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Players Mentioned
Bushnell Cup Winner Jeff Terrell Signs With Kansas City Chiefs
April 30, 2007 | Football
Two years ago, Jeff Terrell was an unknown, unheralded sophomore on the outside looking in on a race to be Princeton starting quarterback. Two seasons - including 16 wins, one Ivy League championship and Player of the Year honor - later, Terrell is now looking to break into another quarterback race. This time, it's with the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs.
Terrell, who guided the 2006 Princeton football squad to a 9-1 record and the Ivy League title, signed a rookie free agent contract with the Kansas City Chiefs following the 2007 NFL Draft. Several teams were showing interest in Terrell as the draft neared completion, but the Chiefs, who did not draft a rookie quarterback, were the ones to get his name on a contract, a two-year deal with a signing bonus, pending he makes the roster. Terrell, who spoke with the Chiefs quarterback coach, Dick Curl, is thrilled at the opportunity.
"I am still trying to digest it all, but on the whole, this is a childhood dream come true and I'm so excited to see what the Lord has in store for me in Kansas City," Terrell said. "I feel incredibly blessed and honored to have this opportunity and will do everything I can to make Princeton and my family proud. Though this was a big hurdle and I am excited, I have a lot of work left to do and a lot to prove to a lot of people. I do trust, though, that if I keep working hard and keep trusting the Lord, things will somehow work out, as they did [Sunday] night."
Terrell has nothing left to prove to Princeton fans, who were thrilled with two seasons' worth of his heroics. As a junior, he led Princeton to a 7-3 record, throwing for 1,721 yards and 10 touchdowns. The Tigers went 5-2 in the Ivy League, good enough for second place, and had their best season in a decade.
And that was just the appetizer.
His senior season won't soon be forgotten. With a team picked to finish sixth in the league preseason poll, Terrell led Princeton to wins in each of its first five games, including a 31-28 comeback win against Harvard, when he threw for 223 yards and two touchdowns while rushing for 32 yards and a score. Included in that opening stretch was a 27-26 overtime win at Colgate, when Terrell rushed for both a key fourth down and an overtime touchdown.
Following a loss at Cornell, Terrell put together a pair of games for the ages. First was a 31-30 double-overtime victory over Penn, when Terrell completed 21 of 36 passes for 227 yards and three touchdowns. He's best remembered for the fourth score, when he took a pitch from running back Rob Toresco on fourth-and-goal in overtime and recorded a touchdown that would be voted the No. 1 highlight on that night's "Top Plays" on ESPN's SportsCenter.
Somehow, he topped that performance seven days later. In the fourth greatest passing game in Princeton history, Terrell threw for 445 yards and three touchdowns in the dramatic 34-31 road win at Yale. Trailing by 14 points on three different occasions, Terrell completed 32 of 47 passes, including the game-winning 57-yard touchdown to Brian Brigham, and hit each of his last seven attempts to secure the win. He would add nine straight completions to start the Dartmouth game to set a Princeton record with 16 straight completions. Also, Terrell's 17 touchdown passes in 2006 are second only to Doug Butler's 25 touchdown passes in 2006.
Terrell threw for 4,166 yards in two seasons at Princeton, fourth most in program history, and his 2,445 yards last season were fifth most at Princeton. That total surpassed the best mark of longtime NFL veteran and current Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, who threw for 2,217 yards in 1988. Garrett's 1998 season and Terrell's 2006 one are the only two years that a Princeton quarterback won the Bushnell Cup award, given to the Ivy League Player of the Year.
There is a precedent for Bushnell Cup winners to have success in the NFL. The last quarterback to win the Bushnell was 2004 Harvard quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, who threw for more than 300 yards in his professional debut with the St. Louis Rams and would earn NFC Offensive Player of the Week honors.