Confounding the Wise

The more we listen to commentators the more we hear "Tebow magic"  and "divine intervention" when describing his success and style of play.  This is what we are going to refer to as "confounding the wise."

Yesterday, Michael Irvin even quoted 1 Corinthians 1:27 when trying to describe if Tebow will ever be able to silence his critics and if the critics will ever "believe."  (Video here.)

I read in the Bible, "He will use the foolish things to confound the wise...This is 'foolishness' we are watching, we are being 'confounded'...he is confounding us so called 'wise men.'"  

Then on ESPN's First Take yesterday, Doug Stewart claimed that Tebow is benefiting from the help of  "a higher power."  (At the 4:40 mark)




Even as Christians we don't really buy the "higher power" or "divine intervention" line. So how is Tebow winning? "Tebow's success is due to production and protection, not magic."

Kerry J. Byrne, of Cold Hard Football Facts, broke down the numbers and has what he calls a "Real QB Rating" and not just a "passer rating" to evaluate the success of a QB.

There's no doubt that Tebow's passing accuracy has been spotty at times. At the end of the day, though, he has consistently outplayed the other team's quarterbacks. The problem is that most analysts are limited in their ability to analyze and compare quarterbacks with anything more concrete than the old eye test. Or they look at stats that simply do not matter at the end of the day, such as passing yards, and can't figure out how Tebow is winning games.

Smarter analysts might know to look at critical measures of passing success, such as yards per attempt or passer rating -- indicators that traditionally have a very high correlation to victory. But even those indicators fail to tell the whole story of Tim Tebow.

Enter Cold, Hard Football Facts.com's Real Quarterback Rating, which we introduced over the summer and which has quickly proven itself the most important indicator in football outside of final score.

[...]

Tebow's Quietly Historic Production

There are two underlying reasons why Tebow is so effective, two reasons that explain his impressive Real Quarterback Rating week after week.

1. He gets the ball in the end zone more often than any QB in football today
2. He protects the football better than any QB in football today

The Broncos clearly have not scored a lot of points with Tebow at quarterback. In fact, Denver has averaged just 19.3 points per game in Tebow's six starts and has scored 18 points or fewer in five of those games. And clearly, the defense has improved dramatically in recent weeks, either purely as coincidence or as a by-product of the fact that Tebow has helped the team improve in all areas by protecting the football.

But Tebow himself has been deadly with the ball in his hands. He produces touchdowns at an amazing clip, better than any quarterback in football in his brief career.

Click here for the full explanation, but also how other QBs measure up to Tebow's overall production as a QB and not just as a passer.