Tebow-ing versus Kapernick-ing

Tim Tebow. A young christian kid from Jacksonville. Guilty of doing little more then doing well in school and winning football games. For years, his personality and style of play made him a burning topic across sports outlets everywhere.

I'll admit it, I was a huge fan of Tebowmania. My wife is a huge Broncos fan and I hopped on the band wagon during the Plummer years, but I've always been irked as to why NFL pundits give so much derision to Tebow. Is it because he doesn’t exactly fit the mold of the ideal NFL quarterback? He’s not terribly accurate, he can’t throw the long ball and he doesn't read the field all that well. He’s never has, and probably never will go to a Pro Bowl. Nor has he, and probably never will, gone through a whole season as a starter.

His pinnacle of NFL success came a couple of years ago when he and the Denver Broncos had a magical year in which they won countless games by the skin of their teeth, almost all led by Tebow.

That brings us to this current season, when another quarterback has become the darling of the sports broadcast world, just this morning I happened upon the Mike and Mike show in which they went through their top 5 QB's under the age of 26. Making the list of the top 5 over successful QB's Newton and Dalton was a guy I'm personally very much on the fence about: Colin Kaepernick. Despite putting up less then stellar numbers this year, the Niners are winning at a good click and the endorsements, along with sports commentators adoration, are flowing freely.

It got me thinking about the hypocrisy of stating that all that matters is winning one moment, and then destroying a man for seemingly doing nothing but win the next. Let's compare some not so insignificant stats of Kaepernick, now 9 starts into his sophomore season, and Tebow, 9 games into his second season of 2011, or a couple losses after Denver's miracle run of 7 straight wins. Colin is 6-3, Tim was 7-2. Colin has 9 Passing TD's, along with his 3 Rushing TD's, got 12 total, to go with his 6 picks and 5 Fumble turnovers. Tim had 10 passing TD's plus 4 rushing for a total of 14 TD's to contrast his only 2 interceptions and 4 fumbles lost. And total passing plus rushing yards? Colin beats out Tim by a whopping 6 yards (1,985 to 1,979).

The biggest contrast is that Tebow threw for a paltry 49.3% completion rate at 9 games in, versus Kaepernick's more palatable 56.4%, but even then Colin is averaging less the 1 yard better in yards per attempt. (7.61 yards/attempt versus 6.73 yards/attempt). Many people would also quickly point to the post season, where Colin's 2-1 record would seemingly dwarf Tim's 1-1 lifetime record.

You could also just as easily point to their respective teams scenarios at the time of their succession. With Tebow on the bench, the Broncos were hurting at 5-16 (.238 winning percentage), where as the 49ers were sitting pretty at 21-5-1 (.796 percent) when Kaepernick was sitting idly by since 2011. I could go back and fourth for a while.

If you want to draw your own conclusions about why one is so obviously preferred over the other, then feel free to stop reading here, but if you want to ask me, the answer is simple. Tebow just doesn't give commentators anything to feed off of.

Colin is more apt to have that big pass play, is flashier with his Kaepernicking then Tim's humble Tebowing was ever meant to be, despite many attempts to turn it into something that it wasn't. Colin's success is easier to display on a highlight real with 2 or 3 big plays in a game, versus Tebows constant running and clock draining to keep a game low scoring and then pull off one big play at the end. It was too easy to point to a low completion percentage and say "He can't do it" then it was to try and explain week after week how he, in fact, did it. In a word, the sports world got lazy with Tebow, and dismissed him the instant that reality reflected their prejudice.

I'm not under any naive expectation that anything will change with this simple realization, Colin will be given years to either develop into the great quarterback that he could become or fade from the spotlight like so many others. While Tebow is sitting at home considering his options for the future outside the NFL. This post is little more then one last bitter sigh of how the wants of the sports entertainment industry has superseded the desire to learn more about the elements of the game that remain a mystery to many of us, and I feel the NFL is just a little more tarnished as a result.