Now That's Ridiculous

I hadn't actually witnessed any of the Tebow magic. I'd just read about. Now I've seen it with my own eyes and I think I need to get them checked.

Through three quarters, nada. Only 3 completions in 16 tries and trailing the Bears 10-0. Then the 4th quarter begins and look out! It's super Tebow.

First Tim Terrific leads the Broncos on a touchdown drive and scores with 2:08 remaining to make it 10-7. That 8 seconds is significant because the Broncos get a free clock stop at 2 minutes.

The onside kick doesn't work. That takes the clock to the 2 minute warning and then I assume the Broncos called their last timeout on the 1st down play because I joined the game with 1:55 left, it was second down and the Broncos were out of timeouts.

Let's translate that 1:55 into football time. That's 115 seconds and you get 40 seconds on the clock after each play. That means before 3rd and 4th downs you can eat away 80 seconds and it's not unusually for a running play to take 7 or 8 second so this game is just about over.

Assuming the runner stays in bounds that is.

Marion Barber is an experienced and a good running back. On second down he got the call to stretch out a run wide and chew up clock. All he needed to do was stay in bounds. Incredibly, that's what he didn't do.

By going out of bounds, the clock stopped. The Bears failed to convert on 3rd down and were forced to punt back to the Broncos with 35 seconds left.

That's were things got a little spooky. Denver's field goal kicker had a career long of 59 yards. Guess how far the Broncos manged to get? Just enough for a 59 yard attempt which was of course good to tie the game at 10-10.

The Bears won the toss to start overtime (nothing like a little drama) and marched down the field to a 3rd down on the Bronco's 38. That's a long 55 yard field goal but the Bears still had one play left. They gave the ball to the same Marion Barber who popped through the left side and looked like he was heading for a big gain when a Bronco defender managed to jar the ball loose.

Needless to say the Broncos recovered. They moved into field goal range thanks to a circus catch or two and put the game away with another 50 yard plus field goal.

If I was a Bears fan I'd be pulling my hair out. You can't make this stuff up. No one would believe you. I never saw anything like it. There are certain truths one learns to take for granted in football. Games just don't end like this. Or at least they didn't before.

I feel sorry for Barber. Talk about a double set of goat horns. This is really starting to be a lot more than interesting. This is simply incredible. I can't wait to see what happens next.