Even tough guys skip out of bounds

Superman wears Tim Tebow pajamas? Yeah, right. Superman wouldn’t have run out of bounds. Superman would have taken on those four Western Kentucky tacklers and it wouldn’t have been a contest. Tim Tebow? He ran out of bounds, settling for an 18-yard gain on his first carry of the game when he could have lowered his shoulder and sent at least a couple of them to the hospital.

Wimp!

Florida’s quarterback with the middle linebacker mentality has gone soft on us and his coach, a macho kind of guy who preaches toughness 24/7, couldn’t be happier.

“That’s something we’ve taught him,” said Florida coach Urban Meyer after Tebow threw for three touchdowns and ran for one in the third-ranked Gators’ 49-3 lightning shortened victory over Western Kentucky in the first game of the season at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium before an announced crowd of 90,086. “That’s something that he wants to do. It’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint. He’s got a bunch more games he’s got to play.”

This is a far cry from last year. The Tim Tebow of last year ran over people. He ran through them. He never met a linebacker that he wouldn’t try to de-cleat. For all practical purposes, he was a single wing tailback in quarterback disguise. Get in his way, he made you pay.

That Tim Tebow was nowhere to be found Saturday. In his first start as the Florida quarterback, Tebow showed real quarterback skills. He threw the ball well (13-17, 300 yards, three touchdowns). There was not even one designed quarterback run in the offense Saturday but Tebow picked his spots carefully and ran eight times for 38 yards and a touchdown.

The new Tim Tebow showed that he can be a thinking man’s quarterback who keeps his emotions curbed and can play under control. He showed he could manage a game and spread the ball around to his talented playmakers. Instead of cracking the sternums of linebackers, he danced out of bounds.

He could have done those things last year, too, but last year the Gators had Chris Leak and that meant a different role for Tebow. Leak is the quarterback that ducked, dodged and slid away from potential tacklers last year. Tebow was the quarterback that took tacklers on and gave the team a lift. Last year, he was a role player. This year, he is THE man.

“Last year I was just hoping to get in and have a chance to make a play,” said Tebow. “This year, I was more prepared, more ready to go. It was definitely different.”

Meyer says that Tebow could have functioned as the starting quarterback last year as a true freshman but it wasn’t necessary with a fourth-year senior starter.

“I thought he probably could have done a bit more last year but Chris Leak was our quarterback,” said Meyer. “Chris did a helluva job and won a national championship. We utilized Tim’s talents but that was never because he couldn’t function as a quarterback but it was because we didn’t need him in that situation.”

Last year the situations Tebow played in were those that called for a bruiser and he more often than not delivered. He’s still capable of being the bruiser but Meyer wants him to be more of a finesse guy.

Saturday, he discovered that sometimes there is a price to be paid for finesse. Late in the third quarter when there was a chance for Tebow to take on a safety, he scooted out of bounds. No sooner was he out of bounds when he was shoved into the waiting double forearm of a Western Kentucky offensive lineman.

Usually the de-cleater, Tebow was the de-cleated.

“He got a piece of me, that’s for sure” said Tebow. “I think that was the hardest hit of the game.”

Because his role was limited and defined last year, there were plenty of questions about Tebow coming into the season. Could he remember that the job of running over safeties and poor little cornerbacks belongs to Kestahn Moore? Could he somehow curb his enthusiasm to run and remember it’s his job to distribute the ball to his playmakers? Could he throw accurately when the element of surprise wasn’t on his side?

The first of those three questions was answered on Tebow’s first carry of the game in the first quarter. The Hilltoppers rushed three, dropped eight and there was nobody to throw to, so Tebow took off up the middle, showed a lot of shake and a little bit of bake before he cut it to the outside. At the 30 four Western Kentucky defenders closed in.

This was Tebow time. Everybody in the stadium knew what was coming next. One on four? No contest. Te-bow! Te-bow!

And just like that he wimped out. Three little scoot steps and he was out of bounds. No forearm to the jaw. No shoulder to the solar plexus. No gurney to carry off three of the four defenders. He simply got out of bounds, flipped the ball to the official and went back to the Florida huddle, ready to call the next play.

Asked if he thought about taking on linebackers in the game, Tebow admitted, “Sometimes.” Asked if he thought about doing a number on those four defenders on his first run, Tebow grinned and answered, “Probably.”

In the second quarter he had another chance to knock a defender into next week but instead of lowering the boom, he tried his best “Dancing with the Stars” move and got clotheslined around the ankles. He popped up, ran back to the huddle and after a delay of game penalty, threw a 10-yard pass to Louis Murphy. So much for letting his emotions get out of control.

The question could he throw was answered on his first pass attempt — A little play fake into the line, a look to his right and then a Leak-like spiral that Bubba Caldwell caught 48 yards down the field. Instead of the wounded ducks that some expected, there were nice tight spirals, most of them chest high and very catchable. It wasn’t until the second quarter when he threw his first incomplete pass.

On the deep ball, he showed a feathery touch. His touchdown passes of 59 and 42 yards to Riley Cooper were perfectly thrown with enough air that all Cooper had to do was run under the ball and make the catch.

“He throws a great deep ball … short routes, long routes … just a great quarterback in general,” said Cooper, whose four catches produced 122 yards. Cooper now has eight career catches and five touchdowns, all on passes thrown by Tebow.

Not everything went perfect. There was a series in the second quarter when Tebow looked like a first-time starter. After a 26-yard pass to Percy Harvin put the ball on the Western Kentucky 49, Tebow had three straight bad plays. He overthrew a wide open Kestahn Moore on the sideline, pitched behind Moore on an option play that resulted in a five-yard loss, and then didn’t get a play off in time, resulting in a five-yard delay of game penalty.

Other than that glitch, it was a rather nice debut. Tebow became the third Florida quarterback to throw for 300 yards in his first start, the first since Shane Matthews (332 yards) did it opening day back in 1990 against Oklahoma State. John Reaves (342 yards against Houston, 1969) was the other Gator to throw for 300 or more yards in his first start.

Like Reaves and Matthews, Tebow got a win in his first career start. He thought he played okay, but knows there is plenty to work on this week.

“I did some things well and other things not so well,” said Tebow. “You have to manage and can’t have as many penalties and that always goes back to me as the quarterback. You have to manage that better. There’s a lot of work to do. We have to keep getting better and get ready for Troy next week.”

Troy will be an improvement over the Western Kentucky team the Gators faced this week. They will be faster and they will be tougher. Tebow will be tempted to lower a shoulder or deliver a forearm somewhere along the way but as long as he fights the temptation and stays wimpy, he will give the Gators their best chance to win.

As Tebow will discover this season, sometimes being a wimp is a rather manly thing to do.

Franz Beard
Back in January of 1969, the late, great Jack Hairston, then the sports editor of the Jacksonville Journal, called me on the phone one night and asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes. The entire interview took 30 seconds. It's my experience that whenever the interview lasts 30 seconds or less, I get the job. In the 48 years that I've been writing and getting paid for it, I've covered Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA basketball championships, BCS championship games, heavyweight title fights and what seems like thousands of college football, baseball and basketball games. I'm a columnist and special assignments editor for Gator Country once again, writing about the only team that ever mattered to me, the Florida Gators.