8 comments MMQB Review: Eli Manning Can't Perform Miracles Edition

Last week in MMQB, Peter told us a little bit about this Tim Tebow fella. Two weeks ago, Peter said it didn't matter how the Broncos, led by this Tebow fella, kept winning games because it didn't matter since it was happening. It is still happening. Like I said last week, I fully expect teh Broncos to never lose another game and win the Super Bowl for the rest of Tebow's career. This week Peter passes up his typical Patriots stat of the week for a Tebow-related stat of the week, because apparently no one is tired of talking about the Broncos, a team that combines the most amount of skill and good fortune to win games that I probably have ever seen. It is remarkable really. The Broncos are playing well while staying in games, and then the other team does something stupid or something fortunate happens and the Broncos win the game.

The real world intercedes on the fun and games this morning:

What fun and games does Peter believe his readers are having on Monday? does Peter think the rest of the world does on Monday morning, other than work or go to school?

That's about all I know, other than this: Smith's 52, has always seemed healthy to me,

Peter King, Visual M.D.

(Tony Dungy) "I have been feeling tired lately. I wonder if it is because I haven't gotten much sleep?"

(Peter King stares at Tony Dungy intently) "I am showing your red blood cell count is low and you probably should go visit your doctor because I am seeing your lethargy is caused by something medically related. You don't seem healthy to me."

(Tony Dungy one week later talking to Peter) "There was nothing wrong with me when I went to the doctor. I guess I was just tired."

(Peter King stares at Tony Dungry intently) "I am showing you indeed are tired, but there is another cause. You just don't seem healthy to me (Peter drinks three beers, eats two sandwiches and an entire bag of Doritos)."

But he's one of those occasionally volcanic coaches; once or twice a game you say, "Settle down, now." It's a stressful job. A fun job, but stressful, and full of the kind of pressure that most jobs don't have.

Coaching in the NFL has stresses most jobs don't have. Being a head coach doesn't have stresses like "how I'm going to pay my mortgage this month," and "If I get fired, will my family be able to survive financially until I get another job."

I'm being dramatic in a way, but every job has certain stresses most other jobs don't have. So while being an NFL head coach is tough, it does have its advantages as well.

I'm sure Smith won't mind if we get on with the news of the day. A playoff coach having a significant health scare. That's news ... but it pales in comparison to the force of nature of all Tebow, all the time.

Sarcasm? Probably. I would much prefer if this wasn't sarcasm though.

If Merriam-Webster could add the definition of "Tebow,'' I predict it would go something like this:

Tebow. TEE-bow. Verb.

I imagine the Merriam-Webster definition of "Tebow" would be this:

"Shut up, stop saying this in any context and never use this word again." This word would exist solely so it wouldn't be used. That's my dream.

To defeat an opponent while overcoming a major impediment.

Tebow's major impediment? The ability to play quarterback at the NFL level. I'm kidding, sort of.

Ex.: Despite having a 102-degree fever, Lucy managed to Tebow her competition for the Miss America pageant through her great determination.

I swear, if this Tebow definition catches on, I am going to go insane. I really will. I'm already nearing the end of my rope after hearing Chris "Blowhard Fat-ass" Berman (catchy nickname) and Tom Jackson act like Tim Tebow cured cancer after the Bears game yesterday. Eli Manning did the same thing against Dallas (coming back from a bigger deficit) and all he gets is appreciation for how well he played, while Tebow is talked like he has the ability to create miracles. The difference in the two quarterbacks is Manning didn't play shitty for the rest of the game prior to the comeback.

Apparently it is more impressive to be really shitty at your job and then be really good at it for a short period of time, than to be really good at your job for a long period of time. So while Eli is rightfully being considered a quarterback who is either elite or somewhat elite, Tebow is given mysterious miracle powers. Manning is skilled, but Tebow, he performs miracles. I think this is similar phenomenon to how David Eckstein guts out base hits while Matt Holliday is just a really good baseball player.

He had help. An incredible sequence of events got the Broncos undisputed possession of first place in the AFC West.

