The New England Patriots currently may employ up to 90 football players. Eventually, 37 of them will be fired. Owner Bob Kraft hopes quarterback Tim Tebow isn’t one of them.
Kraft, appearing Friday on CNBC, said that the organization wants to see Tebow stick around.
“We want high quality people who work hard, are team players,” Kraft said, via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com. “I don’t think there is a nicer person that I’ve ever met, and now he’ll get to compete with all the other people at the position, and our hope is that he’s on our 53-man roster.”
Kraft’s comments mesh with the notion that Tebow will be a quarterback and only a quarterback. (Even though we still believe that, if Tebow makes the roster as a quarterback, they’ll find a way to use him as something other than a quarterback.) Based on the team’s experience, he’s a quarterback they may eventually need.
“You never know what’s going [to happen]; Tom Brady missed the whole season a few years ago,” Kraft said. “You can’t enough quality people in any of your businesses.”
Kraft expanded on his belief that Tebow’s religious beliefs were an attraction -- even though that kind of talk has to make Kraft’s lawyers a little antsy.
“In this age of technology, where people are isolating themselves and going to their little instruments and spending hours of not interfacing with people; people who respect tradition, religion, spirituality, I think we need more of that in America today,” Kraft said.
Though Tebow ultimately has to be one of the best 53 players in order to make it to the 53-man roster, these intangibles could help him in a close case -- especially if Kraft is lobbying aggressively for Tebow to stick around. As Tom Curran of CSN New England recently suggested on PFT Live, the goal could be to have Tebow’s passion influence others in the locker room.
That could end up being a bigger contribution than anything Tebow ever does on the field.