Eagles are Tim Tebow's best, last chance at NFL career

Lindsay H. Jones | USA TODAY Sports

This is it, Tim Tebow. Your last chance to stick on an NFL roster.

But fortunately for Tebow, signing with the Philadelphia Eagles also provides his best shot to restart his NFL career.

Tebow, nearly two years removed from his last NFL experience (on the training camp roster of the New England Patriots), will sign a contract with coach Chip Kelly's Eagles on Monday and take part in the team's offseason program, according to a report from Fox Sports.

Tebow worked out for the Eagles last month, so they have some idea of what sort of shape he will be in when he arrives. They've gotten a glimpse of what his throwing motion looks like after extensive work with private quarterback coach Tom House. And they've talked to him enough to know what sort of man they'll be adding to their locker room.

After an offseason in the headlines, thanks to major moves such as trading away running back LeSean McCoy and signing 2014 rushing champion DeMarco Murray, Kelly and the Eagles must be OK with the media attention Tebow's addition will bring, because there will be no other bottom-of-the-roster quarterback in the league with more intrigue than Tebow, the enigmatic former Heisman Trophy winner at Florida whose popularity transcends sports.

Tebow, who spent the past year working as an SEC Network college football analyst while moonlighting for ABC's Good Morning America, is joining perhaps the only team where it is OK not to be a prototypical pocket passer, and he will be playing for perhaps the only coach in the league innovative, creative and crazy enough to try to find a place for Tebow on his roster.

The chances that Tebow will becomes the Eagles' starting quarterback are slim – even with a shaky quarterback situation after trading last month for former St. Louis Rams first-round pick Sam Bradford, who is coming off a second anterior cruciate ligament surgery. It seems unlikely that Tebow could even beat out Mark Sanchez for the backup job.

But maybe Kelly would see enough value in Tebow as a situational player to make him the No. 3 quarterback ahead of Matt Barkley.

So what will Tebow have to do to earn a spot on the 53-man roster?

First, he will have to prove that he has indeed improved his mechanics in his two years away from the NFL.

Even in Kelly's offense that lets the quarterback play out of the shotgun and requires the quarterback to be mobile, Tebow needs to have improved his accuracy. In his stints with the Denver Broncos and New York Jets from 2010 to 2012, he completed 47.9 % of his passes. Even in his best year, 2011 with the Broncos, when he led Denver to an improbable AFC West title and a wild-card playoff win, he completed 46.5% of his throws while playing in an offense designed specifically for his unique (albeit limited) skill set.

No matter how many individual sessions Tebow has had over the past two years with House, the quarterback coach he was referred to by Tom Brady, Tebow will never look like a traditional NFL quarterback. But maybe he has improved just enough that Kelly will find a place for him.

If Tebow hasn't, if he reverts to his old awkward passing motion and is slow to grasp the playbook or diagnose coverage when the Eagles start on-field work next month, and if the Eagles are forced to cut him by September, no one else will come calling.

Tebow wasn't out of the NFL for the last two years by accident. It wasn't because teams were afraid of the circus that follows him. If Tebow couldn't make it in New England, playing in Belichick's structured, distraction-limiting environment, and buried on the depth chart behind Tom Brady without the pressure of having to start, he wasn't going to make it anywhere else.

Until now, with Kelly, and the only situation that might make even a little bit of sense.