If you want to start a heated debate at a sports bar, just mention the name Tim Tebow. It's been years since he took a meaningful snap, yet the mere mention of his name still divides rooms. People usually fall into two camps. You've got the folks who think he was the greatest winner to ever lace up cleats, and then you have the "stat heads" who claim he couldn't throw a beach ball into the ocean.
The reality? It’s complicated.
When you look at tim tebow football stats, you aren't just looking at numbers on a page. You're looking at a weird, hybrid era of football where a human bulldozer tried to play quarterback in an NFL that wasn't quite ready for him. Honestly, the gap between his college dominance and his pro struggles is one of the most fascinating case studies in sports history.
The Florida Years: Breaking the SEC
Let’s be real for a second. In college, Tim Tebow was a glitch in the matrix. He wasn't just good; he was statistically offensive to anyone trying to play defense against him.
Most people remember the "Promise" speech or the jumping fade passes, but the raw data from his time with the Florida Gators is actually hard to wrap your head around. He finished his four-year career with 9,285 passing yards and 88 passing touchdowns. That sounds like a great pocket passer, right? But then you look at the ground game. He rushed for 2,947 yards and 57 touchdowns.
Think about that. Fifty-seven rushing touchdowns. That’s more than most elite running backs get in a full career, and he did it while throwing for nearly 10,000 yards.
In 2007, the year he won the Heisman, he became the first player in NCAA history to rush and pass for at least 20 touchdowns in a single season. Specifically, he had 32 passing and 23 rushing. He was basically a one-man offense. He ended his college career with a passing efficiency rating of 170.8, which was second in FBS history at the time he graduated.
He didn't just win games; he owned the record books. He left Gainesville with 5 NCAA, 14 SEC, and 28 University of Florida records.
🔗 Read more: College Football Top 10: What Most People Get Wrong About the 2026 Rankings
Why the College Numbers Tricked Us
The problem was that the SEC in the late 2000s was perfect for a guy like Tebow. Urban Meyer’s spread option allowed him to use his 245-pound frame to punish linebackers. In college, if the pass wasn't there, he’d just run over a safety. You can't really do that in the NFL. At least, not for long.
The stats showed a player who was incredibly efficient (67.1% completion rate in college), but scouts were worried about his "wind-up" delivery. It took forever for him to get the ball out. In the SEC, he had time. In the NFL? Every millisecond is a sack.
The NFL Reality Check: Denver and Beyond
When the Denver Broncos took him in the first round of the 2010 draft, half the league laughed and the other half started buying jerseys. The tim tebow football stats from his pro career tell a story of a guy who was simultaneously terrible and a miracle worker.
In his three seasons in the NFL (mostly with Denver and a brief, weird stint with the Jets), his traditional passing stats were... well, they were bad.
- Completion Percentage: 47.9%
- Passing Yards: 2,422
- Touchdown-to-Interception Ratio: 17-9
- Passer Rating: 75.3
For context, a 47.9% completion rate is usually enough to get a guy cut in preseason. It’s objectively low. Most high school starters hit a higher clip than that. But then you look at the "winning" stats. In 2011, he took over a 1-4 Broncos team and somehow led them to a 7-4 finish as a starter.
He had six game-winning drives that season. Six! He would look like he’d never seen a football for three quarters, and then suddenly, in the fourth, he was Joe Montana with a linebacker's body.
The 3:16 Game
You can't talk about his stats without mentioning the 2011 Wild Card game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. It is probably the most "Tebow" game ever played.
💡 You might also like: Cleveland Guardians vs Atlanta Braves Matches: Why This Interleague Rivalry Hits Different
The Steelers had the number one defense in the league. Tebow went out and threw for 316 yards on just 10 completions. That is an insane 31.6 yards per completion. He also threw for two touchdowns and rushed for another.
Then came the overtime play. One pass. Eighty yards to Demaryius Thomas. Game over.
The statistical coincidences from that game are still eerie to look back on. 316 yards. 31.6 yards per completion. The TV ratings peaked at 31.6. It was the kind of thing that defied logic, which is basically the theme of Tebow's entire professional career.
The Rushing Threat that Never Left
Even when he couldn't complete a screen pass, he was still a nightmare to tackle. In the NFL, he racked up 989 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns in a very limited number of starts.
If you pro-rate those numbers over a full 17-game season as a primary starter, he was on pace for nearly 800 yards rushing a year. That’s Lamar Jackson territory before Lamar Jackson was a thing.
The issue was sustainability. The Broncos' offense under John Fox became a "broken" version of the option. They ran the ball more than any team in the league because they didn't trust Tebow to throw. It worked for a few months, but once defenses like the Patriots figured out they could just "mush rush" and keep him in the pocket, the magic evaporated.
Comparing the Two Worlds
It’s almost like looking at two different human beings.
📖 Related: Cincinnati vs Oklahoma State Basketball: What Most People Get Wrong About This Big 12 Grind
The College Phenom:
- Won 2 National Titles.
- Accounted for 145 total touchdowns.
- Threw only 16 interceptions in 4 years.
- 9.2 yards per pass attempt.
The NFL Enigma:
- 8-6 record as a starter in Denver.
- 6.7 yards per pass attempt.
- More fumbles (14) than rushing touchdowns (12).
- Only 173 total completions over 3 years.
The drop-off in completion percentage—from 67% to 47%—is the smoking gun. It shows that the windows in the NFL are just too small for a long delivery. He wasn't "bad" at football; he was just a specialized weapon in a league that requires a Swiss Army knife.
What We Can Learn from the Numbers
So, what’s the takeaway here? If you're looking at tim tebow football stats to prove he was a "bust," you'll find plenty of evidence. The sub-50% completion rate is a massive red flag.
But if you’re using the stats to prove he was a winner, you can point to the 2011 season and that legendary playoff win. Very few quarterbacks in history have more game-winning drives in a single season than Tebow had in his one year as a full-time starter in Denver.
If you want to dive deeper into how his style of play influenced the modern "Dual Threat" QB, you should look at how teams like the Ravens or Eagles structured their offenses years later. They took the "power run" QB concept Tebow proved could work and paired it with a more refined passing game.
To get a true sense of his impact, go back and watch the 2011 Broncos vs. Bears game or the 2011 Wild Card highlights. The stats won't show you the tension in the stadium, but they do show a guy who found a way to win when the math said he shouldn't.
If you're tracking current dual-threat quarterbacks, keep an eye on rushing-to-passing TD ratios—it's the "Tebow Scale" that defines how much a team relies on a QB's legs versus their arm. Compare his 2011 rushing attempts (122) to modern QBs like Jalen Hurts to see just how much the league has changed since the "Tebow-mania" days.