Part 8 (1/2)
-ISAIAH 40:31.
I know I made it to cla.s.s that next week. I always did. I was well into my major of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences with a minor in Communication. Choosing my major was easy-I knew I wanted to be working with people and youth, possibly in a not-for-profit setting, and figured that zeroing in on that made sense. I never looked back.
But as much as I loved what I was studying, that week was a tough one. There were so many distractions, it's amazing I got anything done. Dealing with that loss was hard enough, but what complicated things even more was the game on the horizon. The following Sat.u.r.day would be my first trip back to Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge since Coach Meyer shook his head at me from across the field before that LSUFlorida game when I was in high school. Although we were still in a stunned state of mind that Sunday, a day after the Auburn loss, Louisiana State students took it upon themselves to do their best to make me feel welcome as we prepared for our visit the following weekend.
It started with a few choice voicemails that Sunday afternoon. Not one of them was worth listening to, but sadly they needed to be heard so that appropriate measures and precautions could be taken. Messages coming in like this one: ”Hey, Tim Tebow, you'd better tell your family to stay inside because we're going to find your parents tonight and they're going to end up in serious pain.” Messages like that-uplifting, positive messages demonstrating good sportsmans.h.i.+p and goodwill toward all.
Of course, everyone on the team had been briefed on what to do if we got messages like that, received intimidating or threatening mail, or were confronted in any way that seemed to jeopardize our safety or that of our families, friends, teammates, or coaches. And so I contacted Coach Meyer and Officer Stacy-Officer Stacy Ettel of the University Police Department was always on hand to keep us safe-to make the coaches aware of what was happening.
By Monday afternoon, the calls were coming in constantly. My cell phone vibrated nonstop, and I had to keep it continually plugged in because the battery was dying every ninety minutes or so, without my ever picking it up at all. Hundreds of calls and text messages were being sent every hour from rabid LSU fans. Crazy, violent, or s.e.xual messages, or all three. Really weird stuff from similarly weird senders. Some of them, but not many, were even literate.
It was such a busy week for me and for us that I simply didn't have the time to deal with getting a new phone with a new number, but I must admit, even though I was no longer taking the calls or listening to the messages, it really got me pumped up to see how much I was in the thoughts of LSU fans. I really was a concern to them and their football team, I guess. In a way it was flattering, but it got old quickly. As best I could figure, someone at LSU or in the surrounding area got my number and gave it out, and I was told that there were announcements at bars around Baton Rouge along the lines of, ”This is Tim Tebow's number. Call or text him and give him a hard time.”
As we were on the bus that Sat.u.r.day afternoon heading into the stadium, Jim Tartt, our junior offensive lineman, reached over and grabbed my perpetually buzzing phone. He answered, at random, one of the many calls still coming in and exploded at the caller. It wasn't pretty, but I was glad I had Jim on my side. The caller probably thought it was me letting him have it. Oh well . . .
I appreciated that the guys were defensive of me-we were all in this together, and now we were headed into the unfriendly confines of LSU. When we were just a few miles out from the stadium, it started getting really crazy. The place and its proud fan base were just going nuts. Fans were banging on the side of the bus as we drove by, and as we were getting closer to the stadium, more and more people were banging on the bus. To its credit, the LSU security detail, which was a.s.signed to us, was doing all it could do, trying to pull people away from our bus. We got down under the tunnel, and there were more of them-sitting and hanging from the stands above us, looking down and screaming at us.
I always made it a point to be the last one off the bus. As guys got off, I would stand at the top of the steps, in position to be able to shake all the players' hands as they came by and give each one a hug before they got off the bus. I was standing there hugging people and watching as Coach Meyer and the defense got off the bus. Coach Meyer was already fired up, when one of the fans, from across the ropes beyond which fans weren't allowed to venture, threw a beer on him.
Everything started to escalate after that, and I thought there would be a fight right there around the bus between their fans, our players, and our fans who had also gathered there to welcome us as we exited the bus. In the middle of this ridiculous scene were our parents who were right up there at the front of everything, along with my family, of course. If it wasn't such a potentially explosive and dangerous moment, it would have been laughable-all of this over a football game. Coach Meyer unb.u.t.toned his jacket, dropped his briefcase, and put his hands up in the air to get us, our families, and our friends fired up. Of course, it got the LSU fans going crazy too.
From all the time I'd spent with Coach Miles during recruitment, I knew this whole display would have bothered him as much as it bothered us. It looked like it was going to be a full-fledged pregame brawl. Not exactly the type of warm-up for the game the coaches usually planned-at least for us. It was stunning, some of the things that people were saying to my parents and the parents of other players. Fans were three feet away from them, calmly cursing at them with every four-letter word and more. There were girls who'd come up to my dad and mom and direct vulgarities at them, followed by, ”What are you gonna do about it?” For anyone wondering, that is not what I'm looking for in a spouse.