This could go for a lot of the Broncos victories. The Broncos have been very good and very fortunate a lot this year. It's really amazing...but not a miracle.

Tebow got the quarterback job and has gone 7-1, and this one, in so many ways, was the weirdest -- and a game Chicago will kick itself over for weeks. Years, maybe.

Decades probably. Thousands of years from now, Bears fans will be talking about that one game where they lost to the really mediocre left handed white quarterback. What was his name again? I'm kidding. We will never forget Tebow's name since if he keeps this pace up I am pretty sure a chapter of the Bible will be added after Revelations to specifically document Tebow's exploits.

Okay. Tebow was 3 of 18 in the first three quarters, and Chicago led 10-0 midway through the fourth

"Okay. So Tebow didn't play well at all for most of the game. But he did such a great job of keeping the Broncos in the game by singlehandedly giving up 10 points midway through the fourth quarter. Maybe we shouldn't give Tebow so much credit, but let's do it anyway."

Tebow got hot, though, against a semi-prevent defense and found a wide-open Demaryius Thomas in the end zone for a touchdown to make it 10-7 with 2:08 to go. But the Broncos had no timeouts left. By the time they got the ball back with two minutes left, all the Bears had to do was make one first down to end the game ... and even if they didn't get it, all they had to do was run it three times and stay inbounds.

But Marion Barber ran out of bounds.

These are the type of things I consider extraordinary which the Broncos have benefited from this year. This happens, but the Broncos have been good and fortunate this year. This can't be overlooked.

And the wind shall be calm, and it shall be warm, and Matt Prater shall be able to kick one from 75.

The only thing less interesting than constantly associating Tebow with his religion is to pretend to write fake Bible verses to describe a field goal attempt.

Bears win the toss. Marion Barber, with the Bears probably a couple of yards yards from winning field-goal position, fumbles. Broncos recover

Marion Barber started because Matt Forte was injured. Marion Barber had not fumbled the ball in 107 touches this year...until this touch at this point in overtime.

Mayhem in the crowd. Tebow silences the faithful, drives the Broncos 34 yards, and Prater comes on to try his second field goal of longer than 50 yards in seven minutes.

Prater was 1-2 on the season from 50+ yards and 8-11 from 50 yards or more at this point in his career. Naturally, he hit these two 50+ yard field goals while missing field goal closer than 50 yards out earlier in the game. Football is a funny game.

"You know what's fun about this?'' said Prater. "Everyone keeps saying what Tim can't do. And he goes out every week and we win. We love the guy. He's so real. Now we just feel like anything's possible.''

I don't like the Patriots. I like Tim Tebow. I want the Patriots to win 45-0 next week because I won't be able to stand the media if Tebow (singlehandely, of course) beats Bill Belichick. I couldn't handle it. There are some things I can handle. This is not one of those things.

Fun to see Belichick match wits with Tebow in Denver -- I hope for the first of many meetings.

Not match wits with Mike McCoy or John Fox, but Belichick is matching wits with Tim Tebow.

In New England, Manning led the Giants on drives of 88 and 80 yards in the final seven minutes; both ended in touchdown passes. In Dallas, Manning led the Giants on touchdown drives of 80 and 58 yards to erase a 12-point deficit in the final six minutes.

Of course this isn't a miracle and since Manning had erasing late deficits before Tebow started doing this, Merriam-Webster will naturally call it a "Tebow" and not a "Manning."

The difference between Tony Romo and Manning was pretty clear in the final minutes. Romo needed a completion to a wide-open Miles Austin inside of three minutes to play to ice the game -- and overthrew it.

Of course Romo also put up 34 points against the Giants and put his team in position to win or tie the game for the second straight week. Let's forget that though, because his team didn't win the game. 34 points should be enough to win the game. Because Romo's kicker can't make a game-winning/tying kick he isn't a clutch player.

It's the simple recognition that right now, today, I think Eli Manning's the most clutch quarterback playing. How much more do you need to see?

I need to see him do it against the Denver Tebows. That's really the only way to measure how good a player/team is, isn't it? Match wits with the offensive genius Tim Tebow? Let's see Manning try to go against a Tebow-led defense. Tebow thinks God has a plan for Eli Manning when Denver plays the New York Giants. That plan is a lot of pain.

