were low accuracy, high-yardage pass attempts. They resulted in Hall of Fame quarterbacks who completed less than fifty percent of their passes but still produced yardage per attempt numbers unassailed by any except the rarest contemporary passers. Otto Graham of Cleveland, for example, averaged an insane 10.6 yards per pass attempt in 1953, nearly two yards more than Aaron Rodgers has managed this season. See also: In 2009 against New England, Drew Brees averaged over sixteen yards per pass attempt, a number nearly unheard of in the contemporary “passer-friendly” NFL but achieved with some regularity in the premodern era. Of the top forty most accurate passers of all time, only two played a down before 1980 (and one of the two is Joe Montana, the progenitor of consistent accuracy); but only one of the three players who lead the all-time chart for most yards per attempt threw a pass beyond 1959, and he, Norm Van Brocklin, only played into the 1960 season. (A look at the all-time list of average yardage per pass completion is perhaps the most staggering of all: the highest-ranking active quarterback is Ben Roethlisberger, who is eighty-second.)
There is a chain—links named Baugh and Unitas and Namath and Fouts and Marino and Montana and Young and Favre and Manning and Brady and Brees and Rodgers—of passers who in some regard can be considered “modern,” inasmuch as theirs is a brand of quarterback recognizable to the contemporary fan and so they have propelled football along a rules-bending trajectory that has resulted in the shattered records lying beneath a sign that reads “2011-2012.” But the further back along the chain you look the fewer Marinos there are among the players’ contemporaries; they are replaced by a very different style of player until, back before World War II, the majority of passers more closely resemble Redskins “tailback” Frank Filchock than Peyton Manning.
These were men who operated offenses that sort of resemble the Wildcat in some very important ways and whose presence was as normal way back in the day as it would be anachronistic in 2012.
In other words: Tim Tebow.
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Tebow as a reactionary counter-revolutionary force representing opposition to the hypermodern contemporary passing game
Tim Tebow is not an icon because of Jesus.
To claim otherwise, as numerous writers have since Tebow, an elite five star high school recruit with scholarship offers from every football-playing university in the United States, first arrived in Gainesville, Florida and scored a (rushing) touchdown in his first game (against my alma mater) is no more than an act of laziness. It’s the easy way out: there are a lot of Christians in America, and Tebow is open and, as far as anyone knows, sincere about his faith, so that must explain whatever. This matter of sincerity is the real key: it represents a welcome reprieve from the refrains of “Praise Jesus!” mouthed by athletes on game day, sometimes mere hours before they’re arrested in a strip club with a kilo of something wholesome American-Christian kids don’t keep kilos of.
This claim is absolutely wrong. It is based on the assumption that Tebow is the only prominent Christian athlete who sincerely lives his faith, an assumption that comes apart in the face of even basic analysis. One of Tebow’s predecessors at the quarterback position in Gainesville, for example, was Danny Wuerffel, who, like Tebow, won a Heisman Trophy; who, like Tebow, is actively engaged in various Protestant Christian ministries; and who, like Tebow, seems absolutely genuine, kind, and open about his faith. Similarly, Drew Brees, whose work for the renewal of New Orleans has made him a legend in that city, talks about his own Christian faith in the book he published after his Super Bowl MVP performance following the 2009 season. These are not the only prominent, sincerely religious figures in the NFL—former Seahawks, Bengals, and Cowboys quarterback Jon Kitna operates a ministry; the late Hall of Fame defensive lineman Reggie White of Philadelphia and Green Bay fame was an ordained minister; Giants tight end Mark Bavaro was often interviewed about his faith by Christian publications; etc, etc. The point is it’s not hard to find examples of football players who sincerely practice Christianity.
“I support Tebow,” an older fellow alumnus of The University of Southern Mississippi told me recently, “because it’s only right that a good Christian have this kind of success in the NFL.”
I countered by offering the aforementioned list of names. “There are dozens of practicing Christians who have had success in the NFL,” I said. “Hundreds.”
A moment’s contemplation, followed by his admission: “I did forget about Drew Brees.”
Which is exactly the issue: Tebow becomes an icon not because he is somehow more Christian than other Christians, but rather because something happens during John Everyfan’s sports consumption process that results in him simply forgetting that the others—who are usually more accomplished, their accomplishments having come on bigger stages—exist. The rookie quarterback of the Houston Texans, making their first-ever playoff appearance, helped lead his team to a playoff victory on the same weekend that Tebow led Denver to one. As a NFL player, then, Tim Tebow is no more accomplished than T.J. Yates; and yet Yates is a kind of anonymous figure on a defense- and run-oriented team while Tebow is a superstar despite also being part of a team that is defense- and run-oriented.
