Tim Tebow Must Improve Accuracy, Awareness to Make New England Patriots Roster

Mixed results aren’t going to cut it for Tim Tebow.

If New England’s third-string quarterback doesn’t get his act together in terms of awareness and accuracy in practice and in the remaining preseason games, there’s no way he’s going to be on the roster come Week 1 when the Patriots travel to Buffalo to take on the Bills.

The Patriots came away with a nine-point victory over the Eagles on Friday night and Tebow saw a large portion of time on the field. He entered the game with over a minute to go in the first half with New England leading by double digits, but didn’t have much success. Mike Reiss of ESPN Boston shows what happened:

Tebow got one more shot before the half concluded—albeit there just were a handful of seconds left on the clock—and was a little better. He threw an incomplete pass on his first attempt and then connected with Leon Washington with his second for 15 yards. But the half ended and Tebow still hadn’t done much yet.

New England’s first drive of the second half was the best four minutes and 24 seconds of Tebow’s debut with the franchise. He led the team down the field and LeGarrette Blount ran the ball in for a touchdown. He completed one pass on the drive, ran for 12 yards and was sacked once. The most important part: New England scored.

Tebow was lukewarm and cold for the remainder of the exhibition matchup as the Patriots failed to put together another scoring drive. Throughout his debut, he completed 4-of-12 passes for 55 yards and was sacked three times. He ran the ball four times for 31 yards. Like I said in the beginning: mixed results.

Reiss points out that we can’t evaluate how Tebow played based on how we would usually look at how a quarterback for the Patriots performed:

While keeping that in mind, Tebow’s performance on Friday night didn’t really show that he was capable of running any team’s offense. He failed to make crisp and accurate throws and hung on to the ball for way too long on several occasions. If he got rid of the ball when he had to, he wouldn’t have been sacked three times.

Now, maybe the Patriots played Tebow a little too often against Philadelphia and he didn’t shine as much as he would’ve hoped. Mallett was forced to leave the game early due to a head injury, according to Ben Volin of The Boston Globe. Maybe Tebow only plays a quarter if Mallett stays healthy.

But part of being a backup quarterback is being readily available no matter what the situation is. When Brady got hurt a couple of years ago and Matt Cassel stepped in, it was as if there wasn’t too much of a difference between the two. Mallet has what it takes to run the offense if Brady were to get injured again.

On Friday night, Tebow didn’t show that he was capable of doing that.

The Patriots don’t need to enter the regular season with three quarterbacks on their roster. All they need is Brady and Brady’s backup, whether that is Mallett or Tebow. Through the first preseason game, there’s no question Tebow doesn’t deserve to be on the team—even though Mallett did exit early.

It doesn’t seem likely that New England is going to cut Tebow yet, but he shouldn’t expect to be on the roster come Week 1 if he continues to play like he did against the Eagles. He must work on his accuracy all throughout practice. Completing 33 percent of attempted passes is completely unacceptable.

If Tebow can complete around 50 percent the next time he takes the field—which should be against Tampa Bay on Friday—then he still has a chance. The Patriots can afford to take a few sacks if Tebow is playing well and completing passes. But if he’s missing—and missing badly—and getting sacked, there’s no point in keeping him around.

Tebow must improve considerably to have a shot at making the team.

All statistics in this article were obtained via ESPN unless otherwise noted.