re: ESPN: College football's top 25 players of the 21st century

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Posted this the other day on the Tiger Rant. When I think top players in CFB I'm thinking of guys that were absolute game changers that were head and shoulders better than everyone else when they stepped on the field. Could literally take over a game single handedly (and often did).

1) Tim Tebow

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I'm sure that I'll never be taken seriously on the topic because I'm a fan of a rival school, but I simply don't get Tebow being #1 on these kind of lists.

Chris leak won that 2006 title for florida. In 2007 tebow lost 4 games. In their great 2008 season he had an utter embarrassment of talent around him on both offense and defense. Ditto for 2009.

Tebow was of course a great player, nobody can possily deny that. But I think his importance to the overall team is massivley overstated. Compare that to someone like Cam, who played on a team that loses 4-5 games with someone else at QB but singlehandedly carried them to victory the entire season.

put it this way. Put Cam on 2008 Florida...are they still national champs? Oh yeah, pretty easily I'm guessing. Put Tebow on 2010 Auburn, are they undefeated national champs? Highly, highly doubtful.

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Yep, it's amazing that Tebow always gets the credit for 06.

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it really is insane. It's like chris leak never existed, you don't ever hear him get talked about when talkin about the meyer years but he absolutley won it for them that year. Talk about one of the SEC's all time most underrated dudes.

Tebow had 13 TDs and over 800 yards of offense that year as a backup QB. Most of which was not garbage time. He was a crucial player as a part time weapon that year, all as a true freshman

No Percy Harvin? Who else was an integral part of 2 natty's catching and running the football? NOBODY he's 1 of 1.

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No Percy Harvin? Who else was an integral part of 2 natty's catching and running the football? NOBODY he's 1 of 1.

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Harvin was mostly an afterthought in 06.

ETA: looking more in depth, I probably wouldn’t even put him in the top 25 of just SEC players of the 21st century, much less all of college football. Those 06-09 gator teams really spread the ball around well.

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it really is insane. It's like chris leak never existed, you don't ever hear him get talked about when talkin about the meyer years but he absolutley won it for them that year. Talk about one of the SEC's all time most underrated dudes.

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I like Chris Leak, but let me show you his stats against good teams that year

@Tennessee - 15-25 for 199 yards 3td 1 int
LSU - 17-26 for 155 yards 0TD 1 int
@Auburn - 9-17 for 108 yards 1td 1 int
UGA - 14-28 for 163 yards 1 td 1 int
SECCG Ar-Kansas - 16-30 for 189 yards 1 td 2 ints
NC Ohio State - 25-36 for 213 yards 1 td 0 int

amounted to 7 TDS in the big games. Tebow had 6, playing less than half the time, averaging over 4.4ypc on 43 carries when everyone knew he was running the ball.


He was a game manager QB. Still a really good one, but don't act like what he did was so special. 23TD's and 13ints as a 4 year starting senior isn't what i would call good.

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let me show you his stats against good teams that year

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looks a lot like a 2006 QB to me

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amounted to 7 TDS in the big games

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all but 1 of which were wins.

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Tebow had 6, playing less than half the time, averaging over 4.4ypc on 43 carries when everyone knew he was running the ball.

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tebow was great at his niche in 2006 which was glorified fullback. As you said everyone knew what he was doing but still struggled to stop it, but nobody is claiming tebow wasn't good at what he did. When it comes to passing, half of what a QB is supposed to do, in 2006 he put up extremely pedestrian numbers overall, which are rendered even more unimpressive ocnsidering nearly half of the completions, yards, and TDs came against western carolina in a game that leak didn't play much.

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He was a game manager QB

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A frickton of people in 2006 were game managers, so what?

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don't act like what he did was so special.

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His contributions in 2006 were more special than tebow's I'm sure of that. Let leak go out of game 1 with an ACL and have tebow start the whole year, florida loses multiple games becuase tebow wasn't a very good passer. Hell he wasn't that great of a passer even after 4 years so certainly not as a TFr.

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23TD's and 13ints as a 4 year starting senior isn't what i would call good.

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it was good enough to win a national title lol.

And hell let's just look at 2006 passin gstats for QBs. When you sort by passer rating his numbers were right there alongside brady Quinn, Chase Daniel, Graham Harrrell, Chad Henne, etc. All those guys were considered really good to great college QBs.

leak threw for more yards than troy smith and colt mccoy and more TDs than Jared Zabransky and chad henne,. I'm not saying he should've won the heisman, I'm saying that he deserves to at least get a casual, in-passing mention when talking about 2006 Florida winning a title opposed to being an afterhought on the "TEBOW WON TWO TITLES" train

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You consider 2x All American an after thought? He was SEC freshmen of the year in 06 too. He's one of the few that was great from day 1.

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He has pretty much an afterthought in 06. Check his numbers from them.

He was elite in 07 and great in 08 but those offenses from 07-09 average almost the exact same number of plays and yards per game on offense each of those 3 seasons and that final one was without Harvin. What was the common denominator? Tebow.

Harvin is 33rd in SEC history in terms of yards from scrimmage. 21 of the players ahead of him played their entire college careers in the 21st century. He’s not even in the top 50 in terms of tds from scrimmage in SEC history.

He’s in the Good-Great category, but not in the elite tier. Devonta Smith is in the elite category for SEC players. Fournette is elite. Bowers is elite.

All excellent at rushing or receiving. Can't think of too many that did both like Harvin.

He should've got more touches doesn't mean he isn't better then some guys with more yards.

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Those 06-09 gator teams really spread the ball around well.

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Yes, but you are underrating Harvin.
Harvin opened some of that up for teammates with defenses focusing on him. Florida had a lot of speed at RB and WR back then, so they were able to hit explosive plays with multiple guys. That doesn't take away from what Harvin did.
Surrounding talent is a factor to contextualize, but it really shouldn't mean that a player gets automatically downgraded because of that.
Harvin actually had more impact potential that didn't play out because of those fast teammates returning kicks. He had 5 kick returns for TDs in the NFL. He had the ability to be as much of a gamebreaker as Bush in the return game.

When people reflect for lists like this, there's a tendency to overvalue the stats. It's not all about stats. But Harvin's stats are extremely good. 11.6 yards per touch on scrimmage yards. That combination of rushing and receiving is the best way to look at his stats because he actually had a lot more rushes than receptions in that offense. It’s not really fair to Bush to make a direct comparison because he had more of a traditional role as a RB, but his average on scrimmage yards was 8.5. Harvin's numbers are so much higher partly because his role in the offensive scheme.

Tavon Austin would also probably be in consideration if West Virginia would've utilized him more as a runner. That game he had against Oklahoma would be on my list of best all-time rushing games.