Congratulations Jacksonville Jaguars — what I can only assume is a publicity stunt in signing Tim Tebow has proven to be effective for the local Florida Men and Women who are still fawning over the 2007 Heisman trophy-winning quarterback. As of this morning, five of the top-selling items on NFL shop are Tebow merchandise. Which is just gross.
They signed Tebow to a one-year minimum contract with no guarantees. The one-year deal is worth $920,000, which is the minimum for a player with his amount of NFL experience. The contract also has an injury split, meaning the Jaguars don’t have to pay him his entire salary if he suffers a season-ending injury.
Maybe this is the master plan. Maybe, in a new era of Jaguars football, with a new head coach that seems to be in the headlines every day, they looked at the money and thought to themselves “ya know, I bet we could make more money in jersey sales than what we actually have to pay the guy.”
Tebow isn’t even a lock to make the team out of training camp. As NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said, the veteran’s minimum contract is another sign that he’s going to have to fight for a roster spot.
Signing Tebow is a circus of a move, with a very small chance of having any sort of positive impact from a football perspective. Teams need to stop focussing their energy on cheap ploys and tactics like this one for jersey and ticket sales, and focus instead on winning. The sales will follow.
This isn’t a knock on Tebow. Why would it be? Someone wants to give him money to get back around a game he loves. Of course he’s going to take it. From the Jaguars’ standpoint, though, they traded an actual tight end, Josh Oliver, to the Ravens in March, and have not re-signed other actual tight end Tyler Eifert, instead opting for the guy that hasn’t played an NFL game since 2012 and who has never played the position before. That makes no football sense, and points me in the direction of this being literally nothing more than a publicity stunt.
If that’s the case, then the Jaguars will cut Tebow by August, thank him for coming out and competing, and will roll in the profits they made on his jersey and ticket sales. Which, as stated above, is gross.