DENVER – Both ends of the quarterback spectrum collide Sunday when the New England Patriots visit the Denver Broncos with Tom Brady and Tim Tebow squaring off in a matchup of quintessential versus quirky QBs.

“Everybody’s looking forward to the Brady and Tebow matchup,” Broncos linebacker Joe Mays said of the two men who will be on the field together only for pre-game warm-ups and post-game handshakes.

The two popular players have little in common except a propensity to captivate the league, deliver in the clutch and win in the end.

Despite a suspect secondary and a series of second-half collapses, the AFC East-leading Patriots (10-3) are on the verge of clinching a playoff berth because of Brady’s prolific passing attack featuring Rob Gronkowski with 15 TDs, an NFL record for tight ends, and Wes Welker, who already had 100 catches.

Turning slow starts into fantastic finishes, the AFC West-leading Broncos (8-5) have won seven of eight since Tebow took over as their starter. He’s come through with five fourth-quarter comebacks by almost magically changing from struggling scrambler and imperfect passer into clutch performer in crunch time.

The Patriots have topped 30 points 10 times, the Broncos have managed 18, 10, 17, 17, 16 and 13, yet won five of those games with a recipe of dominant defence, spectacular special teams and Tebow.

Aside from a blowout loss to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers when Kyle Orton was still their starter, the Broncos, who are hurting in the secondary with safety Brian Dawkins (neck) and cornerback Andre’ Goodman (concussion) recuperating, haven’t faced a team like the Patriots or a quarterback like Brady.

“He’s mastered so many things about the quarterback position,” Tebow said. “Footwork and accuracy, and he’s also been blessed with good players around him, but he’s still been one of the best in the league for a long time.

“He’s someone that I’ve watched and seen probably thousands of cut-ups of him. He does a lot of things very well, very cerebral and understands the game very well. For a young quarterback like myself, he’s definitely someone to look up to and learn from, what he does well and try to implement that in my game.”

Brady and his teammates watched the end of last week’s Broncos’ win over Chicago while they were flying home from Washington, D.C. on Sunday, and they came away impressed by Tebow, who was bullied by the Bears, completing 3-of-16 passes for 45 yards through three quarters before connecting on 18-of-24 throws for 191 yards in the fourth quarter and overtime.

“I appreciate good quarterback play,” Brady said. “I’m always watching around the league, whether it’s Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees having phenomenal years. Obviously, Tim is having a great year. You watch guys and the way that they perform under pressure and it says a lot about who they are and the way their teammates feel about them.

“It’s a big challenge. It’s going to be a very electric environment out there. We’ve had some really great games against the Broncos over the years. I’m sure this will be no different.”

The prolific Patriots would love to score early and often to keep Tebow from even having the chance to work his last-minute magic on them.

The Broncos are intent on starting faster. In the first half, they’ve scored six times in 49 drives behind Tebow. In crunch time, he’s engineered scoring drives 16 times in 28 possessions.

“For some strange reason we come out slow and sluggish,” Broncos running back Willis McGahee said. “… then we get the train moving.”

Through the first three quarters, Tebow has completed 39 per cent of his passes for 520 yards with a passer rating of 65.1.

In the fourth quarter and overtime, he looks like, well, Brady, with a 61 per cent completion rate, 770 yards through the air and a passer rating of 107.9 — about Brady’s overall rating.

Tebow also has 517 yards on 94 keepers, an average of 5.5 yards a carry. Against San Diego last month, Tebow ran 22 times, six fewer carries than Brady’s had all season.

“He obviously has a skill set as a quarterback that not many have,” Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich said. “But he’s a great quarterback and his team follows him just like we follow Tom.”

Tebow is breaking the mould that Brady and others have built as a pocket passer, showing there’s more than one way to win in today’s pass-happy NFL.

“I think everybody has strengths and weaknesses at every position,” Brady said. “As a quarterback, you try to play to your strengths. I think that’s what we all try to do.”

Tebow isn’t just unorthodox in his athleticism but in his approach.