We probably used way too much energy too early in dealing with this melee. We all ran into the locker room, still dressed in our suits and much more worked up than we needed to be at this stage in the pregame process. After we got dressed and took the field, the whole pregame was so exciting. Way too exciting. The whole student section was chanting ”_____ ______, Tebow,” (you can fill in the blanks-but don't think churchy words) for much of the pregame, which got me even more fired up, if that was even possible. If anything, I probably did some stuff to egg it on too. My veins were coursing with adrenaline and anger, and I couldn't wait to take the field and get the game started.
Coming into the game, LSU was ranked number two in the country, but we opened the game playing like the better team, while they were playing cheap. From the outset, Tyson Jackson, Glenn Dorsey, and their other defenders that made up what some say was one of the best defenses ever in college football, were all talking trash to us, and I was loving it. When they were hitting me on an option play to make the stop, they were still trying to hit me while I was already on the ground.
We kicked a field goal on our opening drive and then held them and forced them to punt, after which we drove the length of the field again, down to their two yard line. I faked the run, bootlegged out to the left, looking for Kestahn Moore in the end zone; but he was covered. I kept running all the way to the sideline, looking for someone to come free, then I stopped and backed up for just a moment and momentarily tucked the ball. That's when the three guys around Kestahn finally stepped up for just a split second, thinking I was getting ready to run it in. At that moment Kestahn came open, and I threw it to him-pushed it into the air toward him, is probably more accurate-and he made an amazing grab around his knees for the touchdown, and the kick for the extra point put us up, 100.
That was one of my favorite plays of my entire career.
They scored a touchdown, and we tried to put together a drive after taking the ensuing kickoff but ended up having to punt. They had a few very long drives, keeping the chains moving and the clock running down. That was frustrating, but we still led, 107. We got the ball, drove to their six yard line, and called a pa.s.s play, while also antic.i.p.ating a heavy blitz. Instead, they dropped back into pa.s.s coverage, blanketing our receivers, and so I kept the ball, cutting back left, and then dove into the end zone to stretch our lead to 177. I happened to have scored in the end zone designated as the LSU student seating area, and so I took the liberty of celebrating with my teammates right there, all of us jumping around for just a while for the benefit of our mockers. No doubt some of them had placed a call or two that week also.
I may have crossed the line, then, but it had been a long week and a long day already, and all thanks to the antagonistic att.i.tude of the LSU crowd. I jogged over to the corner of that end zone and acted like my hand was a phone and dialed a number and yelled, ”Who're you all calling now?”
For some reason, that seemed to get them even more worked up.
We got the ball to start the second half and started marching right down the field on our first few plays. Then, on a play that seemed to sum up the inconsistencies of the 2007 season, I handed off to Kestahn, our most talented running back, who had already made that fantastic touchdown catch, and at the end of a beautiful little ten-yard run he simply tripped, unforced and untouched, and fumbled the football. LSU recovered.
That got the crowd back into it, and we felt the game beginning to change at that point. They drove down the field and scored to make it 1714 after a fake field goal, when just moments earlier we were looking at moving in to take a 247 lead. We kept fighting, though. We scored on a thirty-seven-yard pa.s.s to CI (Cornelius Ingram) on a well-designed play drawn up by our coaches. They blitzed us, and we read it and beat the blitz for a touchdown to CI, taking our lead to 2414.
Even after they scored to cut our lead to 2421, we had chances to put it away, but throw together a couple of drops, an off-target pa.s.s, and lining up in a wrong formation a little later, and we were punting again. They converted several fourth-down plays for first downs to keep the drive alive, and in that, their final possession, they marched down the field, scoring with just over a minute to play.
Talk about a frenzied atmosphere.
On our final possession, I ran the ball out to around the fifty, and then on the last play we had time for a Hail Mary, but I overthrew it, just past Coop's hands, and they hung on to win by a heartbreaking score of 2824.
The game was ultracompet.i.tive, ultraexciting, and one of my favorites to play in because of the atmosphere that surrounded every aspect of it, from the week leading up to it, the bus ride in, the rowdy stands-everything. Annoying as those phone calls were, the LSU fans made it awesome. Really. And we came away with our health, which is why I can probably be so generous with my praise for their totally unacceptable behavior in civil company.
At the same time, the loss was also devastating to me and to all of us, because we felt like we'd played one of our best games up to then. Statistically it didn't look like much-we only scored 24, and we lost-but, still, to do that against a team of their caliber was something. We just needed to find a way to finish it off and win the game. It was crus.h.i.+ng for all of us to come so close and do so many things well as a team yet just not do enough to win.