Things you should know about how the NFL schedules TV games

Whichever games will get the most ratings and make the most money for the network is how the games are scheduled. Glad we covered this so quickly.

Let me explain first why the league did that, then I'll tell you a few things about the gymnastics of which games go where.

If Gregg Easterbrook is reading this column, he just read the word "gymnastics" and probably got an erection at the thought of high school gymnasts or high school cheerleaders. Pervert.

Also, putting the game on CBS would mean it wouldn't be a national game. The New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Phoenix CBS affiliates will show their local teams' games and not Tebow-Brady.

And really, does any football fan in those cities care to see their local team? Probably not. I know Eagles, Giants/Jets, Browns, and Cardinals fans don't care enough to see their teams play. Everyone wants to see Tebow-Brady. Since everyone wants to see Tebow-Brady, I don't even know why everyone doesn't have to be subjected to this game.

Now, in the aftermath of the decision, it's been assumed that one of the league's powerful owners, Robert Kraft of the Patriots, had a major hand in keeping the game in the afternoon. An afternoon game in Mountain Time means the Patriots would get back to New England at about 2 a.m. If the game had been moved, their charter would return at about 6 a.m. Monday.

Robert Kraft is just afraid of losing to the Denver Tebows on national television! Kraft and his group of cheating at football, heathen, model-marrying, out-of-wedlock-child-having players don't want to face down the wrath of Tebow on national television.

The Browns should build around Colt McCoy, not draft a quarterback in 2012 to replace him.

I'm not sure I could agree with this. McCoy hasn't been great, but overly mediocre. The Browns should at least draft a quarterback in the 2nd or 3rd round. McCoy is in his second season and hasn't done anything (at least to me) that says he is franchise quarterback material. We can blame his supporting cast and that could be partially valid reasoning. Peter seems to think McCoy's decision making is a problem. With better players around him, is it a guarantee his decision making would get better?

And I came away thinking the Browns should stick with him and use a rich 2012 draft to finally build the kind of offense around McCoy that any quarterback would need to succeed.

I can agree with this. Still, the Browns need to draft another quarterback. Maybe not in the first round, but in later, but not too much later rounds.

Now, I realize he made two or three idiotic throws in the second half -- and you're not going to win doing that consistently. But one of the bad throws came after he was concussed and should never have been put back in the game. And those throws have to be addressed.

Oh I didn't know McCoy made bad throws after he had a concussion. Well, a history of concussions combined with his mediocre play demands the Browns not have a solid backup plan for McCoy on the roster. What could go wrong?

But he did enough good things that I came away thinking: Use the three picks in the top 40 next April (Cleveland has its own first- and-second-round picks, plus Atlanta's first-rounder from the Julio Jones deal last April) to help McCoy, not replace him. Three plays showed a mature quarterback making good decisions:

So in summary...Colt McCoy made two or three idiotic throws and three great plays. This comes out as a positive in Peter King's opinion because he is assuming the idiotic plays will decrease while the great plays will only increase.

Of course, we wouldn't be talking about any of this if McCoy didn't make some brain-fart throws. But I believe he can be coached out of those -- it's what Bill Walsh would believe, watching him -- and I believe some of that stems from the fact that the Browns are a poor offensive team as a whole.

I'm not anti-Colt McCoy, but Peter's belief that McCoy is making bad throws because of the team around him doesn't necessarily make sense. Maybe putting a better team around would help out, but a bad throw is a bad throw. Ask Rex Grossman. It doesn't always matter how good the team around the quarterback making the throw is.

9. Denver (8-5). At some point you just have to go along for the ride, sit back, enjoy it and realize you're witnessing one of the greatest stories we've seen in the NFL in a long, long time.

I agree. A rookie like Von Miller just coming to a team and making such a huge difference...you don't see that very often.

12. Tennessee (7-6). The most impressive loser of them all Sunday. My Lord, where did this Karl Klug come from? (From Iowa. Fifth-round rookie. Another great and underrated product from the Kirk Ferentz School of NFL Development.) Plays like the Tasmanian devil. Six sacks bounding inside and outside.

