Finally an article from a Denver paper with some common sense... so, obviously I thought it fit well here.
http://www.denverpost.com/broncos/ci_15106536
Krieger: The next Elway? Oh, c'mon now
By Dave Krieger
The Denver Post
Posted: 05/18/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
John Elway (Denver Post file photo)
Like Jay Cutler, Jake Plummer and Brian Griese before him, Tim Tebow got the John Elway question on his first day.
"I'm not really worrying about it," he said, and you can only hope that's true. At least nobody asked what kind of tree he would be.
Seriously, can we just stop?
I thought we'd kicked our Elway comparison fetish with Kyle "Pro Bowl" Orton. Even in a fragmented media world in which the silliest claims get the most attention, I didn't hear anyone compare Orton to Elway.
Before that, we always found some slender straw to grasp. Griese actually succeeded Elway — we're pretending that weird Bubby Brister thing never happened, OK? — so he got the questions full force until Mike Shana- han took the heat off by comparing him to Joe Montana instead.
Plummer was a scrambler, a risk-taker, an improviser. That was the only common ground with Elway we required.
Cutler had the big arm, so we went back to the well again.
The main thing Tebow has in common with Elway at this point is celebrity, which, as Brady Quinn can tell you, doesn't have that much to do with whether you get to play in the NFL.
In fact, Quinn had the best answer of the day to an Elway question. Unlike Tebow, he wasn't asked about being compared to Elway because, amazingly, he hasn't been, although I'm guessing we'll correct that by training camp.
No, Quinn was asked if there was a brighter spotlight on the quarterback competition in Denver because of Elway's legacy.
"I don't know, don't discredit Bernie (Kosar) now," the Cleveland refugee said with a laugh. "Come on."
When Elway first arrived on the scene 27 years ago, the fascination was based principally on three things. First, he was controversial nationally because he had forced Baltimore to trade him. Tebow may be controversial politically, but the football world doesn't really care.
Second, Elway had a howitzer where you and I and Tebow have a shoulder. Long before he became an accomplished quarterback, Elway was a huge attraction because he might uncork a 70-yard rocket at any time. Many people had never seen an arm like that. I know I hadn't. He was part football player, part Ripley's Believe It Or Not exhibit.
There was little evidence in college, and none Monday at Dove Valley, that Tebow has that sort of rocket launcher.Third, Elway was the No. 1 pick in the draft, almost unanimously considered the best player available in 1983. The Broncos had never before acquired such a prized commodity.Tebow was the 25th pick in the draft, and a fair number of teams had him ranked lower than that. The closer comparison in Broncos history on that basis is Tommy Maddox, the 25th pick in 1992 as Dan Reeves prepared prematurely for Elway's departure. Reeves' pick was called a reach in some quarters, as was Josh Mc- Daniels' pick of Tebow this year.
But no one asked Tebow how he was going to deal with the Tommy Maddox comparisons.
Covering the Broncos back in the 1980s, I used to think that if major- league baseball ever came to Colorado, we wouldn't spend nearly so much time documenting our football team's offseason study halls.
Like so many things I believed in the '80s, this turned out to be completely wrong. Maybe Def Leppard wasn't the greatest band of all time, either. I just don't know anymore.
There was roughly one media wretch for every 7-on-7 repetition Monday at the Broncos' first full team workout of 2010.
Well, unless you count Tebow's fake repetitions, in which case there were two reps for every wretch, but one of them was pantomimed. For most of the morning, whenever Orton, Quinn or Tom Brandstater took a snap in the 7-on-7 drill, Tebow, standing well behind the line of scrimmage, pretended to take the same snap and drop, sort of like an on-deck hitter timing his practice swing to the pitch.
"We're changing some stuff with our offense," McDaniels said later. So maybe Tebow was just practicing, and maybe they have some really innovative new formations planned for 2010.
Either way, Tebow is no Elway. And we will do him and everybody else a favor if we kick the habit of pretending he is. More than a decade after Elway retired, this tick of ours is like nicotine. We might need a patch.
On the first day of his first full team workout, Tebow checked down rather than throw deep. He looked like a rookie trying to learn an NFL playbook for the first time, with a steep learning curve in front of him.
Which, coincidentally, is exactly what he is.