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| Former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden on Tuesday night called former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow 'a winner' during a rare appearance at FSU. Bowden talked about the current Denver Broncos quarterback during remarks at a Tallahassee Quarterback Club function. It was Bowden's first time at Doak Campbell Stadium since the 2009 season. (Gary W. Green/Orlando Sentinel) |
During his keynote speech at Tuesday night’s Tallahassee Quarterback Club’s awards dinner, former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden gave attendees a glimpse into his still sharp 82-year-old football mind.
In between stories about FSU alum and actor Burt Reynolds wanting to fund a uniform change campaign in the early 1980s, and other tales about how SEC schools tried to woo him away from Tallahassee, Bowden offered his thoughts to a full University Center room on the current state of football, and how it’s now played in between the lines.
In a nutshell, the game he coached in various roles for 57 years … has changed.
“You know, football goes in cycles,” he said. “There will be like 10 years where defense is the dominant thing. … And then you’ll get into an offensive cycle, where nobody can stop anybody. And that’s kind of where we are right now. They’re scoring all kind of points.”
What does he believe is the primary reason why today’s game is vastly different than the one that helped earn him a pair of national championships and international recognition?
The quarterbacks. They’re different now. They run, they throw, they jump-throw, they fake hand-off, they run option packages at higher speeds and in different angles.
Quarterbacks now are bigger than his former Heisman Trophy-winning signal-caller, Charlie Ward. They have arms that rival Danny Kanell’s and Chris Weinke’s. They run with flashes of Deion Sanders’ elusivene– OK, who are we kidding? Let’s not get TOO far ahead of ourselves.
Still, the point remains: quarterbacks in the 21st century are different than they were in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
Case in point, Bowden said: take current FSU quarterback EJ Manuel and former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. In the NFL with the Denver Broncos, Tebow’s power-running, agile, option quarterback style has proven — recently, at least — to be a winning formula. The Broncos are 8-1 with him starting games. This season alone, with Tebow at the helm, they have won three overtime games.
Bowden doesn’t think that’s a coincidence.
“You know, I got a letter this past summer from some writer up in, oh, gosh, I guess it’s out there where Tebow’s playing ball there. Where is that? Where? Denver? Yeah, Denver,” Bowden said during his speech Tuesday night. “So the writer says, ‘Coach, what is your opinion on Tebow? Do you think he can win? Do you think he can win in this league?’
“I wrote him back and said, ‘Yeah, he can win. The guy is a winner.’”
For all of Tebow’s college career, Bowden had a front-row seat to the flashes of successful brilliance he contends we’re still seeing now. Every year he was at Florida, Tebow’s Gators beat the Seminoles in the annual end-of-season rivalry game. Two separate seasons, Tebow and the Gators even hung 45 points on FSU in back-to-back series wins. Sure, the Seminoles were going through a rough patch those years as Bowden was nearing the end of his coaching days, but Tebow was making his team nationally relevant and national champions. Florida won titles in 2006 and 2008.
“I don’t want to say he’s a great player, but he makes the guys around him better,” Bowden said about Tebow. “Everybody plays better that plays with him.”
Then, speaking to the high school and college athletes in the room who were being honored during the awards dinner, Bowden added: “I mean, some of you young men probably have some of that stuff on you, and dadgum, there’s a quarterback back there that can do that.”
He pointed near the back of the room, where Manuel was sitting.
A 6-foot-5, 240-pound quarterback Bowden and his then-assistant, current FSU head coach Jimbo Fisher recruited, Manuel led the Seminoles to an 8-4 regular season record during his first full season as FSU’s starting quarterback. He was injured for parts of three games — all losses — and proved just how big an impact his legs, arm and leadership presence had on his team.
During the awards dinner, Manuel, along with FSU safety Lamarcus Joyner, received the Tallahassee Quarterback Club’s Bob Crenshaw Award for leadership and character. A former 175-pound FSU offensive lineman and class president who died in a plane crash at 24. The award goes to the Seminoles player each year who displays “the biggest heart.”
Here’s a little more on what Bowden had to say about Tebow and about the current state of football:
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You know, football goes in cycles. There will be like 10 years where defense is the dominant thing. Now, LSU and Alabama this year, they’re kind of in a different breed. Their defenses are dominating. But there was a time in football where defense just rules the roost. Scores of 7-6, 14-7, 21-20. No big, high scores.
And then you’ll get into an offensive cycle, where nobody can stop anybody. And that’s kind of where we are right now. They’re scoring all kind of points. When I was coming up — I can’t say, ‘You and I,’ because y’all are so much younger than I am — I mean, gosh. Ballgames were 7-6. If you had a two-touchdown lead you protect it.
Right now, we’re in an offensive cycle and the question here is why? And my thought on it is this: Because something that’s happening now in football that hasn’t happened before. That is, defenses are not used to seeing a passing, running quarterback. They’re not used to seeing a triple-threat quarterback. It used to be, all the quarterback did was hand off and throw. Hand off and throw.
But now they’ll kill you running the doggone football.
So the the linemen will spread everybody out. You don’t have but one guy back there, that’s the quarterback. Well, the defense isn’t going to take that guy (maybe a running back), they take him. They’ll pick him up, but nobody picks up the quarterback.
Tebow’s doing it right now in the NFL. The NFL has never faced an option. And he keeps pulling games in and pulling games out. How long is it going to last? I don’t know.
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Finally, check out this video of Bowden speaking before the awards dinner about his return to FSU for the first time since his 2009 retirement. When asked if he’d come back for other functions, namely being recognized at a game or at least watching an FSU game, Bowden said he would … but “doesn’t know when.”
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