Know Your Role
Hi, everyone. Today is Super Bowl Sunday, where the New York Giants and New England Patriots will battle it out for the right to be known as the best football team in all the land. These teams will be led by their star quarterbacks Eli Manning and Tom Brady. However, I’ve been thinking about two other quarterbacks, and what they can teach about success.
Not Your Typical NFL Quarterbacks
Over the last few years, the NFL has evolved more and more into a passing game. For example, in the year Joe Namath set the record for passing yards in a season (4,007 yards in 1967) to become the first NFL quarterback to throw for 4000 yards in a season, even 3000-yard seasons were relatively rare. (No one broke Namath’s record until pro football went to a 16-game season, but Namath’s 14-game record wasn’t snapped until Dan Marino did it in 1984.) However, today, it is very common for top quarterbacks to throw for more than 4000 yards, and this year, three quarterbacks threw for over 5000 yards, and one just missed it.
However, there are two teams in the NFL that have made an effort to buck the trend of pass heavy offenses: the New York Jets, led by Mark Sanchez; and the Denver Broncos, led by Tim Tebow. Each quarterback has admitted limits as a passer, although Tebow’s shortcomings are far more visible, even to the untrained eye, than those of Sanchez. However, each team has had a good running game, and as a result, the Jets made the playoffs two of the last three years, making it all the way to the AFC Championship Game each time. The Broncos, after starting the season with Kyle Orton, finally decided that the season was lost, and decided to give Tebow a chance. To everyone’s surprise, he won seven of his first eight games and the Broncos won the AFC West Division and won the first round of the playoffs against the vaunted Pittsburgh Steelers, throwing for 316 yards, and an 80-yard touchdown pass in the first play of overtime to get the win.
Messing with the Formula
However, there were (and are) a lot of complaints that Sanchez and Tebow were horrible quarterbacks, and that someone needs to be a great passer in order to succeed in today’s NFL. (The last team to win a Super Bowl without an elite quarterback at the helm was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers nine years ago.) In his first season, Sanchez threw 12 touchdowns against 20 interceptions. As a starter, Tebow only completed 46.5% of his passes. However, each of these quarterbacks succeeded when he had a great running game and a defense that gave him a chance, and each has had a tendency to perform well in the clutch. The fourth quarter became known as “Tebow Time” in Denver, where the Broncos have seven wins in the fourth quarter or overtime in only 13 games as an NFL starter for Tebow. In his first two seasons, Sanchez had a 6-2 record on or after December 1st in his rookie season, and a 4-4 record on or after December 1st in his second season (each including the playoffs), and he tied the NFL record for most wins by a starting quarterback in road playoff games, with four.
However, what led to disaster for each team and each quarterback was when the formula changed. For the Jets, Sanchez threw a lot more than he did in either of his previous two seasons, with 543 attempts, or 33.9 per game, compared to 364 in 2009 and 507 in 2010. His high in passing attempts was 59 in a game against the New York Giants. For the Broncos, it came when the Patriots jumped out to a big lead, and were able to stop the run, forcing Tebow to pass far too often. This is not to say that they are terrible quarterbacks, but that they need a good running game in order to make their passing game to work.
This made me think about what it means to fit into your role in life. Sometimes, we try to be flashy, and we try to do things that we are not as good at, and it harms us in the end. In the end, I think that this is not a strike against reaching out to do something new, but an understanding of what our abilities are, and where we work our best.
How do you know what your role is in life?
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Tags: abilities, Denver Broncos, Mark Sanchez, New York Jets, strengths, success, Tim Tebow
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2012 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Personal Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 7th, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Hello Steve,
Great post. Speaking of my own role in life, from the moment I saw my older daughter come into this world, I knew my role would be to be a Dad and a Husband, and I have loved every moment, even those who have proved to be more than challenging!
Stevie @ eHarmony Profile´s last [type] ..Catch Him And Keep Him
February 8th, 2012 at 1:56 am
For a lot of people, determining what your role is can be difficult and take a long time. It is never easy at first. You cannot be in your face about it and not out of the gates with guns blazing. It comes with careful decision, hard work, and humble, but educated execution.
Nile´s last [type] ..Has Blogging Become A Chore to You?
February 13th, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Thank You Steve
Great post on football, my husband would have liked it and you sure do know a lot about it, not knowing much about this sport all I can comment on is that it was well written and very informative. Maybe I should take a copy and fool my husband, use some of your quotes
Again thank you
Sharon
February 15th, 2012 at 7:24 am
Hello Steve, part of what I get out of this is the importance of knowing what our strengths are, and building our plan (game plan) around that. In home business, lots of people try to be flashy and be who they aren’t, rather than finding their own strengths and using them to best advantage. Good post!
Eldon Beard´s last [type] ..Do You Need a Blog to Promote Your Business Online?
February 21st, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Thank you for your reply, Stevie! Please forgive the lateness of my reply. It is interesting to find out the way that we know what our role in life will be, and I am glad that you have found yours, and how everything starts to work together in order to fulfill it.
February 21st, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Thank you for your reply, Nile! You are so right that learning your role takes some time. If you look at the examples that I listed above, Mark Sanchez was widely criticized in his first year as it looked like the Jets would miss the playoffs after winning the first three games of the season, but then, the Colts pull their starters to rest them for the playoffs (essentially giving up their perfect season) and the Jets came back to win the game, and then they dominated the Bengals, and made it to the conference championship, something no one would’ve expected on December 1st, and even being a Jets fan, I can be included in that group. It’s all about making everything come together, rather than thinking we can do it all.
February 21st, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Thank you for your reply, Sharon! There are always places that you can learn about sports, and I am glad that you have found something of value here.
February 21st, 2012 at 7:36 pm
Thank you for your reply, Eldon! I have seen too many people in our industry try to become just like that person in the front of the room at the presentation, but to tell you the truth, that isn’t a very effective model for me. If I see the flash, I run the other way, because I start to wonder if I am seeing sizzle with a steak or a fire instead. Sizzle might be appealing, but there ultimately has to be something to bite into when it comes down to it. If someone is one of these naturally outgoing people, that is great, but if that isn’t you, you will look awkward when you try to be that person.
February 22nd, 2012 at 8:35 am
Hey Steve, my advice to people is to define what you do best and then focus on doing it. Outsource the rest and forget about it.
If people try to do too many things, they get distracted and lose focus.
Find out what you are good at and then change lives with it
March 9th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Thank you for your comment, Gavin! Please forgive the lateness of my reply. You are so right about focusing on what you do best. I think that there are too many professions where people are expected to do just about everything. For example, if you are a pastor, you are expected to preach sermons, visit the sick, counsel parishioners, perform weddings and funerals, just to name a few. Going into seminary, I thought that I might be called to preach, but as time went on, I realized that was not my role. (My work in churches is confined to supply preaching.) I was reading a book about Roger Williams, and it turns out that in the 17th century, Congregationalist churches had a pastor and a teacher. I was thinking that I could’ve definitely used that set up, because I don’t have the best skill set for a pastor, but I could be a pretty good teacher
How many of us would do better in our current field if we could do more specialized work on the things we are good at?