Conversely, there are times when despite what appear to be insurmountable odds you feel as if things will work out fine. You don't know why this is the case; you can't prove it statistically or with any known formula. Instead, you have an overwhelming sense of calm in the face of adversity. This, my friends, is the realm of Tim Tebow.
Every week the Broncos look over-matched, Tebow shows very little in the way of tangible football skills, and then, inexplicably, they rise from the ashes and win. All of this with a starting quarterback who is too genuine to be real--or so his disbelievers seem to think. He has never shown himself to be anything but modest, but many people seem to have a clear sense that this can't be all to the story. Chuck Klosterman wrote a great piece in which he explained why it would be easier to accept Tebow if he were the kind of guy who went out and partied and got himself arrested. Then he would be gritty or tough. Instead, we have this overtly devout, gosh-darn, team-promoting quarterback who nobody seems to know how to evaluate.
Tebow's mechanics are bad. He doesn't fit the mold for an NFL quarterback. He is elusive but not fast, has a mediocre arm, has good but not extraordinary understanding of the game, and doesn't really pass the "eye test" (the test that suggests you can look at a quarterback and simply see whether he looks for real or not). All of this is true.
The problem is that Tebow also keeps succeeding. He's 7-1 in eight starts this year. His winning percentage is second only to Aaron Rodgers. Moreover, he's doing it on a team that is, by all accounts, mediocre. The Broncos traded away their best receiving threat (Brandon Lloyd) at the same time that Tebow took over this year.
All of this is to say that this is startling and strange--hence the ubiquitous Tebow publicity. It's also gotten people wondering whether there is some divine intervention going on here. I'm about as skeptical as anybody when it comes to this, because--let's face it--very few people want to think about God making a difference in a football game and not doing a thing about rampant starvation and disease elsewhere in the world. Nobody really wants a God who influences football games but doesn't stop car crashes. But here's the thing: God's interaction one place does not preclude the other. And for the first time ever I've found myself wondering, "What if God did fog up Marion Barber's head and get him to run out of bounds?" "What if God did give a little kick in the butt to Matt Prater on that 59-yard field goal to send it to overtime?" "What if..."
The answer, I think, is probably not, and not just because I think God has better things to do than impact football games. I think this is a case of marked intangibles that the stat-driven football world does not understand. This is a case of a culture change in the Denver locker room. Whatever Tebow has, it's contagious. It could be God, yes, but it could also be determination borne out of the premise that this is just a football game; it doesn't matter that much; and yet, if the team works together there's no reason they can't win. And they just keep doing it.
Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book, Outliers, about the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. In Roseto there were virtually no cases of heart disease prior to the age of 55 during the mid-twentieth century. This was startling because heart disease was rampant in America during this time frame before the advent of cholesterol-lowering medication. More astonishing was that, as an investigation was launched of the town and its inhabitants, it was discovered that there was no tangible reason for this to be the case. The people of Roseto ate comparably to other people in America, they got comparable exercise and had no innate biological advantages. Finally, the researchers realized the only conceivable difference, and it was far more holistic than they could have imagined. The difference was stress. The people simply were not worried about life; they lived a casual, neighborly lifestyle. They were an outlier, not by any tangible definition that science could yet explain, but because of what was considered at that time an "intangible."
Now look at the Broncos and tell me that's not the same case. They are as low stress as you can get. They have a quarterback in Tim Tebow who doesn't feel measured by the world's standards, and amazingly enough, he's gotten everybody around him to buy into the same view. He might be one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, but don't expect it to show up on the stat sheets. He's a lesson in intangibles. He might very well be the Roseto of the NFL. And I, for one, am loving every second of it.
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