Tim Tebow has been in Mobile this week trying to show NFL decision-makers that he has the right stuff to be a pro quarterback. His statistics at Florida demonstrate he certainly did at the college level.
SEC Football by the Numbers started the season by looking at the records being chased by Tebow in 2009. Here's an update on how he did.
Touchdown responsibility: Tebow shattered Danny Wuerffel's SEC career record, but he did not break the NCAA major-college record (henceforth, all references to the NCAA are to its top division of football), although another Senior Bowl QB did.
Tebow accounted for 145 TDs at Florida -- 88 passing and 57 rushing -- to finish 23 ahead of Wuerffel, who had held the SEC record of 122 (114 passing and eight rushing) compiled from 1993 through 1996. In turn, Wuerffel was 21 ahead of the next-best mark of 101 achieved by both Peyton Manning at Tennessee and Chris Leak at Florida. To look at it another way, Tebow accounted for 50 percent more TDs in his career than all but three players in SEC history.
Tebow came up one short in pursuit of the NCAA record of 146 shared by Colt Brennan (Hawaii, 2005-07) and Graham Harrell (Texas Tech, 2005-08). However, Central Michigan QB Dan LeFevour did break the record by reaching 150 -- 102 passing, 47 rushing and one receiving. LeFevour has been nicknamed "the Tim Tebow of the MAC." Maybe Tebow should be "the Dan LeFevour of the SEC."
Touchdowns: By running for 14 TDs in 2009, Tebow broke this career record, too. He finished with 57 -- four more than Kevin Faulk scored LSU from 1995 through 1998. Faulk scored 53 TDs -- 46 runs, four receptions, two punt returns and one kickoff return. Faulk played in 41 games; Tebow in 55.
Naturally, with the most TDs, Tebow has scored more points than any non-kicker in SEC history. He's not the highest-scoring player in SEC, though. He wasn't even the highest-scoring active player in 2009. Tebow's 342 points are good for eighth on the SEC career list behind seven place-kickers, including record-holder Billy Bennett, who scored 409 points for Georgia from 2000 through '03, and Leigh Tiffin, who concluded his collegiate career at Alabama in 2009 with 385 points, the second-most in conference history.
Rushing touchdowns: Another broken record for Tebow. With 57, he has eight more TD runs than any other player in SEC history. Herschel Walker held the SEC record of 49 set for Georgia from 1980 through 1982. Walker carried the ball 302 more times than Tebow.
Rushing yards by a quarterback: Tebow ran for a career-high 910 yards on a career-high 217 carries in 2009 to leave former record-holder Matt Jones behind. Tebow finished with 2,947 rushing yards. Jones ran for 2,535 yards at Arkansas from 2001 through '04. Mississippi State's John Bond (1980-83) is the only other SEC QB with at least 2,000 rushing yards.
Total offense: Tebow became the first SEC player to reach 12,000 yards of total offense in his career. His 2009 total of 3,805 yards passing, rushing and receiving (although he didn't have any receiving) was the fifth-best single-season mark in SEC history and lifted his career figure to 12,232 yards. Tebow's predecessor at Florida, Chris Leak had held the SEC career record with 11,350. Tebow set the league's season mark with 4,181 yards in 2007.
Yards per play: Tebow couldn't catch two other Florida QBs in this category, although he is one of seven players (with at least 900 career plays) to average 7 yards per play. Tebow had 12,232 yards of total offense on 1,687 plays (rushes, passes and receptions combined). That's an average of 7.25 yards per play, the third-best career total in SEC history, but behind the 7.75-yard average of Wuerffel and the 7.35 of Rex Grossman (Florida, 2000-02).
The other players who have averaged gaining more than 7 yards per play are Manning, JaMarcus Russell, Matthew Stafford and Pat Sullivan.
Passing efficiency: Tebow not only set the SEC record for highest career passer rating, he also broke the standing NCAA record. Unfortunately for Tebow, so did another QB -- and by more than Tebow did.
The NCAA measures passing efficiency through a formula that considers completion percentage, yards per pass, touchdowns per pass and interceptions per pass. In that way, passers aren't judged by how much they throw, but by how well they throw.
