Could've gone better. All of it.
BuzzFeed Sports Presents: The Year In Tebow
Image by Wade Payne / AP
Arguably the greatest college football player of all time, Tim Tebow's NFL career had a rough start that finally seemed to smooth out in 2011 as he made it to the second round of the playoffs with the Broncos. So, how did 2012 go? Spoiler alert: not well.
Chapter 1: Miracle 2011 Season Ends With Large, Non-Miraculous Loss
Based on the way it started off, 2012 really seemed like it could be the Year Of Magical Tebowing. After taking over as the Denver Broncos' starting quarterback in Week 6 and leading them to a 7-4 record over the rest of the season, Timmy Tremendous pulled off a terrific and to this day inexplicable upset victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild-card round of the playoffs. But afterward, in the divisional round, the Broncos came up against the NFL's premiere eviscerator of dreams: Bill Belichick's New England Patriots. Tebow got throttled, dismantled, and otherwise destroyed by the Pats, completing only 9 passes out of 26 en route to a 45-10 loss. A terrible loss, but Tebow had seemingly established himself as the starter on a playoff-caliber team, so the future looked bright, right? Turns out the light at the end of the tunnel was just a train filled with garbage. A garbage nightmare train.
Image by Elise Amendola, file / AP
Chapter 2: Tebow Comes To The Big City
In March, Denver signed Peyton Manning to become their starting QB. Manning was about to turn 36 years old and had just sat out an entire season with career-threatening spinal problems. Tebow was 24 and in Spartan physical shape. It says something about the esteem in which the NFL held Tebow's 2011 season that the Broncos' decision was widely considered a smart one.
With Manning in town, there wasn't a whole lot of reason to hold on to Tebow, and so with little fanfare (ha) and next to no media attention (double ha), he was traded to the New York Jets.
That press conference can be seen above. In it, Tebow says the word "excited" 44 times.
Source: youtube.com