And the reason for Mr Yates’ near-complete anonymity outside the immediate Houston Texans fan base? There is nothing to notice about his game. His style is that of every other current player at his position. He may not have the rifle arm of Aaron Rodgers or the commanding presence of Tom Brady or the accuracy that Drew Brees raises to the level of performance art, but his game is otherwise not dissimilar from every quarterback of his and many previous generations. He might write shitty James Patterson prose while Brees has the deft touch of Walker Percy, but in the end both of them put words on pages and construct sentences and create fiction. Enter Tebow, though, and see not prose but like a Cecil B. DeMille film, huge and clunky and cheesy as hell, but when they show The Ten Commandments on TV you’re going to watch it. Tebow is entertainment media, just like Yates and Brees, but he’s delivering the goods via some entirely different method from a completely different era. Tim Tebow plays quarterback, but he plays 1940 quarterback, not 2012 (or 2000, or 1990, or 1980, or even 1970 or 1960) quarterback. Tebow—his quarterbacking, along with his golly-gee sincerity, his middle class Protestantism, and his comic book physique—is a true throwback. Everything about him hearkens to the safe pre-Sixties America mythologized by entire swarths of the American population. He is an agent of nostalgia, the archangel of good ol’ days simplicity.
This is of course primarily a sports phenomenon; it’s doubtful Denver liberals refused to cheer when Tebow’s eighty yard pass against the Steelers gave the Broncos their playoff win. That said, Tebow is a conservative, reactionary symbol—reactionary in the strict sense of the term, an appeal to the glorified things of a previous time in response to society’s rapid change. Where Brees and the Saints write new entries in venerable record books, stretching the boundaries of the acceptable, throwing forty times per game, scoring forty-five points per contest, rolling up six hundred yards of total offense, Tebow and the Broncos run archaic offenses and throw fifteen or twenty times in a game. Tebow is a phenomenon not simply because he is Christian, and not because he is a bad player who still somehow wills his team to success, but rather because he defies the contemporary vision of what good football is, running when he should pass, completing forty percent of his throws in an age when the old elite threshold of sixty is passe` (Drew Brees seems more likely to finish a season having completed eighty percent than forty), slowing down an increasingly frenetic pace and using the passing game as the occasional big-play item it once was, rather than the core instrument it now is. In an age of strict rules about collisions, Tebow is a brute force; in an age of complexity, Tebow is simple, maybe to a fault.
It would be a gross overstatement and extreme generalization to say that political conservatives have a uniformly favorable view of Tebow while political liberals have some aversion to him; again, no loyal Bronco is going to be disappointed if 2011-2012 is the beginning of an extended success run just because they favor higher marginal income tax rates, or hold what the right wing calls a secular (or Kenyan anti-colonial, as the case may be) worldview. That said, I would be unsurprised if there’s a Tebow approval rating poll among the general public that didn’t indicate conservatives rate him more highly than liberals. Part of the appeal of contemporary libertarian-shaded paleoconservatism is that it offers simpler solutions to complex problems, and the Tebow vision of the NFL is absolutely less complex than the convoluted approach of Breesian Paytonism; another part is that because Tebow seems so throwback old-timey, he’s like an actual living Normal Rockwell thing, and this might appeal to American glory days thinking.
Finally, those who answer our hypothetical poll question may convince themselves that they feel a certain way about Tebow for any of a number of reasons (one side may say it’s because “the media” treats him unfairly purely because of his faith; the other side may say it’s because “the media” glorifies him purely because of his faith; neither side is right) but the real dividing line is that, until now, no one has offered any sort of legitimate explanation for why he has had the success he’s had (hence the outstanding Jesus in the Broncos locker room skit on Saturday Night Live—postrevolutionary football offers no answers for what’s going on here, so it has to be religion), and so some cling to intangibles, whatever they may be, while others find themselves simply enraged by the maddening inexplicability of it all. It’s not Tebow! they say, and, in frustration, they’ll joke about how Tebow is apparently responsible for Von Miller and Elvis Dumervil sacks, or Matt Prater field goals, etc.
There’s no need for the confusion now. The evidence is in: Tim Tebow is a pretty good NFL quarterback after all. It’s just that he’s a pretty good NFL quarterback from seventy years ago, and so it’s hard for us to identify what makes him good, sort of like how it would take an expert to identify the characteristics of like some reptile species found alive, previously thought extinct, that make it not just some iguana (in this case: accuracy becomes secondary to per-attempt yardage and power rushes of the read option Wildcattish variety replace West Coast Offense short passes).
The NFL has experienced a revolution, with the likes of Brees, Brady, and Rodgers its radical leaders. But rare’s the revolution that goes uncountered; in this case, the leader of the counter-revolution is named Tebow.
Choose sides. I, New Orleanian, Saints fan by birth, am a radical. I stand with Brees.
Long live the revolution.