Tebow's rating of 170.8 surpassed Wuerffel's mark of 163.6 in the SEC record book. It also surpassed the NCAA record of 168.9 set by Boise State's Brian Dinwiddie from 2000 through '03. However, Oklahoma's Sam Bradford, despite (or perhaps because of) missing most of the 2009 season, has a career passer rating of 175.6.
Interception ratio: One reason for Tebow's high passer rating is his low interception ratio. In his career, Tebow threw an interception every 62.2 passes. The SEC divides this record into three categories -- for players with 200, 400 and 600 passing attempts -- and Tebow leads all three. For the highest category, second place belongs to former Kentucky QB Andre Woodson with an interception every 51.1 passes.
Tebow came close, but didn't break the NCAA career record. The NCAA measures interceptions in terms of percent of passes attempted. For Tebow, 1.6 percent of his throws were picked off. The NCAA record of 1.3 percent was set by Billy Volek at Fresno State from 1997 through '99.
Completion percentage: The SEC limits this category to quarterbacks who have completed at least 300 passes, and among that group, Tebow ranked second entering the season and ends his career in the same spot. Tebow completed 213 of his 314 attempts in 2009, a 67.8 percent completion rate. That's the third-best mark in SEC history for QBs who completed at least 200 passes. Tim Couch holds the season record at 72.3 percent at Kentucky in 1998. Tebow finished 0.002 percent behind the second-place mark of 67.836 achieved by Russell at LSU in 2006.
The 2009 performance edged up Tebow's career mark to 66.4 percent, behind only the 67.1 percent of Couch from 1996 through '98 in SEC history.
In a strange twist, Tebow did better an existing NCAA career completion percentage record without breaking the SEC mark. The NCAA divides this record into passers with between 875 and 999 attempts and those with at least 1,000 attempts. The 875-to-999 record had been held by Scott Milanovich, who completed 66.2 percent of his passes from 1992 through '95, so Tebow broke this record. Although, again, he's running second to Bradford, who also is in this category and has a career completion mark of 67.6 percent.
It's a non-record, though, because the player who leads the 1,000-or-more category -- Hawaii's Brennan -- completed 70.4 percent of his passes, better than the record in the category with fewer attempts.
Passing yards: Tebow didn't have a prayer of breaking the SEC career mark of 11,528 yards set by David Greene at Georgia from 2001 through '04. Tebow finished with 9,285, good for 11th in SEC history.
Touchdown passes: Tebow threw 21 TD passes in 2009, his lowest output as a starter. That still moved him into a tie for third on the SEC's all-time list with Leak at 88. With Manning second at 89, Wuerffel's 114 career TD are 25 more than any other SEC player has had.
Tebow holds other SEC and NCAA records not examined here, such as the league's season mark for TD responsibility and NCAA streaks for games with both a passing and rushing TD. And he remains the only player in NCAA history to rush for 20 TDs and pass for 20 TDs in the same season.
He became the second player in SEC history to lead his team in both passing and rushing for three consecutive seasons, the second player in SEC history to lead the conference in passing for three consecutive seasons, and the second player to be chosen as the AP's All-SEC QB for three consecutive seasons.
And while he did not become the second player to win the Heisman Trophy twice or the first player to win the Maxwell Award three times -- as he had a chance to do in 2009 -- he again was selected by the league's coaches as the SEC Offensive Player of the Year (ahead of the 2009 Heisman Trophy winner, Alabama RB Mark Ingram).
So does all of that make Tebow the greatest player in SEC history? That's for you to decide.
When the Press-Register selected its SEC 75th anniversary team in 2007, it chose Wuerffel as the greatest player in the conference's history. Wuerffel had several of his records broken by Tebow. Both won a Heisman Trophy and both led their teams to a national championship. Tebow was the QB when Florida set or tied SEC records for most victories in two, three, four and five seasons. Wuerffel was the starting QB in three SEC championship-game victories -- no other QB has done it more than once -- and played on a fourth conference title team.
So did Tebow surpass Wuerffel, or should Herschel Walker have been the choice all along?
