Can Too Much Media Coverage Be a Distraction to Manning, Tebow and Palmer?

If a quarterback is always standing before a microphone or in too many interviews with the media, does it cause a distraction from his focus on studying the play book and preparing for the 2012 season?

Lately, there is so much attention being put on Peyton Manning and Tim Tebow. One wonders if this attention is a distraction, causing the NFL players to loose focus of why they playing football.

Let's compare the first two years of NFL performance for Manning, Tebow and Carson Palmer. Here is a graph:

As you peruse the data, you see that both Palmer and Manning increased in performance in the category tagged completion percentages. However, Tebow, a darling of the media, decreased in his second year in the NFL.

Palmer	Manning	Tebow
60.9	56.7	50
67.8	62.1	46.5
6.9	5.4	-3.5	Difference

Quite frankly, the start-up performance of Palmer was more outstanding than Manning if you focus on the first two years in the NFL. The numbers show that Palmer increased by 6.9 percentage points, and Manning increased by 5.4.

Tebow, however, decreased in his second year with a -3.5. Is it possible that he became distracted because the media flooded the public and him with news about Tebowism?

If the Denver Broncos value the completion percentage as an indicator of potential of a quarterback, then the public should understand that Tebow's numbers in the completion category did not have a steady increase, but a decrease.

Palmer does not seem to get the same level of media attention as the other two, but in the Raider Nation, in general, courting the media is not a priority. Just win, baby is the focus at all times.

The Raider Nation, in my opinion, would rather have the wins than the wind and flurry of stories about auxiliary activities, especially when the drought in going to the playoffs has lasted as long as it has in the Oakland Raiders franchise.