Eagles to sign Tim Tebow

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fearsomefour

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It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
Tebow had such a deficit of arm strength and accuracy. Working with Tom House is interesting as well. I am sure he was directed there by Brady. House can clean up his mechanics, getting him rotating properly and throwing off his back foot instead of his front. How that translates to game action? Who knows?
If Tebow sticks I think he is a situational guy. I still think he could have a roll in a redzone sort of offense. 2 or 3 TE set, similar to what SF ran a couple of years ago. Give him run pass options....simple passes that get guys open quickly by design. Get the ball out of his hand quickly or run, no huddle.
 

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http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/...-house-inside-quarterback-s-challenges-042015

The book on Tim Tebow, from the guru who tried to fix him
Bruce Feldman
FOX Sports/APR 20, 2015


What is Chip Kelly doing by signing Tim Tebow?
Mike Garafolo reports on Chip Kelly's possible reasons for signing Tim Tebow and Tebow's chances of actually making the team.

When I first saw colleague Jay Glazer's report Sunday that Chip Kelly's Philadelphia Eagles were about to sign Tim Tebow, I thought, This might break the Internet.

Hyperbole? Of course, but it didn't take long for the old Florida Gators Heisman winner to be the top trending subject in the country. And you knew Tebow's return to the NFL was going to be the big story on all the TV sports shows this week.

As I looked around Twitter on Sunday night, there was a bunch of ridicule and outrage regarding Tebow. Mind you, this is the Eagles signing a 27-year-old quarterback who's actually won an NFL playoff game, as their fourth QB to a one-year minimum contract.

This is a guy who does everything right off the field, and he's an issue?

Tebow doesn't warrant another chance, yet a bunch of guys who've been in all sorts of trouble do?

Again, fourth QB. One-year minimum contract.

Tim Tebow is perhaps the most polarizing sports figure we've seen in years. For many, he resonated because of his clean-cut image and because he was devout. He spoke about his faith in public settings, visited prisons and even referenced Bible verses in the eye black he wore during college games. He was a bona fide phenomenon, but that came with a hefty undertow.

Many recoiled at Tebow -- or at least the idea of Tebow -- as if he were some oversaturated pop-music act. He was like a one-man version of Duke basketball or Notre Dame football. People got sick of him, or hearing about him. But that's actually more our fault in the media than it is his. Tebow's return is one thing, and then you add in the fact that it's to Chip Kelly's team it becomes even more combustible subject.

Before I started working on my book "The QB," I had no intention of writing anything about Tebow in there. However, one of the main characters in the book, Tom House, a former journeyman major league pitcher who has turned into the country's leading sports biomechanics guru, had been working with Tebow for months. Every day for hours. This was after Tebow had been released by the Patriots two years ago and Tom Brady, who has become a protege of House's, recommended the former Broncos QB see House at USC, where he has an office above the third base line.

House is one of the most fascinating characters I've ever written about. The word guru gets thrown around way too much in sports. I'm guilty of it, too, but he's actually the closest thing to one I can think of. He was Nolan Ryan's coach, and Randy Johnson’s, and then he started working with Drew Brees at the beginning of his NFL career. Brees swears by him. Said House changed his life.

Brady has been a believer for a few years now. So have about a dozen other NFL QBs who make a pilgrimage in the offseason to see him. In The QB, I refer to him as The Mad Scientist. Watching him teach a dozen 20-something pro pitches was riveting.

House has a PhD in performance psychology, a Master's degree in marketing and an MBA and has written almost two dozen books.

According to House, one of the big mistakes quarterback coaches make is getting too caught up in trying to make all their QBs throw exactly the same way. Bodies are different. Physiognomy. Conditioning-wise.

"They're wired differently," he said. "What you need to do is identify the critical variables. And do you have a fix for the variables that aren't efficient? Then, if they're efficient and effective and they're repeatable, they play. And we do as well with quarterbacks who are just trying to get better to go to college as we do with Drew Brees and Tom Brady, who just want to get 1 or 2 percent better."

Tebow needed a lot more than 1 or 2 percent improvement, though.

"Everybody's afraid of Tim," House told me back then. "There's too much stuff that comes with Tim. When he showed up here, he was 10,000 reps behind any other NFL quarterback. He'd never been given a tool kit on how to fix [his mechanics]. With good intentions, he wasn't getting any help. Everybody pulls for him, but good intentions with bad information is just as bad as no information at all."

