In what may be the Chip Kelliest move yet of a dizzying off-season, the Philadelphia Eagles have signed quarterback Tim Tebow to a one-year contract.
And why not? The former Heisman trophy winner hasn’t played in the NFL since 2012, and his career mark of a 33.4 quarterback-rating is pretty dismal (even granted that QBR seems like a weird and dubious statistic). But the Iggles already have four other quarterbacks with sub-par passer-ratings, so why not add a fifth? Might as well bring in one more to compete for the team’s third-string QB slot — after all, your third-string quarterback isn’t going to make or break the team’s success.
Mainly though, this seems like another magnificent case of Eagles head coach Chip Kelly trolling sports radio and the media. Whether or not Kelly is the football genius that many claim him to be, he’s never dull — even during the off-season. Kelly has spent the winter dismantling and (maybe) rebuilding his team in his own image — trading away his starting quarterback, the team’s all-time leading running back, and key members of its defense and offensive line. (My wife’s LeSean McCoy jersey is now as out-of-date as my DeSean Jackson jersey.)
But this is a Tim Tebow story — meaning it’s only secondarily about football. The guy isn’t most famous for his limited playing time with the Broncos, Jets and Patriots, but for the ostentatious gesture he trademarked. Tebow is most famous for “Tebow-ing” — kneeling in prayer during games in an extravagant display of religious devotion.
Tebow’s outspoken white evangelical faith has made him more than a quarterback. It’s made him a culture-war icon. He’s become a representative of a particular brand of Christianity — one that emphasizes preaching and public prayer. And, whether or not it’s what he intended, that has also made him a representative of a particular brand of religious politics — a partisan ideology that emphasizes anti-feminist and anti-gay culture-war issues.
Signing Tim Tebow will thus bring with him a whole new set of fans — people who may or may not care about football, but who have very strong tribal affiliation with the strains of religion and politics he has come to represent. Even if Tebow never steps onto the field in an Eagles uniform, it’s likely the team will sell a lot of Tim Tebow jerseys to those who want to wear that tribal affiliation literally on their sleeves.
But isn’t there a risk that signing Tebow could also alienate other fans from other tribes? The white evangelical Christianity of the culture-warriors defines itself by what it’s against, and the people it defines itself against may feel slighted that the Eagles have brought back a symbol of the religion and politics that opposes them. Isn’t that a big risk to take for a player who’s been out of the game for years and whose primary success was back in college?
That’s why I think the Eagles should follow up by signing another player who’s been out of the game for a while and whose primary success was back in college: Michael Sam.
Like Tim Tebow, Michael Sam is a gifted athlete who accomplished some remarkable things on the field as a college player. Like Tim Tebow, Michael Sam is a charismatic guy spoken highly of by former coaches and teammates. And like Tebow, Sam’s identity off the field has overshadowed his record in the game itself. Sam makes headlines not because he was the SEC’s defensive player of the year, or because he demonstrated he can rush the quarterback at the NFL level, but because he is the first openly gay athlete at the elite college level that the NFL has ever had to contend with in public.
Signing Michael Sam to the same kind of one-year contract that Tebow just got could be huge for the Philadelphia Eagles. Imagine this: The front page of PhiladelphiaEagles.com features two jerseys for sale — Tim Tebow and Michael Sam — side by side under a banner headline reading “Pick Your Side: Offense or Defense?”
Cha-ching! It’d be a culture-war proxy election, fought with dollars. They’d make a fortune — maybe even enough to pay for one of those wild fan-imagined scenarios where the Eagles manage to trade up to draft Marcus Mariota.
Plus, it just seems like a very Chip Kelly kind of thing to do.
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