Tebow provides us all with day we’ll never forget
DENVER — TEBOW! TEBOW! TEBOW! You’re going to have to speak up. It’s pretty loud with all the chanting.
Everyone who saw this coming raise your hands. Liars. TEBOW! TEBOW! TEBOW!
Once more, his name is a code word for the unexpected and inexplicable. This is why there are lottery winners. Someone hits the jackpot, and everyone else wonders how it happened.
We don’t know what’s ahead for the Denver Broncos’ Tim Tebow — greatness, fleeting glory or whatever. But he’ll always have Sunday. He’ll always have the second quarter, when he torched the NFL’S best defense for 185 yards on five completions, his passes transforming from ugly ducklings to weapons of Pittsburgh Steelers’ destruction.
He’ll always have the first and only play of overtime, when he brought the house down with a pass over the middle that Demaryius Thomas turned into an 80yard game-winning, odds-defying, logicbusting touchdown. A football equivalent of a walk-off homer on the first pitch.
He’ll always have the stunned faces from viewers around the nation, not believing what they were seeing. Especially in Pittsburgh.
“This,” he said afterward, “is definitely a special memory.”
But he added the really meaningful moment was before the game, talking with a young girl who had endured 73 surgeries.
A flat-out fairy tale, full moon rising over the stadium and all. TEBOW! TEBOW! TEBOW! Actually, this was a tale of two quarterbacks:
It was the best of overtimes, it was the worst of overtimes.
It was the test of young confidence, it was the test of veteran grit.
It was a night of belief, it was a night of incredulity.
It was Tebow, living the day of his professional life. So far.
It was Ben Roethlisberger, limping on a bad ankle through four quarters, refusing to buckle, even though it was painful to watch him move.
But we knew Roethlisberger had toughness.
Did we really know Tebow was capable of this, in the caldron of a playoff game, aggressively seeking the big plays that can finish an opponent?
Didn’t he reach a new level Sunday night?
“You never quiet the questions. It’s just part of the gig,” coach John Fox said.
“He showed he can be a quarterback in the NFL,” running back Willis Mcgahee said. “They said he couldn’t throw. They said we wouldn’t be able to move the ball on them, and we did that. Wonder what they’re going to say next week?”
Tebow completed 10 passes — for 316 yards. Thomas had four catches — for 204 yards.
One more mystical number: Denver has played four overtime games since Tebow took over. The Broncos are 4-0.
The pregame presumption was that Tebow would be the bug, and the Steelers defense would be the speeding car win- dow. John Elway would have the offseason to question the viability of the future of his quarterback. Now he must ponder how vast Tebow’s horizons are.
“I don’t know if I felt extra pressure from it,” Tebow said of his first postseason start. “I knew it was a big game.
“I just tried to go out there and play hard, play fast and be aggressive and trust my teammates. . . . They make me look a lot better than I really am.”
The rite of passage of his career might end up being Sunday’s second quarter, with completions of 51 yards, 30, 58 and 40. How’d he wake up this morning thinking he was Drew Brees?
The Broncos scored 20 points in the quarter. Denver scored 13 points in the second quarter in Tebow’s 11 starts during the regular season.
Then there was the winning overtime play. Until then, Denver had run on 23 of 24 first downs. The stunned Steelers could only go home. Nobody had ever been Tebow-ed quite like that. Roethlisberger’s reaction? “Shock.”
So Tebow-mania is alive and well and capable of things most never imagined.
But now it has to go to New England.