2010 NFL Draft Preview - Oakland Raiders Select Tim Tebow

With the eighth pick in the 2010 NFL draft, the Oakland Raiders select quarterback Tim Tebow from the University of Florida. Shocked? Think about it. Are you really that surprised?

Now is the time for draft speculation to run wild, so I thought I would get it started with perhaps the craziest or most probable scenario out there. To begin, Al Davis alone runs the Raiders. Al Davis does what Al Davis wants and usually it is the last thing anyone would expect or would believe was good for the team.

Does Oakland need Tim Tebow? They need something, probably not Tebow, but that isn't the point. Tim Tebow is a big name, he's "hot" for many different reasons including his play/lack of play and his commercials, and Al Davis likes high profile, big names and players who are "hot".

Need more reasons? No problem. The Raiders (Al Davis) always seem to overvalue talent and draft players many spots ahead of where everyone else rates them. For proof we need only look to last year's draft and the Raider's selection of Darius Heyward-Bey. The Raiders really reached for Heyward-Bey, mainly because of his combine times, and his play last year showed what a stretch it was. Heyward-Bey caught a stellar nine passes and scored one touchdown. This is exactly what you want out of the seventh overall pick in the draft.

If you want to blame some of this lack of production on the quarterback situation no one could argue it. Charlie Frye, Bruce Gradkowski, J.P. Losman and JaMarcus Russell weren't in the Pro Bowl this year (which in itself is hard to believe as almost every other QB in the league was due to people backing out). Injuries and disagreements as to who should start at quarterback made consistency an issue for the Raiders. All this leads us to Tebow; he is a quarterback. Factor the position listed behind his name along with the Raiders' poor player evaluations, lack of quarterback success, and Al Davis doing the unexpected and you have yourself with the number eight pick in the draft, Tebow. Finally, Tebow is a winner and Al Davis likes winners.

Tebow won the Heisman and National Championship. Al Davis seems to love this sort of player and in the past had some pretty good luck with this strategy, Marcus Allen, Bo Jackson, Tim Brown and Charles Woodson for example. However, while Tebow was a great college player he appears to be more along the lines of Eric Crouch, Andre Ware or Charlie Ward. All of these were great college players but their college successes didn't carry over to the NFL. They were, like Tebow, great athletes who were playing the quarterback position in college but in a system that doesn't translate to the NFL. Should this stop the Raiders from selecting Tebow? Perhaps the better question should be will it stop them?