Cleveland Browns

Tim Tebow stubbornly killed his NFL career; Terrelle Pryor saved his

Published Nov. 15, 2016 2:06 p.m. ET

Chris Chase

While Tim Tebow is off flailing at breaking balls in the lowest level of professional baseball, another hybrid college quarterback whose talents didn't translate to the NFL is a starter in the league all because he understood the futility of living out his dream and had the gumption to switch positions, work hard at his new endeavor and become an asset a team needed, not the dead weight he'd been.

Cleveland Browns wide receiver Terrelle Pryor is having the career Tim Tebow should have had.

Both were quarterbacks with a ton of college success (Tebow at Florida, Pryor at Ohio State) that had a few NFL triumphs before bouncing around the league, getting signed strictly because of their size and athletic talent. They hung onto the hopes that their previous success, no matter how fleeting it may have been, would allow them to stay in the league as a viable starter or backup. It didn't. Pryor was cut four times and dumped off in a trade, practically running plays directly out of the Tebow game plan. Neither had the stuff of NFL quarterbacks. If they wanted to stay in the league, they'd have to change their position. Tebow balked. He was a quarterback, he insisted and, showing an immense lack of foresight and understanding of leverage, told teams this. But when faced with the same decision Tebow refused to make - try to survive in the NFL by dumping the quarterback dreams - Pryor went all-in.

Where his athleticism, speed and size hadn't been enough to make him an NFL quarterback, Pryor would do the next best thing - line up 15 yards to the side and become an NFL receiver. His NFL failures forced his hand and instead of whine about it and refuse to listen to every single NFL team that was telling him they didn't want him as a quarterback, Pryor put tremendous effort into his offseason, studying routes, working closely with Browns receivers coach Al Saunders and, best of all, enjoying the challenge. Pryor didn't view this as a demotion, he looked at it as a brand new opportunity.

He told Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com:

"I just really want to go beat up on some corners. Catch the ball over them, run past them, catch the ball stiff-arm them whatever, it doesn't matter. Every time I touch the field, practice, game, I'm going to bring high energy, high effort.''

In the first three games of the season, Pryor has 14 catches for 244 yards. On Sunday, he reeled in eight for 144, lined up at quarterback in 14 Wildcat plays, had a rushing touchdown and, oh yeah, went in at safety for a play. Pryor almost single-handedly led Cleveland to victory, but three misses by new field-goal kicker Cody Parkey, including one as time expired, dropped Cleveland to 0-3.

Pryor doesn't care about the record. "We have one of the best teams in the NFL,'' he told reporters. "We can battle with anybody. We just have to find a way to win.''

Tebow, meanwhile, refused to switch to the tight end or H-back position to which he was so well suited. His current (surely brief) dalliance with baseball isn't odd because it's Tim Tebow playing baseball but because it's being made by a man who was too stubborn and bullheaded to change football positions. Changing sports, however, is evidently cool.

So now Tebow wallows in the instructional league, which almost nobody knew existed before Tebow used his fame to get there, while another failed quarterback has transitioned to another position and remains in the NFL.

Terrelle Pryor isn't a grand success yet - three games make not a career - and is never going to be Jerry Rice. (Although if Josh Gordon comes back firing then the Browns could have a dynamite receiving duo.) But he swallowed his pride, listened to people around him and transformed himself into a player that NFL teams might want rather than a quarterback no one had time for.