"WE'LL NEVER LET TEBOW BEAT US PASSING THE BALL" - FABLED PITTSBURGH STEELER DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR, DICK LEBEAU, BEFORE THE DENVER BRONCO/PITTSBURGH STEELER PLAYOFF GAME
Never say never, Chief. You may have to eat your words.
Strangely enough, this article from the Wall Street Journal (the Wall Street Journal has a sports section?) does as good a job as any of focusing on the central issue to explain the success of Tim Tebow. It focuses more on the things that Tebow CAN do and less on the things he presumably CANNOT do.
FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204124204577151071688443732.html
Clearly he poses a dilemma for defenses around the league.
The Steelers were the #1 defense coming in. All of a sudden they were a band of walking wounded who couldn't stop the most abysmal passer in NFL history afterward.
Dick Lebeau didn't go from one of the most highly regarded defensive coaches in the league to a dunce-cap overnight. Only Romeo Crennel and the Lions have short-circuited the Tebow train and it seems like he has adjusted to each challenge. Who would have thought that a guy with his make-up would be able to respond to adversity? ;)
The Broncos KNOW what Tebow CAN do (see his teammates quotes below). Others are coming around slowly but surely. Then again, that's the problem with experts. They can't account for something that doesn't fit into their preconceived "expert" notions.
Maybe it's time to turn the tables on the experts, and put them under the same microscope.
EXPERT BIAS:
http://thoughtrefuse.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/study-supports-expert-bias/
One of the more common logical mistakes we make is to turn to the expert bias, also known as the logical fallacy arguing from authority. The logical error is committed by espousing expert credentials for sound logic, in order to make a logical argument. A logical argument is founded on logic alone. No amount of degrees or experience can supplant concrete logic.
Recently, a study was done on how expert advice affects the decision making part of the human brain, and lends physiological evidence that we are predisposed to experts over logic. This has long been the contention of logical proponents, the most well known being Nicholas Nassim Taleb, who detailed in his New York Times best selling book, The Black Swan, just how detrimental and pervasive the expert bias can be.
The real problem is, with painful acuteness, in dividing the non-expert “experts” from the expert “experts”. Or, put in another way, how do we know the advice your getting is good advice? That often depends on the particular area of advice sought. The advice of a plumber is quite different then that from a market analyst, in terms of accuracy.
What delineates good advice from bad advice, as the study alludes to, is the level of uncertainty within the realm of the expert. The higher level of randomness found within a field respectively increases the chance any advice given from an expert in said field will be wrong. This all boils down to the number of variables the expert must account for. Just compare what a plumber has to account for and what a market analyst has to. Quite often we feel adequately capable of tackling that leaking faucet in the kitchen, but when trying to plan our retirement investments feel vastly inferior to it’s daunting complexity.
With justification, we approach the expert economist for investment advice without hesitation. We simply don’t know much about that sort of thing. But how much does the expert really know? Considerably more then you do, but the massive degree of randomness in financial markets cannot mean that expert economist can know everything there is to know. His advice has to be approached with a level of skepticism.
The expert bias problem becomes exceedingly dangerous when we remove that layer of skepticism and take the advice as ad hoc certainty. The expert is hardly beyond fallibility, and those decisions you blindly had over to the expert can and do result in disaster. Case in point, the current financial meltdown fueled by poor housing market predictions and the creation of a little understood mortgage-backed security market.
Time for the critics / experts to regroup and change their narrative. AGAIN. How many times has that been done during the continuing football odyssey that is Tim Tebow?
And I don't want to hear for a moment the argument that the supporters of Tim Tebow are operating on blind faith and not logic. My logic for supporting Tebow has centered on the FACT that this kid has succeeded / dominated on every level he has played at. On the FACT that the QB position in the NFL is in FACT one of the most misunderstood and most poorly evaluated positions in sports. Do I need to bring up the Peyton Manning versus Ryan Leaf debate again? And on the FACT that all this kid has ever done is LEAD his team and WIN games and that given time and patience with the right organization, he would do the same thing in the NFL.
The only place where my logic and my argument has failed is, I didn't think he would do it this soon. Way to go, Timmy!!!
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Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Denver Broncos - Recap - January 08, 2012 - ESPN New York:
"Tebow's passer rating of 125.6 was the highest in Broncos postseason history.
“
They say (Tebow) couldn't throw. They said we wouldn't be able to run the ball on them. We did that. I wonder what they're going to say next week.
”
-- Broncos CB Champ Bailey
responding to critics
"He showed he's a quarterback in the NFL, case closed," McGahee said. "They say he couldn't throw. They said we wouldn't be able to run the ball on them. We did that. I wonder what they're going to say next week.""
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It seems like they will say the only thing they have left to throw at a second year QB -- he hasn't won a Super Bowl. Of course, my wife had to jinx that for this year by asking me who I would root for in a Giants - Broncos Super Bowl. Very tough question though. Very tough.
GIANTS CONTINUE TO ROLL:
2012 NFL playoffs -- Jason Pierre-Paul says New York Giants 'gonna win' game vs. Green Bay Packers - ESPN New York:
""We gonna win ... we gonna win," Pierre-Paul later added."
Let's just say I would be very happy regardless of the result and who would have thought that I would say I could even be anything but miserable after a Giants Super Bowl loss. Thanks Timmy Boy!!!
Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.
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