Will we look back more fondly on the Tebow season than on the Manning era?
If Peyton Manning never wins a Super Bowl with the Broncos it’s quite possible that decades from now fans will look back with greater fondness on the 2011 season than on any with Peyton Manning at the helm. That was the year affectionately known as the “Tebow season”.
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Every Broncos fan remembers how the 2012 season ended. The Wild Card Ravens flew into Denver and dispatched Peyton Manning and the top-seeded Broncos in an overtime game that most would prefer to forget. The Baltimore team went on to win the Super Bowl that year while Denver was left searching for answers.
The 2013 Denver Broncos season was snuffed out in an even more painful way. After having navigated through the AFC playoffs Manning and the Broncos were destroyed in the Super Bowl by the Seattle Seahawks 43-8. It was a blowout so historic that only the Broncos of the eighties could relate to it.
To hopeful seasons in a row have come crashing down on Broncos Country.
The addition of Peyton Manning was made for only one reason: so that the Broncos could hoist the Lombardi trophy. Manning was not signed so that the team could break offensive records on its way to the playoffs. The biggest free agent signing of all time was made with the singular objective of winning it all and thus far that has not happened. Peyton Manning has therefore failed to deliver on the promise his massive contract represents.
Manning, of course, is not finished in Denver. The Hall-of-Fame QB has the 2014 season ahead of him at the very least and possibly one or two more. So the script has not been finished. The story may well end in glory. Number 18 may yet be the first signal caller ever to win Super Bowls with two different teams, securing his place amongst the best of all time and enshrinement on the Broncos Ring of Fame.
But he may not.
If Peyton Manning never wins a Super Bowl with the Broncos it’s quite possible that decades from now fans will look back with greater fondness on the 2011 season than on any with Peyton Manning at the helm. That was the year affectionately known as the “Tebow season”.
For Peyton Manning and his $20M contract success is supposed to be a given but for Tebow, who displaced Kyle Orton after a 1-4 start to the 2011 season, the only expectation was fun. That Tebow turned the Broncos into the least likely playoff team in Denver history was something nobody saw coming.
Tim Tebow took Denver sports fans on the wildest ride this side of Rocktober. It began with a week seven victory in Miami (on Tim Tebow day at Sun Life Stadium) and continued through a dazzling six game winning streak that pulled the flailing Broncos back into contention for a Wild Card. Tebow and the Broncos were the talk of the NFL, pulling out last-second wins over the Chiefs, Jets, Chargers, Vikings and Bears. It was the quite possibly the most memorable stretch or regular season victories in NFL history. Tebow could look terrible for almost four quarters and then deliver wins through the narrowest windows of opportunity when it looked like all hope was gone.
Denver has never seen a spotlight so bright as the one Tim Tebow brought here. He was a national obsession. The media could not get enough Tebow. America could not get enough Tebow. People from coast to coast were photographing themselves in Tebow’s famous prayer pose and posting their pictures on social media. “Tebowing” made the Broncos America’s team.
The Broncos lost their last three regular season games in 2011. They got beaten by the Bills on the road and by the Chiefs at home yet somehow they still managed to squeak into the playoffs and even host the Wild Card game.
The Pittsburgh Steelers came to Denver as massive favorites to take down the Broncos on January 8, 2012. At half time, though, Pittsburgh trailed Denver 20-6. The Steelers came back to tie the game 23-23 at the end of regulation and forced overtime. Overtime only lasted for one play and that play was perhaps the greatest single play on Denver sports history.
No Broncos fan will ever forget the game-wining 80 yard touchdown pass from Tim Tebow to Demaryius Thomas on the very first play of overtime in the 2011 AFC Wild Card game. It was absolutely amazing. Mile High broke out onto sheer pandemonium as did the entire state of Colorado. Nothing before or since (with the lone exception of Elway’s first Super Bowl win) lead to a greater feeling of euphoria for fans of the Orange and Blue.
The Broncos got pounded by the Patriots in the divisional round of the playoffs that season and the decision was made from the top of the organization that Tim Tebow had to go. He didn’t have the tools to take the Broncos to the next level. Tebow probably would have been ousted even if Peyton Manning had not come along but Manning’s availability made it a no-brainer.
Nobody will ever accuse the Broncos of making the wrong move by bringing number 18 to town. He is one of the very best quarterbacks ever to play the game. With Manning at the helm the Broncos are a consistent threat to win the AFC and get back to the Super Bowl but getting there is not enough, not when Peyton Manning is in the picture.
If Manning never wins it all for Denver his era as a Broncos player will be reflected on with both fondness and disappointment. The Tebow season, though, will always stand out as surprising, shocking, wild and fun. We expected nothing and we got something magical out of a year that started out dismally. That is a legacy far better than seasons that began with great promise but ended in heartache.
