Thursday Night Football: Will Win over Jets Finally Give Tim Tebow Validation?

With Thursday Night Football in full swing and giving us another night of the week to relax in our favorite way, we get the New York Jets visiting the Denver Broncos.

This Thursday night matchup offers a perfect proving ground for Tim Tebow.  This kind of prime-time game against a good opponent will allow the world to see if the Tebow project is actually working. 

The Jets are coming off an always-tough loss to the Patriots, but previously won three straight.  They did so by taking the ball out of Mark Sanchez's hands so much and letting Shonn Greene get into a rhythm. 

Greene has finally been getting around 20 carries and it had paid off.  That's what Rex Ryan likes to do, run the ball and trust his talented defense.  Still, for a run-based team, the Jets only average 98 yards per game on the ground.

They won't get into a shootout by any means against Denver on Thursday, though.  Denver has won three of the four games that Tebow has been the starter.  Tebow has had his fair share of knocks by almost every analyst known to man, but he continues to win. 

They have found the winning formula by understanding Tebow's accuracy issues and scaling back the amount of passes he throws.  They have scaled it back to almost nothing.  Tebow threw only eight passes a week ago when the Broncos ran the ball 55 times. 

The use Willis McGahee a lot who should be playing tonight after getting knocked out of the game last week, and they also found amid McGahee's injury that Lance Ball can run a lot, too.  Ball had 30 carries last week and has shown he may not be a breakaway runner, but he can keep the pile moving and in turn keep drives going. 

We may see 80 or 90 combined carries tonight and it will come down to converting those 3rd-and-longs after a couple of failed rush attempts.  It will also come down to turnovers.

Another reason for Denver's success under Tebow is that he doesn't throw interceptions.  He may miss a lot of passes, but at least he is not missing to the wrong team. 

Even in his watered-down pass attack, Tebow has found the end zone seven times.  So he is making big throws enough to go along with the consistent running game John Fox was brought in to orchestrate to win games.

The Jets defense will be his toughest test to date.  They may give up some yardage on the ground, but they do make the backs and, in this case, the quarterback pay for their rushes.  This will be a hard-hitting game as Tebow tries to beat a playoff contender for his fourth win in five games.

If he were to pull this off with his hard-running style and pick up enough third-down conversions to win would he finally get some props? 

He is unorthodox, but once he can rattle off win after win does it matter how it is coming?  I don't think so. 

Now if the Jets shred him up tonight, it won't be a question and it will allow the boo-birds and naysayers to come back out.

Still, does it matter how a team wins?  Even when he threw just eight passes, as the quarterback he plays an integral part of winning the game.  He makes clutch runs, and a couple, just a couple, clutch throws. 

If he wins this game, he deserves some validation for what he has done.  Which would be turning a dead-in-the-water team to a 5-5 team in the playoff hunt.  Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers will always be the sexiest picks with their 400-yard games and five-touchdown outings, but there are a lot of things Tebow can do that they cannot.

Given the choice, I would take a pure passer like Tom Brady or Rodgers as well.  Still, I think for what Tebow has done, he deserves some credit and tonight's game will be very telling if it has been a fluke. 

The Jets will create a test for Tebow that will make it very impressive for him to be able to play well enough to win again.