ATLANTA -- He'd spent the better part of four hours taking licks from the No. 1 team in the country, ultimately engineering two fourth-quarter touchdown drives and hoisting the SEC Championship trophy, but Tim Tebow's day was far from finished Saturday.
First came the pictures -- with his teammates, with his offensive coordinator, with the cheerleaders. Then came the receiving line. Like worshippers at a Papal visit, giddy Florida fans in the front row waited patiently as Tebow, of his own accord, jogged three-quarters of the way around the Georgia Dome turf slapping hands with nearly every well-wisher within arm's reach.
"That was practically the hardest part of the day," joked college football's reigning Heisman winner. "I just wanted to give back as much as I could."
Florida's quarterback could not possibly have given more than he did during Saturday's epic battle with Alabama. In front of a Georgia Dome-record crowd split evenly down the middle between Gator and Crimson Tide faithful, in a back-and-forth game filled with big plays, big hits and countless momentum swings, the two SEC titans staged the type of drama-filled duel that next month's BCS Championship Game will have a hard time topping.
The Gators (12-1) prevailed, 31-20, in what Florida coach Urban Meyer called "one of the best college football games I've ever been a part of." Tebow, who's spent much of the season overshadowed by a slew of stat-popping Big 12 quarterbacks, delivered his defining performance to date, one that transcended any completion percentages or yardage totals.
For all his previous accolades, Tebow, in his two years as Florida's starter, had never done what he did Saturday: Lead a fourth-quarter comeback on a national stage. Of Florida's previous 12 games this season, he and the Gators cruised to 11 blowouts ... and lost the other to Ole Miss.
Playing without star receiver Percy Harvin and several interior defensive linemen (including season-long starter Brandon Antwine), Florida found itself in a rare dogfight. On eight different occasions, the lead either changed hands or the score became tied. Florida led 17-10 at the break having leaned heavily on Tebow in the running game. (He ran 11 times for 49 yards in the first half and was involved in all but one of the nine plays on Florida's first touchdown drive.)
Alabama seized momentum in the third quarter, however, scoring 10 straight points and possessing the ball for more than 10 minutes, with the Tide's offensive line increasingly imposing its will on the Gators' decimated defensive front. Tailback Glen Coffee (21 carries, 112 yards) gashed Florida on the ground, and 'Bama's star freshman receiver, Julio Jones (five catches, 124 yards), routinely beat Florida's corners.
The Gators had come into the game averaging 263 yards on the ground, but the Tide's defense simply would not allow the type of big plays to which Florida had become accustomed. It averaged just 3.4 yards per attempts, the longest gain going for 14 yards.
So, come the fourth quarter, the Gators changed plans -- and outgained the Tide 130-1 in the final period.
"We put it in our quarterback's hands," said Meyer. "We told Tim, 'You're going to have to go win the game with the receivers' and they did."
Statistically, Sam Bradford and Graham Harrell have produced first quarters equivalent to Tebow's final passing numbers: 14-of-22 for 216 yards and three touchdowns. But neither they, nor Colt McCoy, have faced a defense like Alabama's. They have not been asked to produce a fourth-quarter comeback against the No. 1 team in the country with a conference title and national-title berth literally hanging in the balance.
Those were the stakes staring Tebow in the face when, with just over 10 minutes remaining and his team down three, Florida faced a 3rd-and-5 and the Alabama 9. With Alabama bringing a blitz, Tebow stood in the shotgun and calmly dished an unexpected shovel pass to tight end Aaron Hernandez for six yards. Two plays later, he optioned left and pitched to tailback Jeff Demps for the go-ahead touchdown that made the score 24-20.
After Florida's defense stopped Alabama three-and-out, the Gators then took over on their own 35. On an eight-play drive, Tebow had a hand in six of them. On consecutive plays, he completed a crucial 33-yard pass over the top to Louis Murphy, play-faked and delivered a 15-yard dart to Hernandez and got Florida to within inches of the goal line on a keeper.
It would have been second and goal at the 1 -- except the officials penalized Florida five yards for "sideline interference." It was a potentially devastating call, but the ever-emotional Tebow chose that moment to start jumping up and down and waving his arms at the Gator contingent behind the end zone.
At that point, there could be little doubt among the 75,892 in attendance that No. 15 would will his team into the end zone. Two plays later, on 3rd-and-goal from the 5, Tebow stood tall in the pocket, waited an extra second, then found Riley Cooper for the game-sealing touchdown with 2:50 remaining.
Tebow practically glided back to the sideline in jubilation, raising his arms, pumping his fists and howling all the way -- even joining the kick-coverage unit as they prepared to take the field, urging them to "make a play, and let's finish this thing!"
"That fourth quarter was vintage Tim Tebow," said Meyer. "There's a special something inside of him, and not I'm not talking about throwing and I'm not talking about running. I'm talking about the ability to make the level of play of everyone else around him better."
Both his performance and the victory marked the culmination of a surge that began after Florida's stunning 31-30 home loss to Ole Miss on Sept. 27. It was after that game that a teary-eyed Tebow memorably told reporters: "I promise you ... you have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of this season, and you'll never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of this season."
His comments drew inevitable eye-rolls from jaded fans and made great fodder for snarky bloggers. But as hard as it seems for outsiders to believe, Tebow's alternating displays of uber-intensity and aw-shucks charm are no more an act than his above-and-beyond thank-you lap after Saturday's win. Florida rolled off what is now a nine-game winning streak, with Tebow, his offensive line and his tailbacks taking their performances to another level.
Alabama was not about to allow the Gators another one of their 49-10 routs. The Tide traded punches for nearly 60 minutes, and when they went up 20-17 at the end of the third quarter, it sure seemed like the momentum had swung entirely to their side
"We didn't finish like we needed to, and they did," said Alabama coach Nick Saban. "They scored two [fourth-quarter] touchdowns -- man, we had them covered about as well as you can cover them."
That didn't stop Tebow from hitting receivers like Cooper (two catches, 56 yards, one TD) and David Nelson (three catches, 27 yards, one TD), who stepped up in Harvin's absence.
"He's a freak," Nelson said of Tebow. "I've never seen anything like it. He'll do anything possible to win the game."
While Tebow almost certainly earned his team a ticket to its second BCS Championship Game in three seasons, discussion afterward inevitably turned to whether the junior had done enough to earn another trophy: His second Heisman.
Tebow has completed 65 percent of his passes for 2,515 yards, 28 touchdowns and two interceptions while running 154 times for 564 yards and 12 TDs. All are significantly lower than his production during last year's Heisman season, when he produced 4,181 total yards and a combined 51 TDs. Yet it's plainly evident just watching him how much better a player he is than a year ago, particularly in the passing game.
"What he did today, he couldn't have done last year," said offensive coordinator Dan Mullen. "They were blitzing us at the goal line, and he threaded the needle three different times for touchdowns."
Realistically, he's going to have a hard time surpassing Bradford, who, at about the same time Tebow finally left the field Saturday night, was taking the field in Kansas City for yet another dominant performance of his own. McCoy, who engineered his own fourth-quarter comeback against a top-ranked team (Oklahoma), remains in the thick of the race as well.
Mullen's take: "Go to every team in the country and say we're going to have a college draft. You can pick any player in the country to start a team. I bet you they'd be jumping to get that No. 1 pick to pick [Tebow]."
The Heisman, as always, will likely come down to politicking. But barring an unexpected development in the final BCS standings, we'll get to see Tebow and Bradford duke it out on the field come Jan. 7 in Miami.
Here's hoping that game will be half as thrilling as this one was.
Source: sportsillustrated.cnn.com
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