For the first month of training sessions, Tebow asked House not to allow people into the stadium because the former college star didn't want anyone to know he was there.

House didn't bother to look at Tebow's old film. "I don't look at bad film," he said. "We work with what our statistical model has validated, and then we work from there. It's what we're supposed to be dealing with right now. We know for a fact that he had premature rotation issues on the front side, and his back foot came off the ground too soon, but that shows up when he's throwing. You don't have to look at it on film."

House also examined Tebow's diet and determined that the QB was taking in too much protein and didn't have enough balance. House wanted to make his body more "quarterback specific, so he doesn't look so much like a linebacker anymore."

House dismissed a lot of reasons why people said Tebow struggled, from being too stiff in his neck and shoulders to a penchant for over-striding.

"There is no such thing as over-striding, but there is something about not having the right timing in the foot stride," he said. "Guys like Brady and Carson Palmer have much bigger strides than Tebow, but they had better timing with those strides. When we start teaching, we look at timing first, then kinematic sequencing, and then the mechanics of the throw. So if you're not timed right, no matter how good you are with the mechanics, it's gonna look weird. It's called the step-wise regression analysis."

The "fixing" of Tim Tebow, the quarterback, would take some three months. House's diagnosis of why Tebow was inaccurate all came back to timing issues with his body. Once they could get his body in sync, the mechanics were actually pretty easy to fix, the former major league pitcher said.

"He still does what he's always done with his throwing arm. We just fixed the front side and gave him a better posture to do it and made him time it better." Beyond that, House said Tebow learned why he would misfire whenever he did, which “The Professor” said was vital for anyone to be at their best.

"We allowed him to understand why the ball goes right or left, why the ball goes high or low and how to spin the ball and how to physically prepare from feet to fingertips and to take it out and make the dynamic movement work for you and not against you. Does the term muscle-head make sense? He muscled everything. He can muscle it when he needs it, but now he's got kinematic sequencing. He's muscled down for efficiency."

Another underlying problem that tied into Tebow's issues in the NFL that House ID'd: The former All-American quarterback had no confidence in his throwing ability.

"He didn't think he could make that throw, so he went to what he was confident in, and that was his legs," House said.

After my time around Tebow and House last year, I went to the NFL Combine, where the reaction from coaches and personnel people to claims of a Tebow transformation was a collective shrug.

"The problem isn't really his arm," said one veteran NFL defensive coach about Tebow. "It's that he's not wired to process what he's seeing once the ball is snapped, and if you don't have that, you simply can't be a quarterback in this league."

How much, if at all, Tebow can remedy that aspect of his game remains to be seen. Chip Kelly, who knows more about mobile QBs than any coach in the NFL and may be the most creative guy in the sport, thinks it's worth a shot to see what happens. It'll be interesting to see what Kelly may do with him. As for the specter of any media distractions, Kelly apparently isn't fazed.

Tebow is pushing pause on a promising TV career, one that no doubt will still be there for him after his time is done in the NFL. He has a dream, and he isn't giving up on it. He's worked his butt off to try to make it happen despite hearing from so many people both inside and outside of the sport about why it won't work. And I’m happy that he'll get a chance to find out just how far he's actually come -- although I may not turn on the TV much in the next few days.

Bruce Feldman is a senior college football reporter and columnist for FOXSports.com and FOX Sports 1. He is also a New York Times Bestselling author. His new book, The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks, came out in October 2014. Follow him on Twitter @BruceFeldmanCFB.
 

Dodgersrf

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http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/...-house-inside-quarterback-s-challenges-042015

The book on Tim Tebow, from the guru who tried to fix him
Bruce Feldman
FOX Sports/APR 20, 2015


What is Chip Kelly doing by signing Tim Tebow?
Mike Garafolo reports on Chip Kelly's possible reasons for signing Tim Tebow and Tebow's chances of actually making the team.

When I first saw colleague Jay Glazer's report Sunday that Chip Kelly's Philadelphia Eagles were about to sign Tim Tebow, I thought, This might break the Internet.

Hyperbole? Of course, but it didn't take long for the old Florida Gators Heisman winner to be the top trending subject in the country. And you knew Tebow's return to the NFL was going to be the big story on all the TV sports shows this week.

