By Dan O’Shea
After almost engineering a second half comeback win against the Chargers, Tim Tebow is one of the hottest pick-ups in Yahoo! fantasy football this week.
He was added 21,237 times in Yahoo! leagues between Monday and Tuesday, and probably has been added a few hundred more times since you started reading this sentence.
Still, he was only about 20-percent owned as of Tuesday evening, which surprises me. Are there that many teams that need absolutely no help at QB?
I was not an advocate of drafting Tebow in the preseason, even as a last-round gamble. Denver coach John Fox just seemed so far away from even letting him on the field as a wildcat option that it seemed like a wasted pick. But after seeing him work last Sunday, and with the knowledge that Fox is now committed to start him Oct. 23 after Denver’s bye week, I’m all in.
Is that too much to base on a single half of football? Maybe.
After a very slow start, Tebow threw for 79 yards and a TD, and rushed for 38 yards and another TD. You can argue that he can’t – and won’t be allowed to – pass for long yardage. You can argue that a defense game-planning specifically for Tebow will be a lot more effective against him than San Diego was when it got ambushed last Sunday.
However – and maybe this is not much more than a hunch – Tebow looked an awful lot like another QB who has taken the fantasy football landscape by storm this season: Cam Newton.
Like Newton, Tebow was very elusive, creating both passing and rushing opportunities after he was flushed from the pocket. Like Newton, he showed he can and will score with both his arm and his legs. Newton has 12 TDs this year, five of them rushing, and his total TD figure ranks him in the top five among all fantasy QBs – actually tied for fourth with Drew Brees, New Orleans. That dual threat more than anything else makes me like Tebow as a fantasy starter.
Like Newton, Tebow will throw some INTs, but his scores should make up for it.
Expert Wire
* Yahoo! Roto Arcade is riding the Matt Forte bandwagon. Forte and Fred Jackson of the Bills have been surprises as the most consistent fantasy RBs this season.
* Bleacher Report reports on Jackie Battle, the new RB savior in Kansas City.
* Fantasy Knuckleheads has a hot read on another surprise at WR: Victor Cruz of the Giants.
And this just in: The first two weeks of the NBA season have been canceled. Though I think we will see the NBA return before Christmas, no one seems in a hurry to study fantasy basketball stats, so I won’t either. It’s all fantasy football until further notice.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on October 12, 2011