Wired with a microphone as part of NFL Films’ “Sound Effects,” last Sunday, Tebow showed a remarkable poise under pressure. When Elvis Dumervil recovered Marion Barber’s fumble in overtime and the Broncos’ sideline went wild, Tebow calmly trotted out to the field singing a hymn.

“I’m not exactly sure what song I was singing, maybe ‘Our God is an awesome God,’” Tebow said. “I know I was singing that one a little bit. It was in my head from the car.”

With the Broncos foundering early on again, Tebow’s position coach Adam Gase asks, “Why do we have to do it this way?” Tebow puts his right hand on Gase’s shoulder, smiles and says, “It’s all right. We’ll figure it out, man.”

Demaryius Thomas sat bummed out on the bench after letting a long touchdown toss slip through his hands at another point. Tebow puts his arm around him and says, “You’re good. Hey, no big deal. It just makes it closer for a little bit longer. You’re about to catch the game-winner. And then you’ll be the hero of the game.”

The latest image fans have of Brady, on the other hand, is his sideline screaming match with offensive co-ordinator Bill O’Brien at Washington following his first interception in more than a month.

“We’re both pretty emotional guys,” Brady said after the game.

That bad pass notwithstanding, Brady is once again at the top of his game with 33 TD passes and 11 interceptions.

“Everything that he does, he does well,” said Welker. “Accuracy, getting us in the right play, understanding what the defence is trying to do and putting us in good situations. It just continually gets better.”

While Brady has the pedigree as a pro with two MVP trophies and three Super Bowl rings, he didn’t enter the league with nearly as much fanfare or scrutiny as Tebow, the raw thrower but two-time national champion and Heisman Trophy winner from Florida who’s considered by many the best combination college quarterback ever.

Tebow was a first-round pick, taken 25th overall. Brady was the 199th player selected in 2000 — yet, he owns the best record for any quarterback in the Super Bowl era with a 121-35 regular season mark.

“He didn’t come in this league with a silver spoon, so to speak,” Broncos coach John Fox said. “And he’s mastered his trade.”

Like Tebow, Brady had his own doubters, waiting until the sixth round to hear his name called on draft day.

“I think you just really have confidence in yourself that you can achieve whatever you think you can achieve,” Brady said, “and then you try to work hard at it, and then when you get your opportunity you try to take advantage of it.

“… Not everyone is a high pick or not everyone gets a lot of chances right out of the box, but when you do get your opportunity, you really try to take advantage of your opportunity and do your best and give everything you have.”

Tebow has, and he’s winning at a .727 clip to Brady’s .776 mark. He’s thrown 11 TD passes and two interceptions.

“He’s a winner,” said Patriots cornerback Antwaun Molden, who was with Houston last year when the Texans lost 24-23 to the Broncos in what was Tebow’s first career fourth-quarter comeback.

“Be alert. Every play he can hurt you,” Molden said of the lessons he learned that day. “Some say he can’t pass. … The guy can pass. And he can also run. He’s more accurate than what people think.”

Tebow topped 300 yards that day, something Brady’s done 42 times in his career.

What Brady hasn’t done much of is beat Denver. The Broncos are his bugaboo. At 5-1, they’re the only team with a winning record against him.

Still, perennial Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey said Brady is the ultimate test for this bunch of Broncos.

“He’s one of the best ever, and I think a lot of people want to find out who’s going to be the next guy,” Bailey said. “But he always reminds everybody who’s still the best.”

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AP Sports Writer Howard Ulman contributed to this report

BOSTON (CBS) – The Denver Broncos are a lot more than just Tim Tebow, and the New England Patriots know that.

“I think they have a good football team, they have a lot of good players – it’s certainly not a one-man team,” head coach Bill Belichick said Monday. “They’re good on defense, they’re good in the kicking game and they run the ball on offense well, they have a well-balanced attack.”

