Four NFL Starting QBs? It's Happened Before

Jacoby Brissett with his new team. Will he start on Sunday?
(photo by Colts.com)

© Tim Peeler, 2017

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One of my personal mantras, as someone who is fascinated with the eccentricities of history, is “everything that happens has happened before.”

So invariably, when something wildly interesting occurs and someone asks, breathlessly, “has that ever happened?” my immediate answer is always “Yes.”

That's usually the right answer 99 percent of the time. It can just take a while to prove it.

Such is the interesting case this weekend of NC State football possibly having four alumni as NFL starting quarterbacks: Philip Rivers of the Los Angeles Chargers, Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks, Mike Glennon of the Chicago Bears and Jacoby Brissett of the Indianapolis Colts.

I wrote about this possibility last week, in this post about the total number of NFL starts for quarterbacks from various colleges. NC State ranks No. 12 with an updated total of 503, after Rivers, Wilson and Glennon started for their teams last week.

Brissett could take Jeff Tolzien's starting position with the Colts this week, which caused someone to ask: “Has one school ever produced four starting NFL quarterbacks at the same time?”

And the answer, as usual, is yes.

Three other schools—Miami, Michigan and Southern California—had alumni quarterbacks starting for NFL teams in the same season.

In 1993, Miami's Jim Kelly started for Buffalo, Vinny Testaverde started for Cleveland and Dallas, Bernie Kosar started for Cleveland and Craig Erickson started for Tampa Bay.

In 2004, Michigan's Tom Brady started for New England, Brian Griese started for Cincinnati, Drew Henson started fro Dallas and John Navarre started for Arizona.

In 2009, Southern Cal's Carson Palmer started for Cincinnati, Matt Cassell started for Kansas City, March Sanchez started for the New York Jets and Matt Leinart started for Arizona.

So it's happened before. Still, it's an amazing accomplishment that one school can produce 12.5 percent of one of the world's most elite and highly paid professions. The odds of anyone becoming an NFL starter are astronomical. The odds of being the starter at quarterback are even higher. The odds that four of 32 of those starters would come from one school are similar to the chances of winning the Powerball lottery.

Of course, since Carson Wentz, the Philadelphia Eagles starting quarterback, was born in Raleigh and lived here until the age of 3 before his family moved to North Dakota, that means five NFL quarterbacks have gotten their starts in Raleigh.

Has one city ever produced that many NFL starting quarterbacks?

Probably, but I don't have time to look it up.