As I looked around Twitter on Sunday night, there was a bunch of ridicule and outrage regarding Tebow. Mind you, this is the Eagles signing a 27-year-old quarterback who's actually won an NFL playoff game, as their fourth QB to a one-year minimum contract.

This is a guy who does everything right off the field, and he's an issue?

Tebow doesn't warrant another chance, yet a bunch of guys who've been in all sorts of trouble do?

Again, fourth QB. One-year minimum contract.

Tim Tebow is perhaps the most polarizing sports figure we've seen in years. For many, he resonated because of his clean-cut image and because he was devout. He spoke about his faith in public settings, visited prisons and even referenced Bible verses in the eye black he wore during college games. He was a bona fide phenomenon, but that came with a hefty undertow.

Many recoiled at Tebow -- or at least the idea of Tebow -- as if he were some oversaturated pop-music act. He was like a one-man version of Duke basketball or Notre Dame football. People got sick of him, or hearing about him. But that's actually more our fault in the media than it is his. Tebow's return is one thing, and then you add in the fact that it's to Chip Kelly's team it becomes even more combustible subject.

Before I started working on my book "The QB," I had no intention of writing anything about Tebow in there. However, one of the main characters in the book, Tom House, a former journeyman major league pitcher who has turned into the country's leading sports biomechanics guru, had been working with Tebow for months. Every day for hours. This was after Tebow had been released by the Patriots two years ago and Tom Brady, who has become a protege of House's, recommended the former Broncos QB see House at USC, where he has an office above the third base line.

House is one of the most fascinating characters I've ever written about. The word guru gets thrown around way too much in sports. I'm guilty of it, too, but he's actually the closest thing to one I can think of. He was Nolan Ryan's coach, and Randy Johnson’s, and then he started working with Drew Brees at the beginning of his NFL career. Brees swears by him. Said House changed his life.

Brady has been a believer for a few years now. So have about a dozen other NFL QBs who make a pilgrimage in the offseason to see him. In The QB, I refer to him as The Mad Scientist. Watching him teach a dozen 20-something pro pitches was riveting.

House has a PhD in performance psychology, a Master's degree in marketing and an MBA and has written almost two dozen books.

According to House, one of the big mistakes quarterback coaches make is getting too caught up in trying to make all their QBs throw exactly the same way. Bodies are different. Physiognomy. Conditioning-wise.

"They're wired differently," he said. "What you need to do is identify the critical variables. And do you have a fix for the variables that aren't efficient? Then, if they're efficient and effective and they're repeatable, they play. And we do as well with quarterbacks who are just trying to get better to go to college as we do with Drew Brees and Tom Brady, who just want to get 1 or 2 percent better."

Tebow needed a lot more than 1 or 2 percent improvement, though.

"Everybody's afraid of Tim," House told me back then. "There's too much stuff that comes with Tim. When he showed up here, he was 10,000 reps behind any other NFL quarterback. He'd never been given a tool kit on how to fix [his mechanics]. With good intentions, he wasn't getting any help. Everybody pulls for him, but good intentions with bad information is just as bad as no information at all."

For the first month of training sessions, Tebow asked House not to allow people into the stadium because the former college star didn't want anyone to know he was there.

House didn't bother to look at Tebow's old film. "I don't look at bad film," he said. "We work with what our statistical model has validated, and then we work from there. It's what we're supposed to be dealing with right now. We know for a fact that he had premature rotation issues on the front side, and his back foot came off the ground too soon, but that shows up when he's throwing. You don't have to look at it on film."

House also examined Tebow's diet and determined that the QB was taking in too much protein and didn't have enough balance. House wanted to make his body more "quarterback specific, so he doesn't look so much like a linebacker anymore."

House dismissed a lot of reasons why people said Tebow struggled, from being too stiff in his neck and shoulders to a penchant for over-striding.

"There is no such thing as over-striding, but there is something about not having the right timing in the foot stride," he said. "Guys like Brady and Carson Palmer have much bigger strides than Tebow, but they had better timing with those strides. When we start teaching, we look at timing first, then kinematic sequencing, and then the mechanics of the throw. So if you're not timed right, no matter how good you are with the mechanics, it's gonna look weird. It's called the step-wise regression analysis."