Ok...so here is a list of players from this Kirk Ferentz School of NFL Development. It's not a bad list, but I don't know if has star players on it. A lot of the guys are very useful players in the NFL. I'm not sure it is a list worthy of an official capitalized school name. I nitpick.

13. Detroit (8-5). The mystery team of the next three weeks. Could see them go 0-3, 3-0 or anything in between (at Oakland, San Diego, at Green Bay). I mean, predict that.

1-2. Oakland looked bad this week, San Diego has momentum, and Green Bay isn't going to want to lose the game that brings them to 16-0.

15. Chicago (7-6). The Bears have a path to the playoffs, but it would be best if Caleb Hanie drove the bus there instead of playing quarterback.

That's a pretty brutal statement about Hanie. Especially for a guy who just advocated strongly for Colt McCoy.

Goats of the Week

Chicago RB Marion Barber. Are you kidding me? Running out of bounds inside of two minutes left, with Denver having no timeouts left and down three? Pure idiocy. Barber's move allowed the Broncos a last chance to tie the game, getting it with 56 seconds left at the Denver 20 ... instead of getting the last-ditch chance with maybe 22 seconds left and no timeouts. And then he fumbled in overtime, allowing Tim Tebow to keep the miracles flowing.

Those miracles by Tim Tebow. Peter did name Matt Prater his "Special Teams Player of the Week," but I find it interesting about how Prater's kicking causes Tebow's miracles to happen. Tony Romo has led the Cowboys to field goal attempts the past two weeks, these are attempts shorter than 50 yards away, and Peter seemed to indicate Romo didn't step up in the clutch essentially because his kicker couldn't make those kicks. Prater makes kicks in regulation and overtime and now Tebow is performing miracles. It's weird of an analysis of how good a quarterback played at the end of a game relies so much on the players around that quarterback performing well also.

"Can you say a prayer for Cutler's thumb?''

-- Final question for Denver quarterback Tim Tebow, a very religious man, on his conference call with Chicago reporters last Wednesday. Bears quarterback Jay Cutler had recent thumb surgery, and it's unknown whether he'll play again this year.

You have to be freaking kidding me. See how the media treats Tebow? Asking him to say a prayer for Cutler's thumb...does the media actually think Tebow is God or has a direct conduit to God more than other people do? How about Tebow saying a prayer for idiot Chicago reporters who ask stupid questions? Sure, maybe this was a joke, but it is a pretty stupid joke in my mind.

Also, does Peter need to tell us Tebow is "a very religious man"? Is this necessary? Tebow's religion is brought up constantly and anyone with rudimentary knowledge of Tebow knows he is a very religious person.

"There's too much glorification of all of sports in our society. The fact is, guys are here to get an education. They represent institutions of higher learning. Xavier has been a great school for years. We are trying to cure cancer at Cincinnati. I go to school at a place where they discovered the vaccine for polio and created Benadryl. I think that's more important than who wins a basketball game. And our guys need to have appreciation for the fact they are there on a full scholarship. And they're there to represent institutions with class and integrity ... I have never been this embarrassed.''

-- University of Cincinnati basketball coach Mick Cronin, after a full-scale brawl, one of the worst in college sports history, ended the UC-Xavier game Saturday in Cincinnati.

Good for Cronin, who suspended four players Sunday, three for six games each.

Yeah, great for Cronin. This is the same guy who wants his players to represent the institution with class and integrity, yet he recruited and gave a scholarship to Lance Stephenson. In high school, Stephenson had an altercation with a teammate in which he was suspended from school for five days and had been accused and charged with sexual assault of a classmate. This is the kind of guy Cronin believes brings class and integrity to Cincinnati basketball, along with Cronin's 58% graduation rate in 2011.

Bomani Jones breaks it down pretty well here. Cronin isn't the worst coach in college basketball, but a lot of his talk can simply be seen just as empty talk.

Then Peter breaks down Tim Tebow's schedule and figures out Tebow doesn't take up too much of his time with media requests. Riveting stuff.

