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New Jersey – Tim Tebow is no longer a New York Jets player.
He was released today.
The Jets tried to trade him, to no avail.
There is no question he has improved as a quarterback since leaving the University of Florida.
He has worked his tail off, with various coaches, and former players, to improve his throwing motion, footwork and so forth.
Vinny Testaverde has been working with him recently, according to ESPN’s Rich Cimini.
“He tweaked Tebow’s footwork, which he believes has improved throwing mechanics,” wrote Cimini.
You have to respect how hard Tebow has worked at improving his craft. However, there are two issues at work here that continue to hold him back.
First off, there is a muscle memory problem.
When you have been doing something one way most of your life – like throwing a football, it’s hard to change that.
Now you can make improvements in practice, and think you are making progress, and that is all find and dandy.
However, remember, in practice, or while working with a quarterback tutor, there is no tackling, no players trying to take your head off.
Often, you are throwing against air with no defenders.
But when you play real football again, and everything is sped up, your mind is racing and you often revert back to your old ways.
That is a problem for Tebow.
Also, even if Tebow does improve his throwing and footwork at tad through his tireless work, that doesn’t correct another issue – he often doesn’t process what he is seeing from the defense fast enough.
I can’t tell you how many times Tony Sparano yelled at him last summer in camp – “Get rid of the football!”
He was too slow and methodical processing, and often took too long to pull the trigger, and this drove Sparano crazy.
Reading defenses is very, very hard. Tebow isn’t great at it, and quite honestly, Mark Sanchez and Geno Smith don’t get the highest mark in this area either.
“He has average field vision and coverage recognition,” Nolan Nawrocki wrote about Smith.
“Geno Smith holds the ball way too long,’ said an unnamed scout.
The Jets clearly think they can fix this issue with Smith.
But this story isn’t about Smith.
Let’s get back to Tebow.
When you combine Tebow’s long-winding motion, with his indecisive, that is a recipe for disaster. These two issues help defenders jump routes.
The Jets gave Tebow a lot of reps last summer, in practice, and preseason games, to gauge how he would do if he had takeover for Mark Sanchez, running the team’s regular offense, not the Wildcat.
They didn’t like what they say, and that is why they never gave him a chance during the regular season, under center. They made up their minds in the summer, and that was it.
We can talk about circus this, and circus that, and perhaps there was a sideshow around with Tebow.
But the bottom line is – if he doesn’t speed up his ability to process what he’s seeing from opposing defenses, and get rid of the ball faster, he might need to change positions.
In college, he could get away with slow decision-making a lot more because on the collegiate level because he had a great college offensive line. Also there are a lot of really bad college secondaries, so player are often wide open.
The throwing windows are much smaller in the NFL, and that has created problems for Tebow
April 29, 2013
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