The NFL has made significant strides in recent years when it comes to drafting and starting Black quarterbacks. Last season, 15 Black QBs started in Week 1, a number likely to be matched again this year. That wasn’t the case a decade ago. For most of NFL history, many franchises had never started a Black quarterback, let alone drafted one. The same was true in college football, where for years major programs rarely recruited Black QBs at all.
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That reluctance at the college level kept the NFL pipeline thin. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the idea of a Black starting quarterback began to gain traction, and even then, only a handful of forward-thinking programs or schools struggling to attract top talent were willing to take the chance.
On their podcast, Bomani Jones and Michael Smith reflected on this lack of opportunity in both the NFL and college football. They noted that while schools like the University of Minnesota broke the mold early, others resisted for decades.
The University of Texas, for example, didn’t have a Black starting QB until the 1990s, with Vince Young becoming only the second in program history. USC waited until 1985 to start Rodney Peete, and didn’t have many others until Caleb Williams became a starter decades later.
In Georgia, just one Black quarterback has started in the past 35 years, while Miami only recently embraced the idea.
The trend extended to the NFL as well. Teams like the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers didn’t see their first Black starting quarterbacks until very recently: Geno Smith for the Giants, and Jordan Love for the Packers.
According to Jones, it’s because the athleticism and playing style of black QBs didn’t get much appreciation, either at college or NFL.
“Minnesota had a lot of black QBs. You know why? Because you can’t be out here discriminating when you are in Minnesota. They cannot be turning down good players to go there. But the thing about black QBs in college, there were still a lot of places that just didn’t do it. Go check how many black starting QBs there were at USC between Rodney Peete and Caleb Williams. I think a couple may have popped up. Georgia has had one black QB who started for one year in the last 35 years, and that was DJ Shaw. In Miami, it took a long time before they got around.”
Everything Bomani Jones and Michael Smith discussed holds true, no matter how much teams might try to deny it. For decades, the league’s obsession with traditional pocket passing kept the position overwhelmingly white. Teams saw “pure passers” as the ideal, and wrongly equated that style with intelligence.
Black quarterbacks had to be exceptional just to get a shot. More often than not, coaches would urge them to switch positions, wide receiver, running back, defensive back, anywhere but quarterback. Ironically, their athleticism, which should have been an asset, was treated as a liability, a reason to move them away from the most coveted role on the field.
Today, that landscape has changed. Black quarterbacks are no longer the exception; they’ve become the norm. They’ve redefined the position, proving that dual-threat athleticism and elite passing ability can coexist, and now, teams actively seek out quarterbacks who can bring both.
