Tebow's success due to production and protection, not magic

OK, that's overstating the case a bit. Foie gras is not so tasty.

But the Cold, Hard Football Fact of the matter is that there is a fundamentally solid statistical foundation beneath the success of the Denver Broncos with Tebow at quarterback.

Put most simply, Tebow consistently outplays the other team's quarterback, often by wide margins. This superior play is the No. 1 reason for Denver's sudden success -- now 5-1 with Tebow at QB this year after a dismal 1-4 start. But these superior performances seem lost on even the most knowledgeable football minds, like that of Broncos executive and Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, for example.

Elway was asked last week on Denver sports radio 102.3 The Ticket if the Broncos were "any closer" to having its proverbial QB of the future on the field. He replied with a blunt "no" and added later, "we gotta get better in the passing game."

Tebow's career completion percentage of 47.1 in the NFL is well below modern standards. But completion percentage is only one small part of the story and not a very meaningful one at that.

So Elway and most observers seem to treat Tebow like a circus freak, a statistically deformed football curiosity who wins games in spite of his own feeble ability to pass the football.

You can win one or maybe two games in the NFL with some kind of fluky effort at QB. But the statistical length and breadth of NFL history shows that teams that win consistently do the same things well over and over -- and those same things begin and end with the quarterback position.

And the Broncos are no exception.

There's no doubt that Tebow's passing accuracy has been spotty at times. At the end of the day, though, he has consistently outplayed the other team's quarterbacks. The problem is that most analysts are limited in their ability to analyze and compare quarterbacks with anything more concrete than the old eye test. Or they look at stats that simply do not matter at the end of the day, such as passing yards, and can't figure out how Tebow is winning games.

Smarter analysts might know to look at critical measures of passing success, such as yards per attempt or passer rating -- indicators that traditionally have a very high correlation to victory. But even those indicators fail to tell the whole story of Tim Tebow.

Enter Cold, Hard Football Facts.com's Real Quarterback Rating, which we introduced over the summer and which has quickly proven itself the most important indicator in football outside of final score.

CHFF Real Quarterback Rating measures all aspects of quarterback play, passing, rushing, sacks, fumbles, etc., and spits it out in a number substantially similar to passer rating and that uses the same formula as passer rating. (Passer rating, while extraordinarily useful in its own right, measures only passing and nothing else -- even if many fans and analysts erroneously refer to it as "quarterback rating.")

Our introduction of Real QB Rating this year has proven fortuitous. After all, it provides a perfect way to compare Tebow to opposing passers. (Get a full explanation of Real Quarterback Rating in the footnotes below.)

Here's how Tebow stacks up against each opposing quarterback this year in traditional passer rating and in Real Quarterback Rating.

Week 7 -- Denver 18, Miami 15 Matt Moore: 92.6 passer rating; 69.6 Real QB Rating Tim Tebow: 91.7 passer rating; 80.5 Real QB Rating

Real QB Rating advantage: Tebow (+10.9)

Week 8 -- Detroit 45, Denver 10 Matt Stafford-Shaun Hill: 126.0 passer rating; 118.2 Real QB Rating Tim Tebow: 56.8 passer rating; 48.2 Real QB Rating

Real QB Rating advantage: Stafford (+70.0)

Week 9 -- Denver 38, Oakland 24 Carson Palmer: 79.7 passer rating; 69.4 Real QB RatingTim Tebow: 98.1 passer rating; 108.2 Real QB Rating

Real QB Rating advantage: Tebow (+38.8)

Week 10 -- Denver 17, Kansas City 10 Matt Cassel-Tyler Palko: 73.2 passer rating; 67.9 Real QB Rating Tim Tebow: 102.6 passer rating; 122.7 Real QB Rating

Real QB Rating advantage: Tebow (+54.8)

Week 11 -- Denver 17, N.Y. Jets 13 Mark Sanchez: 67.9 passer rating; 62.2 Real QB Rating Tim Tebow: 61.3 passer rating; 87.1 Real QB Rating

Real QB Rating advantage: Tebow (+24.9)

Week 12 -- Denver 16, San Diego 13 Philip Rivers: 77.1 passer rating, 68.8 Real QB Rating Tim Tebow: 95.4 pass rating, 94.4 Real QB Rating

Real QB Rating advantage: Tebow (+25.6)

In other words, Tebow is no statistical circus freak winning in spite of himself. Tebow's Broncos are winning because he consistently outperforms the opposing quarterback when you take into account all aspects of production: passing, running, sacks, total touchdowns, interceptions and fumbles. In fact, he consistently outperforms them by a wide margin.

Denver is 5-0 when Tebow produces a higher Real QB Rating than the opposing quarterback and 0-1 when the other team has the advantage. And those results are no coincidence.

