File this under "misleading statements"

Ross Tucker over at si.com seems like a generally decent writer. He occasionally provides anecdotes from his playing days, and he generally has a good grasp of what's going on in the NFL. But today he wrote an article about how the Broncos have their QB of the future on their roster, and it isn't Tim Tebow but Kyle Orton. So, fine, I mean I would definitely agree that Orton will be a better QB than Tebow over the next few years. But then we get this line:

In Orton, the Broncos already have a winning starter who has gone 29-19 during his career despite never really being "the guy" for either the Bears or the Broncos.

Here we go again (copyright, Whitesnake) with the "only QBs win games" stuff. Ugh, I can't believe I have to explain this.

Fact: Orton's teams do have a 29-19 record when he starts. Also a fact; Orton's 2005 Bears amassed a 10-5 record when he started. Also a fact; Orton completed 52% of his passes that season, with 9 TDs, 13 INTs and a 59 QB rating.

Is there anything in there that makes you believe Orton had anything to do with that 10-5 record? Orton was pretty clearly horrid that season (he was a rookie, after all), but that is the main season in which he amassed his won-loss record. Subtract that season and it drops to 19-14.

Ross Tucker is attempting to make you believe that only Orton affects the wins and losses of his team. Of course, that's not true. The Bears generally had a good defense every year he was in Chicago, although the 2008 unit wasn't that good, as evidenced by the fact that they missed the playoffs. The point is, it's ridiculous to attribute wins and losses to Kyle Orton. Orton is a winner when his defense is playing well and keeping scores reasonable (2005 Bears, first six games for the 2009 Broncos), but he all of a sudden stops winning when his defense crumbles (final ten games for the 2009 Broncos). Is that because Kyle Orton has a magical power to win and lose games by himself? No, it's because football is the ultimate team sport, and he needs a good team.

The main thesis of Tucker's article is fine, which is that Denver was stupid to draft Tebow when they already have a perfectly fine QB. And that's all Orton is, perfectly fine. He has the same problem that Jason Campbell has, which is that he's a league average starter and people don't like that. People either want a really good QB to get behind, or a really bad one to make fun of. Nobody likes having a league average starter that elicits no strong feelings either way.

But to call Kyle Orton a "winner" is to ignore the facts of his career. He had a rough rookie season, which is fine because he shouldn't have been playing and only was because Rex Grossman got injured in the preseason. He didn't become a full-time starter again until 2008, when he had an average season (79 rating) and the Bears finished 9-7 and out of the playoffs. Then last season he played above-average football (87 rating) while the Broncos collapsed from 6-0 to 8-8, unprecedented in the history of the NFL (the 2003 Vikings finished 9-7 after starting 6-0). He is not a "winner" with magic beans and pixie dust, he is a league-average starter capable of playing above-average football, and surrounded by a good team he can win. Surrounded by a mediocre or subpar team, however, Orton all of a sudden isn't such a winner.

I would also like the record to show it is also misleading to claim Orton has "never really been the guy" in either Chicago or Denver, when he was without question the starter for the '08 Bears and '09 Broncos, and will again be the unquestioned starter for the '10 Broncos. I suppose what Tucker means is that nobody has ever given him a big contract and long-term support, which is true, but the statement he uses is factually incorrect.