A comedy of errors (but I'm not laughing) led to this column being posted so late today. I regret making you wait.

But as long as you tell us exactly and in great detail what happened, then all is forgiven. Just don't leave out a detail.

I've caught a little bug in the last few days somewhere, and I've been trying to fight that off. I had to travel for a story early this morning, flying out of JFK at 6:55 a.m., and so at about 1:30 this morning, I lay down to sleep for three hours, unusual for my Sunday night. Woke up at 5. Rushed to get ready, got in the car to the airport and in five minutes discovered two very bad things: I left my cell phone in the car, and my flight, which I was told would have WiFi, did not.

No WiFi on the plane? When did the United States turn into poverty-stricken Africa?

So I got on line quickly at the airport, tweeted my delay, informed my editors I was an idiot, and, with two hours of work left on the column, finished it on the plane and sent upon landing.

Clutchiness. That word should be changed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary to "Kinging."

I can't figure out why I have this splitting headache.

Perhaps you accidentally read your column this week? Sometimes it gives people headaches and this one with approximately 900 Tebow mentions potentially qualifies as headache-inducing.

Then three of Peter's "Tweets of the Week" are about Tebow. Enough already.

4. John Fox, Denver. Remade his offense, willingly, in midseason when it was obvious Tim Tebow was a better option quarterback than pro-style pocket quarterback. Good coaches adjust to their talent. Fox is the poster child for that this year, and the Broncos are contending because of it.

This is so ironic considering Fox refused to adjust his offense or defense at times in Carolina to the talent on the roster.

a. Pittsburgh's ferocious rush. I thought Jason Worilds was supposed to be a big disappointment. He looked terrific Thursday night against Cleveland.

I know! Why can't reality match our self-created perceptions of athletes?

l. Carson Palmer trade's looking really good for Oakland, eh?

Well, the good news is the 2nd round pick won't turn into another first round pick. The Raiders are only going to give up a 1st and 2nd round pick for Palmer. So there's that.

Every owner who's thinking about firing his coach should ask himself if the team is really very far away, and if it isn't, what's going to be gained by firing the coach? In some cases, I can see the intelligence in changing coaches. But in some places -- Minnesota, Washington, Philadelphia, most notably -- I see good coaches having bad years with the ability to turn things around next year.

Mike Shanahan needs just a little more time to turn the Redskins around. That's all he needs. He's had a losing record in his last four seasons of being a head coach, but he just needs more time to turn it around. Because at 5 years for $35 million to be the Redskins head coach, it isn't too much to ask for more time to have a winning record. You pay a coach that much money, you should give him more time to get his shit together and win more games.

I would think if a coach gets paid $7 million per year he could be expected to turn team around in less than two years. I must have excessively high expectations.

6. I think Tennessee has more good players that we don't know than any other team in the league.

"We" means "Peter King doesn't know and he assumes everyone else only pays attention to just a few NFL teams like he does." Anyone who reads this blog knows I hate it when columnists lump fans' ignorance into that columnist's own ignorance.

e. Beernerdness: A shame. I've been living on Vitamin Water and regular water for four or five days, mostly. So I'm sorry, I have no fun beer news to report. Will make it up to you over the holidays. Promise.

As long as you promise to make it up to me. My life isn't complete without knowing exactly what interesting beers Peter King tries on a weekly basis.

f. Smart move by the Cardinals, not upping the ante on their 10-yard, $220-million contract offer to Albert Pujols. I don't blame Pujols for migrating to the American League for $3.4 million more per year

Plus, as a 38-42 year old Albert Pujols can be the DH. I'm not sure the Cardinals wanted a 38-42 year old Pujols manning first base. You gotta love the designated hitter.

g. "I am completely innocent,'' Ryan Braun told Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, after it was revealed by ESPN that he tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance in October, making him subject to a 50-game ban to start 2012. All of Wisconsin is saying the same thing this morning: You'd better be.

Actually all of Wisconsin is saying, "That's great. The Packers are 13-0 right now, so we'll worry about Braun later and focus on our history-making Packers team."