After all, it turns out that no stat in football outside final score -- indeed, maybe no stat in North American sports, period -- is more important than Real QB Rating this season when it comes time to separate winners and losers.

At Cold, Hard Football Facts.com Insider, for example, we track the Correlation to Victory of Real Quarterback Rating, all of our "Quality Stats" and many other indicators: we tell you often teams win games when they win each statistical battle. Real QB Rating is easily the most important indicator in football.

Here's the Correlation to Victory of several notable indicators through Week 12 of the 2011 season.

Real QB Rating -- 156-20 (.886) Passer rating -- 135-41 (.767) Real Passing YPA (which includes sacks) -- 124-52 (.705) Passing YPA -- 121-55 (.688) Rush yards -- 119-56 (.680) Rush YPA -- 89-87 (.506) Passing yards -- 80-96 (.455)

The numbers are extraordinarily telling: gaudy passing days do not help you win football games and a more prolific day pounding out yards on the ground is only slightly more important. Instead, more effective all-around play at quarterback wins football games -- regardless of how many yards a quarterback produces through the air. And right now, Tebow gives Denver more effective all-around play at quarterback almost every week.

Can Tebow do it over the long haul? Can he consistently pad his stats and performances by running the football like a college quarterback?

Probably not. Sooner or later he'll have to pass the ball better, like Elway said. But that doesn't change the fact that, right now, Denver's 5-1 record is easy to explain: Tebow is consistently better and more productive than the other team's quarterback.

There are two underlying reasons why Tebow is so effective, two reasons that explain his impressive Real Quarterback Rating week after week.

1. He gets the ball in the end zone more often than any QB in football today 2. He protects the football better than any QB in football today

The Broncos clearly have not scored a lot of points with Tebow at quarterback. In fact, Denver has averaged just 19.3 points per game in Tebow's six starts and has scored 18 points or fewer in five of those games. And clearly, the defense has improved dramatically in recent weeks, either purely as coincidence or as a by-product of the fact that Tebow has helped the team improve in all areas by protecting the football.

But Tebow himself has been deadly with the ball in his hands. He produces touchdowns at an amazing clip, better than any quarterback in football in his brief career. Here's a comparison of Tebow vs. some of the more prolific quarterbacks in recent history.

Career percentage of touches that result in a TD:Tim Tebow -- 6.0 percent Aaron Rodgers -- 5.7 percent Peyton Manning -- 5.5 percent Tom Brady -- 5.1 percent Drew Brees -- 4.7 percent John Elway -- 3.9 percent

Wow. Tebow may not pass the ball effectively. But he's produced an incredible 22 touchdowns (13 passing, nine rushing) in just 368 touches (225 pass attempts, 121 rush attempts, 22 sacks). Nobody in football gets the ball in the end zone more often.

More importantly, Tebow takes incredibly good care of the football. We track something at Cold, Hard Football Facts called the "interception ladder." It shows us that every interception decreases your chances of winning by about 20 percentage points. In other words, interceptions are destructive plays that severely limit a team's ability to win games.

But the Broncos are winning not just because Tebow protects the football, but because he protects it better than any QB in the game today. Here's how he stacks up against some of the more prolific QBs in the game today.

Career interception percentage:Tim Tebow -- 1.78 percent Aaron Rodgers -- 1.83 percent Tom Brady -- 2.2 percent Drew Brees -- 2.71 percent Peyton Manning -- 2.75 percent John Elway -- 3.1 percent

Add in that Tebow has lost just one fumble in his career (with four INT) and his turnover rate is an incredibly miniscule 1.4 percent.

Tebow has suffered just two turnovers all year, one interception and one fumble. Both of those turnovers came in the Detroit game, his lone loss this year. He has a clean slate, zero turnovers, in Denver's five victories this year.

We're not trying to extrapolate too much out on Tebow's career. Clearly, he's played only a handful of games. The other passers on those lists played over the long haul. A lot can change between here and the end of his career -- whenever and wherever that may come.

But for right here, and right now, Denver is winning because Tebow is consistently the best and most productive quarterback on the field.

* (An explanation of Real Quarterback Rating. The indicator is calculated just like passer rating, which is based upon four factors: completion percentage, yards per attempt, TD percentage and interception percentage. You need five raw pieces of data to do the calculation: attempts, completions, yards, TDs and INTs. We use the same formula for Real QB Rating, but add in the impact of rush attempts, rush TDS, sacks and fumbles, in this manner: ATT (attempts) = pass attempts + rush attempts + plus sacks; ADV (advances) = completions + rush attempts. NetYds (net yards) = passing yards + rushing yards -- yards lost on sacks. TDs (touchdowns) = TDs passing + TDs rushing by QBs. TOs (turnovers) = interceptions + fumbles by QBs. QBR (Quarterback Rating). We then punch those five numbers into our passer rating calculator to spit out the Real QB Rating.)

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