ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith compares Lamar Jackson to Tim Tebow

The parallels in the start of the careers of Baltimore Ravens quarterback and reigning league MVP Lamar Jackson and Kansas City Chiefs superstar signal-caller Patrick Mahomes are identical. They both revolutionized the game, ascended to elite status, won league MVP, and appeared on the cover of the popular sports video game EA Sports’ Madden following their breakout seasons.

If Jackson continues to follow Mahomes lead, he’ll be a Superbowl champion in short order. However, according to ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, Jackson favors another quarterback that spent some time in the AFC West. On Monday during a segment on the popular sports talk show that he co-hosts ‘First Take’, he delivered a rather sizzling take when he compared Jackson to former Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow.

“There was a guy that ran the football very effectively. Matter of fact as a quarterback, [he] led a team to one of if not the top-rated running attacks in football”, said Smith. “That would happen to be Tim Tebow when he was with the Denver Broncos. But what did I repeatedly say about [Tebow]? He couldn’t throw the football on an NFL level.”

He was engaged in a debate with former Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth about whether Jackson was one of the top two quarterbacks in the league and Smith not only made the Tebow comparison but he Jackson barely makes the cut on his top five list.

“Not only is he not top two, I’ll tell who I have ahead of him,” said Smith. “I’ve got Russell Wilson ahead of him, obviously Patrick Mahomes first…I’d put DeShaun Watson ahead of him, I really really would, and of course the greatness of Drew Brees because of his accuracy throwing the football.”

Ranking two quarterbacks that he best last season during his MVP campaign and another that is 41 years old and whose arm talent has begun to fade in recent years and has already got his post-playing career job in the media line up is one thing but to make the comparison to a player in Tebow who posted miserable career stats as a passer in his short-lived career is beyond disrespectful even if he was simply trying to make the point that the Ravens ranked near the bottom of the league in passing offense last year as the Broncos did during Tebow’s tenure.

That comparison wouldn’t have been so outlandish and his take wouldn’t have been nearly as hot around this time last year when Jackson was coming off his rookie year where he started eight games, ran for 695 yards on 147 attempts and threw just six touchdowns to three interceptions.

However, coming a sensational sophomore season where he led the league in passing touchdowns with 36 and was lethal from the pocket with a league-leading 25 touchdowns thrown from inside it combined with the fact that he finished sixth in the league in rushing yards and first among quarterbacks with 1,206 makes both sound extremely asinine. According to Smith’s ESPN colleague Matt Bowen, Jackson’s 77.5 QBR inside the pocket last season finished second only to Matthew Stafford of the Detroit Lions.

Both of them are incredible athletes and two of the best players in college football history with matching Heisman Trophies to show for it but they don’t even belong in the same sentence or even stratosphere as far as their professional careers are concerned. Even as a rookie thrust into action midway through his inaugural season in the league, Jackson showed more growth and potential as a proficient passer than Tebow did at any time in his career.

In his short three-year career, Tebow appeared in 35 games, made just 16 starts and completed a woeful 47.9 percent of his passes for a mere 2,422 yard and he threw more than half as many interceptions as he did touchdowns with 17-9 ration in his career. In his second season alone, Jackson completed over 66 percent of his passes, more than doubled Tebow’s career passing touchdown total, and had a 6-1 touchdown to interception ratio.

While Smith did concede that Jackson “improved exponentially” as a passer from year one to year two as evident by his drastically improved quarterback rating (113.3 up from 84.5) and completion percentage (66.1 up from 58.2), he cited Jackson’s lack of success in the playoffs as to the main reason why he doesn’t hold him in as high of esteem as he does the other players he has ranked ahead of him in his mind.

“I got Lamar Jackson in the top five,” Smith said. “But 0-2 in the postseason, still having to throw the ball more effectively, all of those things come into play as a reason why I wouldn’t give him the top two.”

He called Jackson’s performance in the first three and a half quarters of his first playoff game against the Los Angles Chargers “absolutely atrocious” and his outing against the Tennessee Titans this past postseason wasn’t much better. However, those were total team collapses and the Ravens were outcoached and outplayed in both games. The only reason they had a prayer late in either of those games was that their young dynamic quarterback could score points in a hurry with both his arm and legs.

Tebow’s brightest moment of his career came in a wildcard game against Smith’s favorite team and Ravens’ arch division rival the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2011 where he threw for a career-high 316 yards, still didn’t even complete 50 percent of his passes and connected with Demaryius Thomas for an 80-yard walk-off touchdown in overtime only to be obliterated by the New England Patriots a week later in the Divisional round. Tebow mania was extinguished the following offseason when the Broncos signed Peyton Manning in free agency. He had a short one-year stint with the New York Jets in 2012 and was in the training camp of the New England Patriots in 2013 and Philadelphia Eagles in 2015 but was released during the final round of cuts in both years.

Another reason that many believe Tebow washed out of the league was because he was unwilling to make a position switch after failing to show enough as strictly a quarterback. Who knows, he could’ve been Taysom Hill before Taysom Hill. Heading into the 2018 NFL Draft many media pundits and even a Hall of Fame talent evaluator suggested that Jackson make a position switch to wide receiver or running back before he even took a snap in the league. He believed and bet on himself and now he has established himself as one of the most dangerous passers and runners in the league, a moniker that Tebow never even came close to and he’s just getting started.

Jackson has silenced several of his critics, doubters, and detractors in just two years, with only one being a full-time starter, but there are still those like Smith that call his ability as a proficient passer into question even though he has produced irrefutable evidence stating otherwise. Judging him off of two bad games in which his teammates on both sides of the ball failed to make plays does not make for a rational or intelligent argument.

“There are lots of quarterbacks that don’t make it to the playoffs in their first two seasons,” Foxworth said. “I understand that being critical of him for not getting to that next level in the playoffs is fair I guess, but I think we also need to accept how great he’s been in a season and a half. It projects to be even better than those guys you mentioned.”