“Don’t screw him up.”

The New York Times traces the evolution of Tim Tebow from college quarterback with mechanics problems to Tim Tebow, college quarterback with mechanics problems that his head coach (despite public utterances to the contrary) didn’t really care about.

“I don’t know if there’s ever been anybody in a team sport that’s dominated as much as Tim, and yet everyone would go, ‘Can he play at the next level?’ ” said Gary Danielson, a longtime college football analyst for CBS Sports and a former quarterback.

Skepticism abounded two years ago for the same reasons it does now: his throwing mechanics, which are about as awkward as a seventh-grade dance. He adjusted his motion at least twice at Florida, once more with a team of quarterback gurus before the draft and again with the Denver Broncos, who, unconvinced of his long-term viability, sent him to the Jets, who almost certainly have their own thoughts on the matter. The subject is bound to come up Monday, when Tebow, almost surely the N.F.L.’s most famous backup, is introduced at a news conference at team headquarters in Florham Park, N.J.

“If there’s something that needs improving, he just works relentlessly at it,” said Temple Coach Steve Addazio, who was Florida’s offensive coordinator when Tebow was a senior. “He’s just wired that way.”

Addazio has saved the evaluation he wrote more than six years ago of Tebow, then a junior playing for Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. On it, he wrote this sentence: “We want this guy on our team.” Tebow fit perfectly into the Gators’ dynamic spread offense, a system devised to win games — which he did — but that did not necessarily prepare him for the N.F.L.

The point here isn’t that Florida had the wrong approach with Tebow.  It didn’t.  It wasn’t Meyer’s responsibility to prepare Tebow for the NFL; it was his responsibility to best deploy his talented quarterback to win as many games as possible.

But what’s interesting is to compare what Mullen was asked to do with his star quarterback and compare that to Loeffler’s marching instructions.  Mullen had a concern that Tebow’s mechanics were potentially harmful in a physical sense and sought to mitigate the problem.  Loeffler was brought in with all sorts of PR hype but behind the scenes was instructed not to muck up a good thing.  How did that work out?  About as you’d expect.

It was never about getting Tebow ready for the pros.  It was about shielding Corch from criticism on the recruiting trail that his system wasn’t conducive to producing quarterbacks who could prosper on the next level.  With Tebow at least, the jury is still very much out on that.  It’ll be interesting to hear if anyone tries to use that against Meyer in recruiting now.

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UPDATE:  This hilarious Charles Pierce skewering of the lastest embarrassment from Ross Douthat begs the question of why God doesn’t go ahead and fix Tebow’s mechanics.