NFL: BRONCOS DEFEAT THE JETS // SPORTS, VALUES & OUR NATION’S IMAGE       

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            UNTIL AFTER THE CURRENT NFL SEASON, “SPORTS NOTEBOOK” WILL POST NEW EVERY MONDAY INSTEAD OF ON TUESDAY, continuing with a new post every Friday.  Editor, Marvin Leibstone. Comments to: mlresources1@aol.com

BRONCOS VS. JETS  ---    IT wasn’t the Tim Tebow-led offense that first positioned the Denver Broncos away from serious trouble and likelihood of Denver losing to the New York Jets last night; it was Denver cornerback Andre Goodman’s third quarter interception of a laser-like pass thrown by Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, producing a TD tying the game at 10-10, allowing a fourth quarter Denver touchdown to dominate, final score 17-13, Denver.

The Tebow-led offense, which failed to exploit numerous drives past a need to punt until the Goodman pivotal play, soared to life with a fourth quarter 95 yard drive that included a 20 yard Tebow rush for, with 58 seconds before endgame, a TD giving the Broncos their third straight win and a redemption-win at Sports Authority-Mile High Stadium after having lost embarrassingly there to the Detroit Lions, 45-10, just a few weeks ago.

That fourth quarter Tebow TD surely caused Tebow-doubters to shed more doubt. With Tebow as starting QB, the Broncos have lifted from beneath where prairie dogs sleep to half a game behind the Oakland Raiders for first place in the American Conference’s Western Division. The Broncos are now 5-5 with a shot at being in the post-season. Yet Tebow, a Heisman trophy winner, can disappoint during most minutes of a game: he isn’t a gifted passer, and he appears to read his play-options too slowly before passing or handing off the ball; many of his rushes have been from desperation, nothing else that he could do or it’ll be sack time, and he does get sacked. Prior to his amazing fourth Q clutch performance against the Jets last night, Tebow’s pass completions were mediocre in each quarter, the Broncos accumulating only seven passing yards in the second Q compared with the Jets 76, and 19 in the third Q, the Jets 79. Tebow’s third Q pass completions were a dismal 1–8. Praise has to go to the Broncos defense keeping most of those New York passing yard advantages from resulting in points.   

Yes, too many of Tebow’s passes last night hadn’t completed, and a slew of his drives couldn’t post numbers, but that fourth quarter Tebow surge that has won him praise in the past won him praise again. He’s hard to label, and that could be a plus, in that an opposing defense will have trouble reading him. Is he a diamond in the rough still? Is he a dynamo performing best under extreme pressure instead of being a steady point-gaining influence from kick-off on, therefore he’ll likely end up doing the unexpected, an unorthodox move that stuns and puts points on the board? Or, is Tebow reaching to be super savvy, yearning to be more methodical and controlling, already knowing just when to go pedal-to-the-floor, carrying the ball as if a receiver rushing at Mach-2 speed? Is he a natural fullback or WR posing as a QB? And, has Broncos head coach decided to free Tebow to explore his own talent, his own limits as he learns how the NFL offense has to differ from Tebow’s college game, therefore we’ve been seeing Tebow exceptionally bad as well as amazingly good in any drive that he captains, somehow saving the best for last? We’ll probably have the answer here before the New Year.  

Kudos, of course, to the Denver defense that held the Jets from scoring after the Tebow-led TD,  special mention: lineman Von Miller sacking Jets QB Mark Sanchez with seconds to go before final, Sanchez being a QB highly successful at fourth down passes winning games. The Denver secondary? Best yet in 2011! The high-rollers expecting the Jets to clobber the Broncos by more than seven based their moves on the Broncos defense giving away any points that the Tebow-led offense could gather; they hadn’t factored in that Andre Goodman interception. The Jets were held to only 83 rushing yards by the Broncos defense, while Jets QB Sanchez was prevented from completing nearly half of his 40 pass attempts.    

It’s wise to keep in mind that no NFL QB can keep steering a series of wins without having the versatility that an NFL QB has to acquire. Against the Jets, Tebow passed for only 104 yards, the Jets Sanchez for 252. Had the Denver vs, Jets defense been what it was four games ago, thus unable to block and interfere quickly enough, the Jets would have beat the Broncos by that proverbial mile. Though Tebow was able to rush for 68 yards from eight attempts, that 68 was more than 50 percent of the Broncos 125 rushing yards total. This speaks to Tebow’s talent as a ball carrier and clutch miracle-worker inside the enemy’s twenty, but it also speaks to a weakness in the Denver offense, i.e., insufficient QB/receiver pass completions, which could hold the Broncos back when the team faces the San Diego Chargers, November 27.

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SPORTS + (-)  ---   ALL sports resonate, radiate, they reach deeply into the fabric of American life, underscoring the virtues that we try to honor and display day after day. Yet many Americans can hate that sports can remind us of human frailty and of the worst that is in us.

Right now, Americans are sickened by the Penn State scandal, by the alleged perversity of a Penn State football official and of the tactic of deniability used to preserve already tarnished individuals and a flawed institution. Also, a Green Bay Packers defensive lineman, John Jolly, was sentenced to six years in prison this week for drug-related crimes, and news surfaced yesterday that a Syracuse football coach allegedly abused a child.

Less disturbing, of course, but disturbing enough, is that a 2011/2012 NBA season may never be, according to some NBA officials, weakening chances for all NBA athletes to enhance their performance value, hurting business enterprises wherever NBA games take place, therefore impacting the nation’s overall economy adversely.

The above-cited seems to underscore sewage, building a case that sports is mostly dirty, at its core a collection of rot.

But the American way of fairness asks that anything reeking of the negative should be seen in perspective, weighed in balance with whatever related good can be found. With this in mind, and looking at the bigger picture, all sports become a reflection of the better side of American life and of human nature globally. Within the nation’s several hundred colleges, and among America’s many sports franchises, are programs and games still quite rich in guidelines, filled with ways advising how we humans can actualize, be the best that we could be as we face the challenges of daily living.

There’s still no better environment than the sports realm for young persons and adults to learn about teamwork, sharing, competition and fairness, what it is to face adversity and win, how to lose gracefully, to try again and again, to develop and sharpen one’s skills through discipline and hard work, to stay strong and to be healthy, to adhere to high standards of behavior, to shape what indeed is heroic.

So, it’s important to realize that reports of the bad and the ugly represent probably less than two, maybe three percent of the entire spectrum of American sports. Make no mistake, the lion’s share of sports programs across the land are more stable, fair and educative than the week’s reports could have us believe.

An imperative, then, is that leaders within the sports realm, and fans everywhere, be especially vigilant as recommendations for ways to rid sports of its spoilers and deviates surface, some of which could weaken rather than reinforce America’s sports programs, for instance, policies empowering Washington, or even state capitols and municipalities, to restructure and enforce rules governing sports, leading to the politicalization of sports, which has been prevented successfully ever since the first Olympiad centuries ago.    

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