Tim Tebow was good enough for the 90-man roster in Jacksonville. He wasn’t good enough for the 85-man roster.
The team included Tebow in the first wave of roster cuts, ending the tight end experiment and basically bringing his football career to a conclusion.
“We knew that was an uphill battle for Tim [Tebow],” coach Urban Meyer told reporters on Tuesday. “Players loved him, locker room loved him, but it was the right thing.”
Is it over in the NFL for Tebow?
“I would guess it is,” Meyer said. “You know, we didn’t get that deep with it. Obviously, he’s his own man. [He’s] an elite warrior, an elite competitor, but he’s also 34 years old.”
Meyer said Tebow’s reaction was “great,” and that they talked about it Monday night and Tuesday morning. Ultimately, there was one major reason for Tebow’s inclusion in the initial cuts.
“It was special teams,” Meyer said. “This whole roster management is really critical as we journey here into the next two weeks. Two of the special teams phases are tackling and he had never tackled. . . . The tight end position is one of those [positions], and tailback, if you can’t contribute on special teams, that’s a tough go.”
As we noted on Sunday morning, the fact that six tight ends played on Saturday night and only Tebow didn’t participate in a single special-teams rep spoke volumes about his chance to make the roster.