“Obviously, they’ve played great when they’ve needed to play well in the fourth quarter, whether it’s kicking 60-yard field goals or driving the length of the field for a touchdown or making a defensive stop or whatever it is. That’s really the mark of a team, is to play well in critical situations and win games and Coach [John] Fox has them doing that. I think that speaks to everybody,” said the Patriots coach.

While Tebow has been a major reason for the team’s success, winning six straight and seven of eight since he took over as the starting quarterback, he is not the only reason.

Denver has the best running attack in the NFL, rushing for 156 yards per game. Willis McGahee paces the Broncos with 76 yards a game, with Tebow chipping in with 47 yards on the ground to go with his 105 yard average through the air. While the Patriots defense is one of the best against the run, they will have a new kind of running attack to deal with come Sunday.

“They have a lot of confidence in it,” Belichick said of the Broncos running game. “They call them, they don’t get discouraged with it, they hang with it. They try to get it worked out if a play is not going well. They hit you on a lot of different points of attack, different scheme runs.”

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“Of course the quarterback has put up quite a few yards himself. Also their option plays, the option, dive option program, that type of thing. There’s a lot of different ways they get that rushing yardage in bursts,” said Belichick. “They really test your defense all the way across the board from the pass rush contain the quarterback standpoint, to playing the normal run-block type of plays to their kind of specialty plays, element of Wildcat, quarterback scrambling, things like that. They get you on a lot of different levels.”

The Patriots will have to make changes this week to prepare for a running quarterback, something that will affect other aspects of the defense as well.

“Offensively it gives you an extra blocker somewhere or it takes a defender out depending on what formation you use. It really puts everybody in play, whereas on a normal running play, the quarterback hands the ball off to somebody else and acts out of the play at the point he hands it off,” said Belichick. “The quarterback, in an offense that runs the ball, he has the whole other 10 people to block for him or to force the defense to catch or cover him in some way which drags a defender out of it. It’s like gaining an extra player schematically.”

So how will the Patriots go about preparing for this? No offense to Brian Hoyer or Ryan Mallett, but neither of them can emulate Tebow in practice. So the Patriots could use a running back or wide receiver lining up under center when hitting the practice field this week.

“That’s something we definitely have to talk about,” said Belichick. “The most important thing for our defense is to get a good look at as close to what the actual plays are going to look like as we can replicate them. However we do that, whichever players we use to try to get that look – we’ll definitely talk about that and try to do it in the way that gives the defense the best look at it.”

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With all the focus on Tebow and the Broncos offense, the Denver defense gets a little lost. The Broncos defense has allowed 15 points or less in five of their last eight game, and features another tandem of pass-rushers New England will have to contend with. Rookie Von Miller already has 11.5 sacks this season, and with Elvis Dumervil’s 7.5 sacks next to him, the offensive line will have their hands full Sunday.

“Those guys are explosive guys that have different rush techniques, good speed,” offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien said Tuesday. “It’s a fast defense overall. We’re going to have to do a good job, especially early in the game of getting used to the speed of the game as it relates definitely to those two guys and then the rest of the defense too. It’s a real challenge, especially on the road with the crowd noise and all those different things that will go into the game plan.”

It won’t help having Champ Bailey lining up ready to pluck a Tom Brady pass out of the air, something he’s done once in three regular season meetings, and once in the playoffs.

“He basically covers the other team’s best receiver every week. I would say he’s definitely in the upper echelon of players,” O’Brien said of Bailey. “He’s in his 13^th year and I don’t see any drop off with that guy. I have respect for their whole secondary with [Brian] Dawkins, [Quinton] Carter and [Andre] Goodman; Chris Harris and Jonathan [Wilhite] is out there now. They have a strong secondary and we have to be ready to go against them.”

Tune in to the Patriots-Broncos game Sunday on WBZ-TV and 98.5 The Sports Hub at 4:15pm. Pregame coverage begins Sunday morning at 11:30am on WBZ-TV with Patriots Gameday; pregame coverage on the Hub begins at 1pm. After the game, tune in to The Postgame Show on 98.5 and Patriots Fifth Quarter on MyTV38.