The tired old story of Tebow's throwing motion

 

Tim Tebow's new throwing motion has been all the rage this week. In fact, he unveiled this "new" throwing motion Wednesday before a breathless audience of NFL executives, football fans, basement-dwelling bloggers and pigskin "pundits." 

 

Which is kind of funny ... considering his "new" throwing motion was the big story in Florida at this very same time last year. In fact, here's one video from Florida's spring practice last April:

 

show video here

 

And here's a story on the topic here, from the Orlando Sentinel, almost exactly one year ago. Oh, yeah, ESPN covered the story last year, while bloggers discussed it in excruciating detail.

 

Here's what happened: the University of Florida hired a new quarterback coach at the end of the 2008 season. His name is Scott Loeffler. He's a former Michigan quarterback and his claim to fame is that he coached Tom Brady.

 

Loeffler was hired away from his alma mater by Florida at the end of the 2008 season to ... you guessed it: help Tebow work on his throwing motion before his senior season.  

 

Personally, we don't get the fuss. It's classic meaningless, pre-draft b.s.

 

Tebow was the top-rated passer in major college football last year. He's the top-rated passer in SEC history. The guy can throw the friggin' football. Sure, he had great talent around him at Florida. But so have a lot of other SEC quarterbacks through the years. But Tebow was more effective passing the ball than all of them. Oh, and in his spare time, he ran for more touchdowns than any guy in SEC hstory, too. The guy can play. What more evidence do you need?

 

Of course, he very well could fail at QB in the NFL. We can't predict the future.

 

But neither can NFL executives, despite the fuss and muss over the dreaded "throwing motion." 

 

NFL talent evaluators, you might remember, have a very spotty track record when it comes to identifying guys who can play quarterback in the NFL, even those guys with perfect mechanics.

 

Let's just look at SEC quarterbacks alone in recent years. The Colts nailed it in 1998 when they made SEC stud Peyton Manning the No. 1 pick in the 1998 draft. He had a great throwing motion. He's become one of the great quarterbacks in the game.

 

But the Browns blew it the following year when they drafted another prototypical pocket passer out of the SEC, Kentucky's Tim Couch, with the No. 1 overall pick.

 

Couch, you might remember, had such a nice throwing motion that football executives gushed over him ... despite the fact he was a watered-down version of a regular SEC stud like Tebow.

 

You know what happened: despite appearing to have all the mechanical tools, Couch was a bust in the NFL.

 

It turns out, then, that those mechanics that are in vogue in any given era do not tell us who can play and who can't.

 

But, hey, that's just us. We don't fuss over things like throwing motions. We fuss over production. And Tebow was probably the most productive individual player in the history of college football. Sounds like a guy who deserves a shot in our book. In fact, we'd take him very, very high in the draft.

 

If he fails, he fails. If he succeeds, he succeeds. But success or failure will have little to do with throwing motion.

By Kerry Byrne