College Football Countdown: 88 Days
By Matt Green
On today’s College Football Countdown, we continue yesterday’s theme of all-time great SEC quarterbacks, but today it’s all about the Florida Gators.
Florida has the most tradition of any SEC program when it comes to the quarterback position. There are five former Gators in the top 12 in SEC history in career passing touchdowns, as well as three of the top five.
And that leads us to no. 88 in the Southbound and Down College Football Countdown.
88
Florida’s Chris Leak and Tim Tebow’s career passing touchdowns.
There’s an old saying that when you have two quarterbacks, you don’t have a quarterback. Well that wasn’t the case for the 2006 Florida Gators. Urban Meyer played the two-quarterback rotation better than anyone has ever done it on the way to a national title.
Tebow was essentially the third-down running back, while Leak played the more traditional quarterback role. Tebow rushed for 469 yards and 8 touchdowns, while Leak threw for 23 touchdowns and 13 interceptions.
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Leak played from 2003-06. In his four years in Gainesville, he threw 88 touchdowns and 42 interceptions. He’s also third in SEC history with 11,213 career passing yards. As a sophomore in 2004, Leak led the SEC with 3,197 passing yards and 29 touchdowns.
Tebow played from 2006-09. And in his time in Gainesville, he was the biggest star the college football world had seen in some time. He became the first sophomore in NCAA history to win the Heisman Trophy in 2007 when he scored 55 total touchdowns. He threw for 3,286 yards with 32 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. He also ran for 895 yards and 23 touchdowns on the ground.
In his four years, Tebow threw for 88 touchdowns to just 16 interceptions, a 5.5 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
To put those numbers into perspective, The Gators, as a team, have only thrown 105 touchdown passes in the last seven years combined. The most touchdowns by an individual over that span is 12, by Jeff Driskel in 2012.
Florida might’ve found their quarterback for this year with Malik Zaire, and that will go a long way to their success in 2017.