That game reminded me how the little things can change a game. That's why as a team and as the leaders on a team, you can never take the little things for granted. The things that lose games are not necessarily an individual drop or breaking a tackle or something like that-that's going to happen in every game-but what's going to change the game is an error of going the wrong way or not having the ball high and tight. Those are mental errors.
We didn't make big mistakes in that game; it was just a series of little things that tripped us up. That always gets me, because it's not for a lack of talent. It's that I didn't focus quite enough or consistently enough, didn't care enough in my mind to tell myself to do it the right way every time. And that's what was so frustrating- we had so many opportunities on both sides of the ball to do some little thing here or there to win the game. To execute a little better. To make a better block or a better read in pa.s.s coverage. On one of those fourth downs, or when they faked the field goal and got a first down, if only we could have read the play sooner and stopped it, we could have won the game. If we had executed better on any of our drives offensively, we could have won it. If we had put it in the end zone just one more time, if Kestahn hadn't fumbled, if CI hadn't gone the wrong way, if I had stepped up and made one more play, seen one more open receiver. There were so many what ifs in that game. And so many things that should never have happened. Things we gave away-they weren't taken away by better play-we just didn't execute fully when we could have.
Maybe, too, the pregame frenzy had sapped just enough of our mental edge by the time all the screaming and voicemails had stopped.
One of the biggest differences between my soph.o.m.ore and junior years was that we wouldn't tolerate those little mistakes any longer. We used those experiences in 2007, like those we recounted and remembered from the LSU game, to learn and grow and get ready and better for 2008.
As dejected as I was with our inability to perform those little details that could have won the game for us, I walked away from the LSU game feeling really good. To go into a hostile arena like that at LSU, with that pregame atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife, to face that kind of adversity and play the way we did-fighting all the way to the end-there was something satisfying in that. And to lose because we just weren't finis.h.i.+ng off some of the small things left me feeling confident that, with some adjustments and better attention to some of those little things, we'd be able to handle a lot of challenges from there on out.
We had a bye week before we played Kentucky, and during the bye week, Kentucky beat LSU. Go figure. We headed to Lexington the weekend of the game, and Kentucky was particularly focused on this being their second big game in a row, since it was us and they hadn't beaten the University of Florida in two decades. They were ranked thirteenth in the country at the time, and after that LSU game, we certainly weren't going to take them lightly. Their quarterback, Andre Woodson, had been playing really well for them, and they had other good offensive players and a pretty good defense to boot.
We went three and out to start the game, and then Andre Woodson threw a thirty-three-yard touchdown pa.s.s. It was clear we were in for a ballgame. If we hadn't been ready to go up until then, that was a pretty good wake-up call. When we got the ball back after their kickoff, I told Coach Meyer to give me the ball. The first play we threw an option run-pa.s.s/stretch play to the right, and I just punctured it by breaking several tackles, gaining about twenty-five yards. From that point on, we really started moving. We drove them backward down the field and closed out the drive when I threw a ten-yard touchdown pa.s.s to CI. They couldn't move the ball against our defense, and when we got the ball back, I threw a sixty-six-yard touchdown pa.s.s to a wide-open Louis Murphy. It was a lot of fun to be in a game like that with both teams playing well, and scoring. We led 2110 at the half.
We scored on our first possession of the third quarter to make the score 2810, and it went back and forth for a while after that. Early in the fourth quarter I carried the ball, and after a gain, I hit one of their players as I continued the run, bouncing off him and throwing me off balance; then when I reached down to put my hand on the ground to brace myself, another player hit me right on my outstretched shoulder. Right away, I could tell that the hit had done some pretty significant damage to my shoulder. I couldn't even lift my right arm. My nonthrowing arm, thank goodness.
I know my body pretty well, and as the game wore on and the pain remained, I knew this was going to nag me the rest of the season. But the pain wasn't disabling, and as we expected, it would require the standard course of treatment as any bad sprain requires.
Kentucky came back to score, cutting our lead to a single score. We needed to mount a drive, and we did. I hit Kestahn Moore in the flat for a big first down. Then we called Trick Left 51 X Pause, and they manned up on Percy Harvin. He beat the guy on an inside fade, and I hit him on the fade at their four yard line.
On the following play, I scored but paid the price again when I lowered my right shoulder to hit a guy to get in there. I remember the agony I was feeling. The sprain didn't get any better with that blow to the shoulder.
But more important, that drive and score sealed the game, as we won a close one, 4537. The next day I had an MRI on my shoulder, and we found out that it was AC separation (acromioclavicular joint separation) and a sprain. The usual course of treatment for such an injury is icing, anti-inflammatory medication, and physical rehabilitation. I got to work, trying to rehab it and recover as quickly as possible. The problem, of course, was my inability to give either of my shoulders a lot of rest. The activities of daily living were hard enough, but then add football-well, no rest for the weary during the season.