The "fixing" of Tim Tebow, the quarterback, would take some three months. House's diagnosis of why Tebow was inaccurate all came back to timing issues with his body. Once they could get his body in sync, the mechanics were actually pretty easy to fix, the former major league pitcher said.

"He still does what he's always done with his throwing arm. We just fixed the front side and gave him a better posture to do it and made him time it better." Beyond that, House said Tebow learned why he would misfire whenever he did, which “The Professor” said was vital for anyone to be at their best.

"We allowed him to understand why the ball goes right or left, why the ball goes high or low and how to spin the ball and how to physically prepare from feet to fingertips and to take it out and make the dynamic movement work for you and not against you. Does the term muscle-head make sense? He muscled everything. He can muscle it when he needs it, but now he's got kinematic sequencing. He's muscled down for efficiency."

Another underlying problem that tied into Tebow's issues in the NFL that House ID'd: The former All-American quarterback had no confidence in his throwing ability.

"He didn't think he could make that throw, so he went to what he was confident in, and that was his legs," House said.

After my time around Tebow and House last year, I went to the NFL Combine, where the reaction from coaches and personnel people to claims of a Tebow transformation was a collective shrug.

"The problem isn't really his arm," said one veteran NFL defensive coach about Tebow. "It's that he's not wired to process what he's seeing once the ball is snapped, and if you don't have that, you simply can't be a quarterback in this league."

How much, if at all, Tebow can remedy that aspect of his game remains to be seen. Chip Kelly, who knows more about mobile QBs than any coach in the NFL and may be the most creative guy in the sport, thinks it's worth a shot to see what happens. It'll be interesting to see what Kelly may do with him. As for the specter of any media distractions, Kelly apparently isn't fazed.

Tebow is pushing pause on a promising TV career, one that no doubt will still be there for him after his time is done in the NFL. He has a dream, and he isn't giving up on it. He's worked his butt off to try to make it happen despite hearing from so many people both inside and outside of the sport about why it won't work. And I’m happy that he'll get a chance to find out just how far he's actually come -- although I may not turn on the TV much in the next few days.

Bruce Feldman is a senior college football reporter and columnist for FOXSports.com and FOX Sports 1. He is also a New York Times Bestselling author. His new book, The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks, came out in October 2014. Follow him on Twitter @BruceFeldmanCFB.
Great read.
I'm almost convinced Tim House could make me an NFL QB.
 

Prime Time

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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/04/21/oddsmaker-tim-tebow-a-5-2-underdog-to-make-eagles/

Oddsmaker: Tim Tebow a 5-2 underdog to make Eagles
Posted by Mike Wilkening on April 21, 2015

tebow.jpg
Getty Images

Will Tim Tebow make the Eagles’ Week One roster?

There are many opinions on the topic, and there is no lack of interest in Tebow. Such are the elements that lead people to say, “Wanna bet?”

And indeed, online sports book Bovada.lv has set odds on whether Tebow will be a part of the Eagles’ opening-week squad.

Those who believe Tebow will make the Eagles are getting 5-to-2 odds (+250). For every $1 risked, $2.50 would be won on a successful wager.

Those taking a more pessimistic view on whether Tebow will make the club can get their money down, too. Tebow is a 1-to-4 favorite to not be on the Eagles’ 53-player roster in Week One (-400). This means bettors will have to risk $4 to take home $1 on a winning wager.

In short, the odds imply Tebow has an 80 percent chance to be cut.

So let’s put this to a vote: Will Tim Tebow be on the Eagles’ Week One roster? Let us know via the poll and in the comments. We’re quite interested to see how the voting matches up with the odds posted by the sports book.

No. 54.16% (912 votes)

Yes. 45.84% (772 votes)
 

Elmgrovegnome

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Mike and Mike were talking about someone that wrote an article about why he thinks Chip Kelly signed Tebow. He claims that with Kelly's bold moves he has been under a lot of scrutiny and he doesn't like it. By signing Tebow it draws the attention away from Chip and onto Tim. He said that, so far, it is working great. All of the news in Philly is suddenly about Tim Tebow.

Strange thought but you never know with a guy like Kelly. It could be true that he is trying to deflect media attention from himself.
 

