Tim Tebow and the worst QBs in NFL history

By CM Towle | Apr 21, 2015

Jan 1, 2015; New Orleans, LA, USA; EPSN analyst Tim Tebow prior to the 2015 Sugar Bowl game between the TCU Horned Frogs and the Mississippi Rebels at Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports /

Former kicker Jay Feely says that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Tim Tebow is the worst he’s seen in his NFL career.

There are a lot of opinions about recently minted Eagles quarterback Tim Tebow out there, but most of them tend to agree that he’s not a very good quarterback. Jay Feely, a former kicker for several NFL teams, went a little further on Tuesday, saying that Tebow is the “single worst quarterback” he’s seen in his career, according to Fox Sports.

Now that’s not pulling any punches. Feely tried to mitigate his comments somewhat by saying that he has respect for Tebow’s beliefs and him as a person, just not his skill at the quarterback position. To back up his point, Feely relayed a story where Tebow threw 13 incomplete passes in a row during pregame warmups, while not facing a defense. This was during a situation where Tebow would have known exactly the routes the receiver was going to run and with no defensive pass rush or interfering secondary, and Tebow threw 13 incompletions.

That’s pretty bad, no matter how you look at it. Of course, the rumor leading up to the Eagles signing was that Tebow has gotten better, that he’s vastly improved his skills through a personal coach. Is it true? We have no way of knowing yet, but Feely didn’t sound convinced.

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So is Tebow really one of the worst quarterbacks in NFL history? It really depends on whether he stays in the league after this latest attempt to return. If he leaves a fourth team without seeing much of the field, it’s not hard to argue that he’s one of the worst. Then he can rank among the biggest busts of all time, like Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell.

Like Tebow, Leaf and Russell were first-round draft picks and they were immediately notoriously bad. Leaf threw two picks in his third game for the Chargers in 1998 and only completed one pass for four yards, yielding a completion rating of 6.7 percent. He also fumbled three times. He played for four teams in four years before being out of the league.

Russell was another huge bust when he was supposed to save the Raiders. Not only did he show up to camp overweight several times, but he started in 25 games and threw 23 picks to 18 touchdowns. The Raiders took two years to get sick of him.

Unlike Rick Mirer who somehow managed to stay in the league for over 10 years, which proves that a quarterback doesn’t necessarily have to be out of the league quickly to be horrible. He played for seven different teams during that time, so at least a few teams were smart enough not to hang onto him for long. He never had a record better than 7-6 and when he was traded to the Bears from the Seahawks, he threw six interceptions in his first three games while throwing zero touchdowns.

So far Tebow has played two years for the Broncos, playing in nine and 14 games in those two seasons respectively. His completion rate was 50 percent the first year and 46.5 the next. He had three interceptions to five touchdowns in the first season and six interceptions to 12 touchdowns in the second. He mostly kept his position alive through his running, consistently keeping an average of over five yards per carry.

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