After the Gators suffered their third loss of the season and slipped in the SEC East standings, it appeared as if the Ducks’ Dennis Dixon had slid into the role of the nation’s best dual threat quarterback and the leader in the Heisman race. Well, seven touchdowns and a romping of the Ol’ Ball Coach have a way of making someone forget about `quality losses’ to Auburn, LSU and Georgia.
Tim Tebow did everything but throw a touchdown pass to himself during Florida’s 51-31 thumping of the Gamecocks. Superman racked up 304 yards and two touchdowns on 22-of-32 passing to go along with his five rushing scores and 120 yards on the ground. The sophomore signal caller has scored a rushing touchdown in 11 consecutive games which is a school record and the longest such streak in the nation. His 19 rushing scores are the most for a quarterback in SEC history and he smashed some guy named Emmitt Smith’s school record for rushing touchdowns in a single season, which was 14.
It’s pretty hard to imagine that a major school can actually survive when only one player is responsible for almost an entire offense, especially in such a difficult conference, but that is exactly what the Gators are doing. Against South Carolina, Tebow accounted for 424 of Florida’s 537 total yards of offense! That’s 80 percent!
And this is nothing new for Urban Meyer’s winner. On the season, Tebow has personally accumulated 3,250 yards of offense (2,532 pass, 718 rush) and 42 touchdowns. Florida as a team has 4,502 yards and 53 scores on offense. In other words, Tebow’s good for 72 percent of their yards and 79 percent of their scoring. That’s as close to a one-man-band as you’ll find in today’s game.
The insanity of the season should level the playing field, seeing as how there will probably be no clear-cut `best player on the best team’ excuse for voters to fall back on. This is a good thing because we were starting to hear some `Todd Boeckman for Heisman’ chatter. Instead, this could be the year in which the trophy is actually given to truly the best player in the nation. And in that case, you can start engraving Tim Tebow on the name plate right now.
Links:
[AJC.com]: Tebow has career-high 5 rushing TDs to lead Gators
If it’s a Yankee fan, I’m going to tell them to go take their seat and sit there for the whole nine innings,” (Michael) Hornung said. “I have free reign. I’m judge and jury.
