CanesSkins26 wrote:Manchester_Redskin wrote:I think Holmgrem sums it up quite well...
The Plain Dealer reported that Browns president Mike Holmgren has reservations about Tebow’s new throwing motion. Holmgren believes he may go back to his old motion when he’s under pressure.
"I just think in the heat of battle guys will usually revert," said Holmgren, who attended Tebow’s pro day earlier this week. "I think, and I told him this, that he was so thinking about his mechanics that at times it looked a little robotic."
Here is the
linkIts all well and good Tebow demonstrating his new action in the comfort zone of a work out, quite another when he is about to pummeled into the middle of next week by a couple of maraurding linemen.
Great point by Holmgren. The motion, as much of a problem as it is, isn't even Tebow's biggest problem, which is reading defenses and running an offense. The offense that UF ran with Tebow under Mullen (before he left) and Meyer was nothing close to an NFL offense. It was designed to let Tebow run and to get the ball into the hands of playmaker like Harvin. There wasn't a lot of down field passing and not a lot of complex reads for Tebow to make. In those games where Tebow's running game was shut down or UF got down and had to play catch up, Tebow struggled when the offense became a pass-first offense and just didn't look at all comfortable having to stay in the pocket and make reads.
Y'all know where I stand on Tebow, and what I am about to say does not change that.
I think Holmgren is wrong. New muscle motor patterns can be made permanent.
There is no muscle activity more complicated than speech. When I was very young, I had a significant speech impediment. Working with a very good speech therapist, over many months, that was corrected. I can remember being very conscious of how I formed words... it was mechanical, "robotic". However, over many months, it became completely automatic, to the point that
I could no longer duplicate my impediment, no matter how hard I tried. No matter how stressed, I did not revert.
The point is, trained muscle memory becomes permanent after enough repetitions. If Tebow wants to be a quarterback, and can find a team that is willing to wait for him while he trains up, he will, I believe, be a very good one. He clearly has the discipline to make himself be true to his mechanics work, until he is no longer robotic, and he no longer risks slipping back into his old mechanics when the world around him falls apart.
The Redskins, IMO, are not a team that can afford to wait. Tebow will not be a Redskin, not because he can't do it... but because he can't do it quickly enough.