Done deal: Today Tim Tebow was hired and signed 5 years contract extension As new Florida Gator head coach see..

Done deal: Today Tim Tebow was hired and signed 5 years contract extension As new Florida Gator head coach see..

Tim Tebow understands the pressure that comes with playing or coaching at Florida.

Tebow won a Heisman Trophy in 2007. He played on national championship teams in 2006 and 2008. Florida was 48-7 in his four seasons there with Urban Meyer, and sometimes that did not feel like enough.

“Florida is incredible, but it can also be a pressure cooker,” Tebow told Sporting News. “Listen, senior year we felt it the whole year and we had won two championships in three years and felt like we couldn’t do a thing right.”

Tebow – who helped unveil the 2024 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team this week – knows the hot-seat questions are coming concerning Billy Napier — who fell to 12-16 in his third season with the Gators after a 33-20 loss to Texas A&M on Saturday. Tebow knows how that must feel as Florida (1-2) heads into a matchup at Mississippi State (1-2) on Saturday.

“You go to Starkville, and if you can get a win there it always helps,” Tebow said. “I think it wasn’t just the loss to Miami (in the opener). I think it was the way they lost that frustrated people.”

Florida lost to Miami 41-17 in the Aug. 31 opener. That set the tone for a rough third season for Napier – which was already pinned against a brutal SEC schedule that features five ranked teams in the final seven games, including No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Texas, No. 5 Ole Miss, No. 6 Tennessee and No. 16 LSU.

Tebow does not envy that hot-seat talk that Napier is going through. Tebow also debunked any notion that he would return to Florida in a coaching role – “I feel called in other areas.” Yet Tebow does have a few suggestions that the Gators might want to pay attention to in the future. That starts at the quarterback position – and it is not the answer you might think.