Though I knew this could be a season-lingering injury, I was unwilling to accept that. I expected it to resolve itself and heal within moments of being diagnosed and beginning the required course of treatment. It wasn't to be-at least not as I hoped. By using my shoulder, I wasn't doing anything that would make it worse in the long term. The only issues before me were the pain level I faced and the functionality of the shoulder to be able to execute the plays. That's when I started getting shots before every game and as needed before practice to help with the healing, flexibility, and usability of my shoulder, because it was during this next week that we had to get ready to go play Georgia.
I prayed regularly for my shoulder to heal, a process which was way too slow in coming. I had a few why? moments-not so much ”why me?”-but ”why not go ahead and heal it now, Lord?” I wondered what lesson I was supposed to be learning through this-I thought I had gotten a bit better at patience. But the truth of the matter was that as much as I loved the scripture verse from Isaiah, I wasn't always real good at embracing it in my life: Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.
I get the ”mount up with wings like eagles” part-I have felt His power and protection in the midst of some of the most difficult of moments-in the Philippines, at LSU, in dealing with trouble from others, and making decisions for my future-like the one that led me to the University of Florida. I get the part about ”they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary”; I have felt His hand on my back in moments when I didn't understand what was going on and why, and in situations where I wasn't sure I could go one step further.
But I wasn't real good at the ”wait for the LORD” part. You would think that when we stop and take a look at all He has done since the beginning of time and throughout the universe-let alone in my life-it would be easy to ”wait.” It would be easy to understand that His timing should be our timing and that ultimately everything He does is for our benefit and our good-even though at the time it may not seem so and we may not understand. For example, my life, from fetus stage to my birth, if left to the ”wisdom” of some doctor sitting before my mom and dad, would never have happened. G.o.d's timing, G.o.d's will. In my better moments I knew that.
I wasn't there yet, but in my heart I wanted to be, and day-by-day I was working and praying to get there, with Him and for Him.
The LSU and Kentucky games continued to reinforce my place in the Heisman Trophy discussion, because we had put up some big numbers against good teams. Part of the big numbers we were posting reflected all the talent around me. Another part of them may have been due to our inability to get our running backs on track, resulting in my carrying more of the running load than the coaches had originally antic.i.p.ated. As the season progressed, though, it had been getting harder for me to keep up the running load, because more and more defenses were keying on me. And with my shoulder a bit dinged, it became another personal and team challenge for us to overcome.
As we were getting ready for Georgia, it was clear that my impinged shoulder had become a bit more than a slight problem. I could no longer raise my right arm above my head. The coaches wanted to try to game plan where I didn't have to run, but since without me our running game wasn't solid, that wasn't going to work. We had some good pa.s.ses and play action in the game plan, so we felt confident that I wouldn't have to do too much in the way of running. Even though I wasn't close to 100 percent, it was exciting to go back to Jacksonville-my home-for the annual battle between Florida and Georgia.
We fumbled on our opening drive, and they took it down the field, scoring easily. That's when a fight broke out on the goal line, or at least that's what it initially looked like to us. We saw Georgia's players on the sideline racing onto the field as if there was a fight, but then we realized they were jumping up and down and celebrating, merely acting like Pee Wee League players. Except that I couldn't remember ever seeing any little kids actually doing that. They were celebrating, dancing all over the field and making gestures to us, the stands, and, I suppose, the national-television-viewing audience.
If we'd have been a more mature team, I think we would have handled that moment differently than we did. Instead we took it as an affront. That was frustrating to me because instead of merely taking it out on them on the field, we had some guys who wanted to go out there and respond to their goal line antics by engaging them in a fight.
It all settled down quickly enough, thanks to the referees and coaches from both teams. We took the ensuing kickoff and drove the ball right down the field, closing the drive when I hit Louis Murphy for a touchdown. Tied, 77. Unfortunately, Georgia had a great game plan for us on offense, which we watched throughout the afternoon as Knowshon Moreno emerged as a top college running back with 188 yards and three touchdowns. On defense, they knew I was hindered by the injury to my shoulder and couldn't be myself, so they started dropping more and more people into coverage, believing I wouldn't run very often, if at all. Eventually I started to run the ball a little, even with my shoulder, and I ended up running in one for a touchdown to finish a drive. My shoulder was killing me. It was tough. We had other guys out there for us playing with their own dings and sprains and at less than full speed or strength and with some pain. It was simply something we had to do-the only difference being that my injury was more noticeable and, as such, was highlighted more frequently by opposing coaches, players, and the media.
By halftime, I could barely lift my right shoulder at all. Toward the end of the first half I had been catching snaps with basically just my left hand. We were trying to fight and bounce back. A lot of things weren't going our way, but we were battling, and we were still right there in the game, at least for a while.