It just seems like he overemphasized luck. The image caption in the article brings up Tulsa and Ball State and how they fell in 2009. Sure, luck played a part in that. I’d argue that losing coaches (like Gus Malzahn and Brady Hoke) and players (like Nate Davis) was the more important factor. When Central Michigan regresses to the mean in 2010, it will probably have more to do with losing Dan LeFevour than luck.

“But remember who you’re talking about, the most celebrated and maybe the most successful quarterback ever.” I don’t know if you mean this honestly or are kind of poking fun at Tebowphilia. But I think it’s dead on. The NFL’ers may not like to hear this, because they think the NFL is the end-all be-all, but in my opinion Tebow’s incredible success in college renders what he does in the NFL more or less irrelevant. The man is already an all-time football legend.

And I think your praise of Tebow’s moxie and guile is misplaced. The guile probably has more to do with the option system. Moxie is more worthy praise, although it could be diminished by the fact that Tebow is as Meyer once said, “a physical phenomenon”. He has DE size and just enough speed that he is a mismatch. He often carried the ball 3-4 yards and could them fall forward for extra simply because he is bigger than many defenders. And he can throw fairly well.

His mechanics corrections are critical to his success in the NFL, I think. The opposition has more moxie and guile than he has ever seen. I personally think he’ll be exposed like Alex Smith was.

One is bounces of the ball. A guy fumbles and either his own team recovers, the defense recovers on the spot and falls on it, or it bounces up into a guy’s arms and he runs it back for a touchdown. The fumble itself was a probabilistic event, but where it bounced truly was: there was a percentage chance any of those things could happen. Or you have a kicker who is a 75% kicker. One year, all his misses tend to happen in games where it doesn’t matter; the next, he kicks a higher percentage (say, 85%), but his four or five misses all come at crucial times, thus deciding some games. And so on. Between any two teams there are a bunch of lucky or essentially randomized outcomes, even if they are strongly tilted in one team’s favor — i.e. Florida plays Vanderbilt. Vandy should lose based on some kind of expected outcome of the game and all the plays in it, but there’s also a set of “bounces” and unexpected but possible outcomes that could result in a victory for them.

Again, I see what you’re saying that when people hear “lucky” they think the person means, hey, the winner and loser of every game just got lucky and that can’t be true! But that’s not what is meant. It’s that we have an expected outcome based on all the players, strategies, and so on, but lower probability events are not impossible events, and so anything can happen. If you look at the NFL in particular, where the teams are quite even, almost every “game” comes down to luck, though you can’t really say that about season long won/loss records. I know it’s a weird thing to think about but this is different than external circumstances, though those play a factor too.

“External circumstances” is probably a better wording. Take the receiver example. If an offense goes from being pass-heavy to run-heavy and a receiver’s production drops, then that’s bad luck from his perspective. From the perspective of the coaching staff though, it wasn’t luck at all. It was a change of strategy that had nothing to do with luck. Or perhaps the team downgraded at quarterback because of free agency. It’s bad luck for the receiver, but it’s not random chance that the quarterback made a decision to leave. Maybe defenses paid more attention to him after his breakout year. That’s bad luck to him, but it’s not luck at all to the opposing defensive coordinators.

That’s why “external circumstances” fits better. I think for a lot of people, just saying “luck” implies that it’s luck from everyone’s perspective when that’s clearly not the case.