The 70-year history of black QBs cleared the way for Mahomes-Hurts

news7d02/10/2023

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The 70-year history of black QBs cleared the way for Mahomes-Hurts

Young RJ

FOX Sports College Football Analyst

Patrick Mahomes And Jalen hurts will make history on Sunday in the first bowl super bowl match to have two midfielders starting Black.

This is a pivotal moment that means a lot to me, because for the first time in my life I’m in a Super Bowl, I can’t lose.

But it’s important not to take this moment as cliché or rosy. It is important to acknowledge the 70-year history of Black quarterbacks in NFL who have never been shot. It is important to remember those who played a role in the long arduous journey to get to this point because this moment will not only mean so much to them but also to their families. and many blocked their way to Sunday.

What follows are statements of fact. I’ll let you know when we get my comments.

Mahomes is the youngest player to ever win the NFL MVP, Super Bowl and Super Bowl MVP. He was 24 years old when he first got there. He is a black midfielder.

A year before Mahomes won the Super Bowl, lamar Jackson became only the second player to win the NFL’s MVP by unanimous vote. The only other unanimous pick for NFL MVP is Tom Brady.

Despite the careers of Doug Williams, Randall Cunningham, Steve McNair, Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick, Warren Moon remains the only black QB in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Only three Black quarterbacks have won the Super Bowl – Mahomes, Williams and Russell Wilson.

In 1969, James “Shack” Harris became the first black QB to begin his opening season in the NFL—15 years after the Supreme Court overthrew segregation, 50 years after the NFL was founded, and a full year. before the NFL-AFL merger in 1969. 1970.

Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes Make NFL History

RJ Young shares his insights into history made during Super Bowl LVII.

Fast-forward 50 years to 2019, when four of the eight teams that made it to the NFL’s knockout stages are led by Black quarterbacks. That also marks the first time two black QBs have been named to the AP All-Pro Team, and the AP has chosen All-Pro Teams in more than 80 years.

In 1927, the Duke of Slater, who Iowa Hawkeye honored by naming their field after him, being the only Black player in the NFL. By 1933, there wasn’t one and it would stay that way for the next 12 years. This also comes at a time when, however, in the short term, teams have been penalized for things like too many incomplete passes.

The first black quarterback did not play in the modern era of the NFL until October 8, 1953, when Chicago bear QB Willie Thrower was brought into the match to relieve George Blanda in the previous 35-28 loss San Francisco 49ers.

Thrower was one of the best high school players in the country in 1948. He says every college in the country wanted him until they found out he was Black. Only one the state of Michigan stand by its offer.

Wisconsin Be the first Big Ten planned to receive a Black QB in 1956 when Sidney Williams, Jr. take this job. Sandy Stephenson, a black QB at University of Minnesota, led the show to a Rose Bowl appearance and the 1960 national title. Jimmy Raye II, black QB, led Michigan State to a national championship in 1966. Chuck Ealey, black QB , famously undefeated for three seasons at Toledo. But neither Stephenson, Raye nor Ealey have played QB in the NFL.

The SECOND didn’t do Black QB until Tennessee tapped Condredge Holloway for the show in 1972, five years after Kentucky’s Nate Northington became the convention’s first Black player.

The first black QB to be selected as No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft was Vick in 2001. The first black QB to win the NFL’s MVP was McNair in 2003. And Moon was the first black QB to be honored in Canton. in 2006 – two years before the first black President of the United States was elected to office.

Black history is still being made in my life, and I was 18 when the Moon was worshiped. He was booed when he started at University of Washington until he gave the Huskies a Rose Bowl victory in 1978 – the same year Doug Williams was selected in the first round by Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Moon won the Pac-8’s MVP, was named the Rose Bowl’s MVP in 1978, and wasn’t built. This is 24 years after Brown v. Board of Education was dropped. Moon won 5 Gray Cups as a QB in the CFL before the Houston Oilers signed him in 1984.

Tony Dungy won the team’s MVP in Minnesota as a QB. Both He And The moon said that they became underdeveloped because they refused to play in a position other than midfield. Dungy finally agreed and played it safe for Pittsburgh Steelworkerwhere he won the Super Bowl in 1978.

I have write at length about another Tennessee State QB, Eldridge Dickey, and how his talent was squandered in the NFL.

[Eldridge Dickey was the greatest HBCU quarterback of his time]

Marlin Briscoe has won two Super Bowls as a general recipient with Miami Dolphins, including as a member of the famous and unique ’72 Dolphins. But that only happened after Lou Saban let him play QB for the Broncos in 1968, then switched him to a wider play, then moved him on.

Briscoe said that he never passed not be playing his QB career. He became addicted to drugs and mortgaged his Super Bowl rings.

Now, here is my opinion:

I tell you all of this to emphasize why it is important to honor these moments in the present. These are the stories we know. There are hundreds of us. As we write on subjects where history is made up of race and gender, some might thoughtfully ask… should we? Is this doing harm or is it helping? Should we act as if this is inevitable or a victory?

I stayed in camp with the former because during Black History Month we were still making history. I say this as a man who wrote a history book about the Tulsa racial massacre just last year. When history stops being made, we can stop writing about it. But we have to write about our history anyway, so we never make the mistake of repeating it if only because we might forget it.

Doug Williams carries the weight of those stories in the NFL and USFL. Joe Gibbs pulled Jay Schroeder for Williams just before the 1986 knockouts began. In Super Bowl XXII, Williams threw more than 340 yards and four TDs with an INT in Washington’s 42-10 game against John Elway’s country music.

For many, Williams winning the Super Bowl remains the most special achievement of a Black QB. It equates to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball and Jesse Owens winning a gold medal in Munich. Historically, sport and war have been where Blacks have had the most and best chance to prove who we are in America, what we’re capable of, even as our humanity has been and continues to be. suspected.

That’s why I chose to celebrate Hurts and Mahomes as the first pair of black quarterbacks to play against each other in the Super Bowl. Part of me hoped they had a minute to soak in that moment together, out of the noise, and realize that they were walking, talking about Black history.

RJ Young is the national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast “The Number One College Football Show.” Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young and subscribe to “The RJ Young Show” on YouTube.

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