Jacksonville Jaguars Cut Tim Tebow

The experiment is over.

Confirmed by the man himself, the Jacksonville Jaguars released tight end Tim Tebow on Tuesday morning. It could mean the end of the 'Tebow Mania’ craze that took the league by storm many years ago and popped back up again in recent months.

https://twitter.com/TimTebow/status/1427623104377987084

It’s safe to say Tebow’s attempt at making an NFL comeback did not go well. In May of this year, the Jaguars sent the internet into a frenzy when they announced they were signing Tebow to play the tight end position, something he had never done before. Add on the fact that Tebow had spent the past six years out of the league, including a stint as a professional baseball player, and this always had the makings of a head-scratcher.

Some called it a low-risk, high-reward type of signing. Tebow was brought on board when NFL teams were allowed to carry 90 players during training camp. Teams had to cut down their roster to 85 by Tuesday’s 4 p.m. deadline. The fact that Tebow couldn’t even survive the first wave of cuts, which required the Jaguars to release just five players, says a lot about what a failure this all was.

A lot of questions were raised from the very beginning. Would Tebow have even gotten a shot if he didn’t have a well-documented relationship with Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer, a friendship that dated back to their days together at Florida? We’ll never truly know the answer to that question, but it’s fair to wonder if favoritism and bias crept into Meyer’s decision to sign Tebow in the first place.

The situation reached a boiling point when Tebow flat out embarrassed himself in the team’s first preseason game on Saturday, a 23-13 loss to the Browns. While most of the attention was focused on No. 1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence making his NFL debut, several clips of Tebow attempting to throw run blocks, something he’s probably never been asked to do before a few months ago, started to make their rounds.

https://twitter.com/CarolinaHuddle/status/1426713920073609216

https://twitter.com/CTowersCBS/status/1427089355156475909

Many on social media seemed to enjoy mocking Tebow’s efforts in that game. One could call it harsh, but it’s the type of scrutiny the Jaguars exposed themselves to when they signed a 34-year-old-ex-quarterback-turned-baseball player to play a new position.

Anyone who defended this signing from the beginning brought up the term “leadership” one too many times. Tebow seems like a great guy, but leadership is earned, and you’d have a tough time convincing me that most NFL players didn’t question the legitimacy of this signing, both inside and outside of the Jaguars’ locker room. Current and former players that immediately took to social media to voice their displeasure of the signing back in May included Devin Bush II, Chris Simms, and the always outspoken Shannon Sharpe. 

This sideshow has now officially reached its anticlimactic end, but let’s hope Meyer didn’t lose the locker room over it, because it certainly wasn’t worth it.