Prime Time

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http://mmqb.si.com/2015/04/22/nfl-philip-rivers-adrian-peterson/

Five Things I Think I Think About the Eagles signing Tim Tebow
1) It is still puzzling that no other team would sign Tebow to compete for a third-string position. At the very least, Tebow brings a positive and supportive attitude to the offseason workout program and can also show some different looks in training camp. As to whether he would make the Eagles, or any team, that is a much more difficult question to answer.

2) Signing Tebow is a negative endorsement of third-stringer Matt Barkley, whom the Eagles have openly shopped without success. It appears Barkley will eventually be offered up for a ham sandwich.

3) Speaking of Barkley, there must be some interesting conversations going on between Kelly and Barkley’s agent, David Dunn, who also happens to be Kelly’s agent (and Mark Sanchez’s).

4) The Eagles now have three former first-round quarterbacks—Sam Bradford, Sanchez and Tebow—and all were drafted when the prior CBA was in place with its disproportionately oversized rookie contracts. The good news for the Eagles is that other teams—the Rams, Jets and Broncos—paid those big bonuses.

5) The Tebow signing has once again brought out the Chip Kelly critics. I, for one, am a fan of his, and I’ll just say this: There is some room for questioning his recent moves, but many critics fall in the But that’s not the way it’s always been done! crowd. As I say all the time, Kelly is a refreshing change agent in a profession sorely in need of one.
 

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http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on...as-the-single-worst-qb-i-ever-saw-lost-to-air

Jay Feely: Tim Tebow 'single-worst QB I ever saw,' couldn't beat air
By Will Brinson | NFL Writer
April 21, 2015


With Tim Tebow now at least temporarily ensconced in Philadelphia, everyone's kind of settling in to see how Chip Kelly and the Eagles handle this and how Tebow deals with playing for a new team.

If he wants to make the team succeed, he better have become a better practice quarterback than he was with the Broncos or Jets. To wit: former Cardinals kicker Jay Feelytold Jim Rome on Showtime during this Wednesday's episode (airs at 9 p.m. ET) Tebow is the "single-worst quarterback I ever saw."

"He's such a dichotomy for me. Because I really respect the person, the man, the things that he believes in and the things he does off the field," Feely said. "He was the single-worst quarterback I ever saw in my career in the NFL."

Feely then proceeds to tell a story about Tebow warming up and losing ... to air.

"I watched him one day ... I sat and watched him do routes on air with Ken Whisenhunt as we were playing the Broncos," Feely said. "And routes on air, there's no [defensive backs], you know exactly what he's going to run, there's no pass rush. He had like 13 incompletions on routes on air. Jim, you and I could go out and do routes on air and we would complete most of our passes."

Brutally hilarious. It fits with everything you hear about Tebow in practice too. Not that Tebow's game completion percentage is particularly stunning (47.9%, which actually is stunning but for the wrong reasons).

Feely's take on the signing is that Kelly really believes his system will overcome everything and manage to "utilize" Tebow.

"He thinks his system is better than everyone's and his system is gonna work and it doesn't matter if he gets rid of star players like DeSean Jackson or LeSean McCoy," Feely said. "He thinks he's smarter so he can take a guy everyone else has quit on ... and utilize him."

Time will tell but the odds are definitely against it happening.
 

Oh_Canada

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It is funny how many fans forget about QBs that win ... and only want a pretty passer. Way back, many of us would have taken a Joe Kapp from Minnesota or Douglas from Chicago to help out our flailing Rams. But wins don't matter as much as image these days I guess! I wish the kid well.
 

Mackeyser

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Well, the question is whether or not Tom House really got him squared away.

I guarantee you that MOST folks criticizing this move know nothing about House or his ability to affect radical and dynamic change.

If House got Tebow squared away, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Tebow not only make the team, but battle Sanchez for that second spot. See, here's the thing... Imagine all that Tebow brings... Now imagine all that plus throwing accuracy and decent arm strength...

If...if that's what the Eagles got, then we'll see. If not, Tebow will be back on the SEC Network soon enough.
 

FrankenRam

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Jay Feely: Tim Tebow 'single-worst QB I ever saw,' couldn't beat air
By Will Brinson | NFL Writer
April 21, 2015


"He thinks his system is better than everyone's and his system is gonna work and it doesn't matter if he gets rid of star players like DeSean Jackson or LeSean McCoy," Feely said. "He thinks he's smarter so he can take a guy everyone else has quit on ... and utilize him."

Sometimes I wonder if Kelly is related to Mike Martz.