Tim Tebow’s quarterback rating for the 2011 regular season was 72.9–ranking him 27 out of the 33 players who qualified in that position this season. His completion percentage was an atrocious 46.5 percent, by far the worst in the league, making Tebow the only QB who completed less than half of his passing attempts this season. His number of passing yards per game-123.5-was easily the worst in the league.
These are not the numbers of a winning National Football League quarterback.
Nobody can or should dismiss the pure grit and determination that Tim Tebow takes with him to the football field. But anybody who thinks that Tebow at quarterback is the answer to a championship for the Denver Broncos–or any other NFL team–is delusional.
We’ve heard the arguments before: the NFL is a passing league; NFL defenses are too smart, too complex, too fast, or too strong for Tebow’s option-style offensive strengths. They are all true. Last Saturday night’s divisional playoff game against the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium provided the rest of the teams in the league with a template for stopping Tebow.
The Pittsburgh Steelers must be kicking themselves right now.
The Patriot’s defense, which has been less-than-stellar this season, went after Tebow with constant pressure from the outside, keeping the quarterback off-balance while preventing him from escaping the pocket where he does the most damage.
Tebow didn’t have a chance, and he looked uncomfortable all night. Sometimes he held the ball too long, sometimes he failed to see open receivers, and in the end the result were mostly the same: He couldn’t produce points. Even when he had a first-and-goal at the New England three-yard-line where he proceeded to throw three straight incompletions–none of them close. Tebow completed just 9 of 26 passes for 136 yards (and most of that production came well after the game was already decided). He was sacked five times and he lost a fumble on his first possession of the game.
Anybody can have a bad–or good–game. But Tebow seemed totally out of his realm against the Patriots, and not for the first time this season. What has been lost in all of the excitement of his last-minute, comeback victories this season is the fact that he has had a lot of very bad performances at quarterback, sometimes even when the Broncos have won the game.
Tebow admitted after the loss to the Patriots that he needs to make improvements in all aspects of his game. That’s an understatement. Clearly we have no reason to believe that he won’t work hard during the offseason to get better at being an NFL quarterback. Maybe he can even improve enough to be competent. But make no mistake, he has a very long way to go.