Colin Cowherd says he compared Vince Young to Tim Tebow ahead of the 2006 NFL draft ... but Tebow was in high school then

Nick Bromberg
·College football and motorsports writer
Updated ·3 min read

Colin Cowherd should probably start to do a little more research before he tries to analyze the NFL draft.

The Fox Sports and former ESPN talk show host spent part of his Tuesday show talking about presumed No. 1 draft pick Joe Burrow and his nine-inch hands. As part of Cowherd’s case against Burrow because of his relatively small hands — and despite Burrow’s insane production at LSU in 2019 — he brought up how he disliked former Texas QB Vince Young ahead of the 2006 NFL draft because Young reminded him of former Florida QB Tim Tebow.

“I was never a big Vince Young fan,” Cowherd said. “I hated his throwing motion. I said he reminds me of Tebow. He wins games, that throwing motion, he’ll never be a great pocket passer. He had a very low Wonderlic.”

There’s just one problem with that comparison. Tebow, now 32, was in high school when Young, now 36, was prepping for the draft. There’s no way that Cowherd was actually comparing a guy about to go at the top of the NFL draft to a recruit who had never played a game of college football.

Tebow threw just 33 passes in 2006 while Young was a rookie for the Tennessee Titans. After winning the Heisman at Florida in 2008, Tebow was a first-round selection of the Denver Broncos in the 2010 NFL draft. And while the two QBs ended up as first-round picks, they also both had relatively short NFL careers for top picks. Tebow played just three seasons in the pros while Young had a six-year NFL career.

Mistakes can happen, so it’d be easy to write off Cowherd’s Young/Tebow reference in his Burrow analysis if it was a one-off thing. Unfortunately for Cowherd, it’s not. The week before, he said he didn’t think that star Oklahoma wide receiver CeeDee Lamb was the top wide receiver in the 2020 NFL draft.

That’s a fine opinion to have. Lamb looks like he’s vying with Alabama’s Jerry Jeudy to be the top receiver taken in April. But Cowherd’s justification for the opinion is foolishly incorrect. He said Lamb is “small” and “gets hurt” in saying that he’s one of the more overrated first-round prospects in the draft.

Lamb is not small, nor did he get hurt often at Oklahoma. Lamb measured at over 6-1 at the NFL combine this week and at nearly 200 pounds.

He also missed just two games over 42 games Oklahoma played in three seasons, including one in 2019 because of a concussion that he suffered against Iowa State while fielding a punt. If Cowherd thinks a player can’t miss more than two games in three seasons to avoid an injury-prone label, he has some incredibly high standards. Or, more likely, he just needs to do some more of that pesky research.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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