Tebow Fans Stand By Their Man

The Denver Broncos lost their first game of the season, 23-20, to the Oakland Raiders and now head into a Week 2 matchup with the Cincinnati Bengals. The team hasn’t made the playoffs since 2005 and it is already not looking very good for the team to get there again this season.

This past July, the Broncos reportedly tried to trade quarterback Kyle Orton to the Dolphins and make backup Tim Tebow the starter. But the trade fell through and Tebow, a fan favorite of many in Denver who was selected in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft, was left as a benchwarmer. 

The Denver Post reports that eight friends pooled the money that they’d been saving up for tickets to the Super Bowl and put it toward two billboards with text to implore Broncos Coach John Fox to start Tebow instead of Orton, who has been the team’s starter since being traded to the Broncs from the Chicago Bears in 2009. "We believe in Coach Fox. We're just tired of Kyle Orton," said fan Jesse Oaks. "We were sitting around after Fox said he didn't hear the chants for (Tim) Tebow (during the loss to the Raiders) and we figured if he's deaf, we hope he's not blind."

After posting his idea on a Broncos message board, Oaks said that hundreds of other people offered to chip in cash to help defray the $10,000 of buying the billboards, which went up in late September. "It just feels like we're a team that's settling for mediocrity," Oaks said. "We're not blind. We know when we see good football.”

Well, it appears the coach was listening — Tebow is now the starting quarterback for the Broncos.