Terrell Pryor, Sr. Is No Tim Tebow, And That's a Good Thing

Back in 2011 or so, no one would have predicted that Terrell Pryor, Sr. was going to be a better NFL player than Tim Tebow. I mean, look at the situation - Tim Tebow, Heisman Trophy winner and first round draft pick, had replaced the highly ineffective Kyle Orton in  Week 4 of the 2011 NFL season. After starting 1-3, the Broncos found new life with Tebow and finished the year at 8-8 and actually won a playoff game. It was Tebowmania in Denver and around the country and he was on top of the world!

Photo: http://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/20120108__broncos-tim-tebow-grimace-010812p1-1.jpg?w=600

Where was Pryor in 2011?

Getting banned from Ohio State University for numerous illicit activities, getting his head coach fired, and then somehow getting selected in the supplemental draft by the Oakland Raiders.

Polar opposites, right? Ironically, once 2012 started their paths were on similar trajectories. Neither player had the kind of skill set that NFL quarterbacks generally require. Very few teams were willing to take a chance on either player, including a Broncos team that traded away Tebow to acquire an aging veteran quarterback coming off a significant surgery for a neck injury.  That doesn't speak a lot about the confidence they had in him for the future.

For both Tebow and Pryor, it was their mental quarterbacking capabilities more than their physical ones that caused team after team to turn them away. Despite the fact that both quarterbacks had been highly recruited and decorated in college, neither's game translated into success in the NFL.

When Tebow was traded to the New York Jets in 2012, it seemed like a good spot with potential to turn into a good thing for him.  However, the Jets never seemed to want to put him on the field and cut him the following year as soon as they drafted another quarterback (Geno Smith, y'all).  Somehow following that debacle the New England Patriots gave him one last shot to make an NFL roster but cut him before the 2013 season started.  Thus, the NFL career of one Timothy Richard Tebow was over.

Tebow could have learned a lot from Pryor. While Tebow was struggling trying to improve himself as a quarterback, Pryor was doing the same for a variety of teams: Oakland (where he did start a handful of games), then the Seattle Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs, and Cincinnati Bengals.  It was after yet another quick cut by a team with no interest in attempting to develop him as a quarterback that he made the momentous choice that Tebow never did:  he switched to a more natural NFL position.  For Pryor it was wide receiver. For Tebow it would have been tight end.

Pryor's height and natural speed were great assets to him as he worked hard to learn how to be a NFL wide receiver. The other thing he had was tenaciousness. Pryor was cut at the very beginning of the 2015 season by the Cleveland Browns and spent virtually the rest of the season out of the NFL before being re-signed by the Browns in December.  From that point on, Pryor began to impress with his receiving skills and broke out at his new position in 2016.  Where did that take him? Signing a pretty nice one-year contract with the Washington Redskins for the 2017 season and providing him with an opportunity to sign an even larger one next year if he performs well in a clearly better offense.

Where is Tebow? Playing minor league baseball as a 30-year-old.

Photo:  https://usatthebiglead.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/tim-tebow-baseball.jpg?w=1000

Had Tebow displayed the kind of flexibility and adaptability that Pryor did at the same point in their careers, he would still be playing in the NFL somewhere as a tight end. I have no doubt about that. Tebow's strength and drive would have made him relevant to at least one team over the past 4 years. However, his pride and stubbornness sent him packing and now he's playing minor league baseball. I think that a higher power was trying to tell Tebow something, but he just wasn't listening.