TTwo years ago, under a cloudless sky in north-central Louisiana, Doug Williams and Michael Vick met on the football field of Grambling University’s Eddie G Robinson Memorial Stadium to reflect on the NFL trail they helped blaze. In 1988, Williams led Washington past Denver in Super Bowl XXII, breaking new ground: he was the first black quarterback to start in a Super Bowl and finished the game as MVP. In 2001, Vick was the top pick in the NFL draft. They were all milestone firsts for black quarterbacks — and they didn’t stop there.
“Now look around this league,” Williams told Vick in his stubborn Louisiana drawl. “I could be wrong, but in the next five to seven years? Half the quarterbacks in this league will be black. In his day, Williams was known for his deep shots, but he may end up achieving this goal for three years.
When the NFL regular season began in September, black quarterbacks made up a record 15 of the league’s 32 starters; including three – Carolina’s Bryce Young, Houston’s CJ Stroud and Indianapolis’ Anthony Richardson – who were taken with the first three picks in the 2023 draft. The historic milestones marked the beginning of the Black Quarterback Era – a heady time that officially began when Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes met Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts in the 2023 Super Bowl. Now the 29-year-old Mahomes, who is bidding for a third straight Super Bowl title, is considered by many to be the greatest QB of all time , even though he has only started the past seven seasons. Dak Prescott, the league’s highest-paid player, is the face of the Dallas Cowboys, the American team. Last year, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson won his second division MVP. The black quarterback is the leading man in professional football.
The news of a black quarterback being named the starter no longer raises questions about whether the fan base – or beyond, America – is done. He just goes onto the field. The game wasn’t always so simple; that much is made clear in a pair of recent projects exploring the Black QB’s landing in the mainstream.
In The big black pilehistorian Louis Moore looks back at the 1979 regular-season game between Chicago and Tampa Bay – the first with two opposing black starting quarterbacks in Williams, the history maker, and Chicago’s Vince Evans, who was ultimately denied a fair chance to achieve its purpose. potential. Moore, a professor at the historically Black Grand Valley State University, strays from the Chicago-Tampa game to examine the players and processes that produced this game of change; CBS labeled it The Battle of the Bombers. Moore calls it “one of the most monumental games in NFL history, a promise that one day things would change in the game and in society.”
Meanwhile, in a three-part Prime Video docuseries, Evolution of the black quarterbackVick crosses the US to consider the full scope of this long arc of progress – from Willie Thrower, the NFL’s first Black QB, to 2023 top pick Young. It’s a story filtered through Vick’s lived experience, which went from consequential to controversial and back again. In 2007, Vick saw his career cut short after pleading guilty for his role in a dog fighting ring. After serving 21 months in federal prison and submitting to a lengthy apology tour led by the Humane Society, Vick returned to Philadelphia a more polished passer en route to being named 2010 Comeback Player of the Year.
Vick’s impact, right up to his turn on the cover of the Madden NFL video game a one-man cheat codenever escapes the diverse array of quarterbacks he interviews for the series. “I was the odd one out, I was the odd one out,” says Steve Young, the white, Mormon left-handed scrambler who built a Hall of Fame career with San Francisco. “But when I saw you play, I thought, ‘This is my tribe. These are my boys. ”
For as long as the forward pass has been a staple of football strategy, there have been questions about whether a black man could throw it. Black quarterbacks were written off as mentally inferior and usually redeployed as defenders. In Evolution, Deion Sanders – the Hall of Fame cornerback turned college football head coach – reveals that he played high school quarterback before being forced into a defensive conversion at Florida State. For most of the NFL’s history, the league’s football pundits betrayed little imagination, outright dismissing the predominant skill of black passers as pitchers and throwers. distorters – “a loaded term,” writes Moore. They were given a small margin for error versus white pocket passers who executed the plays as drafted, for better or worse. While white decision makers, the media and fans found it easy to overlook pro football’s persistent racial biases, black fans could not look past it.
The first episode of Evolution features a sketch from Richard Pryor’s 1977 TV variety show, in which he stars as the US President. At the time, the idea of a black commander in chief was as far-fetched as a black QB being given the keys to an NFL franchise, so the thought was that Pryor would do just that. join the dots:
“I want to know what we’re going to do to get more black brothers as quarterbacks in the National Football Honky League,” an Ebony magazine militant asks in the sketch.
“I plan to not only have a lot of black quarterbacks,” Pryor began, “but we will also have black coaches and black team owners. As long as there will be football, [there’s] There will be some black in there somewhere. Because I’m tired of the mess that’s been created. Since the Rams disappeared James Harrismy jaw is tense – you know what I’m talking about? We’re going to get it down now about the matter.”
But despite everything, black coaches and executives are still fighting for space in the NFL appear to be no worse than their white peersand Black ownership is a small and largely uninfluential club dominated by Magic Johnson, Lewis Hamilton and other wealthy sports figures, black quarterbacks are undeniable. The modern NFL game favors passers who throw and run – and makes no distinction when it comes to the skin color of these QBs. “I remember turning on the PlayStation and seeing the cover athlete on the screen and thinking, I want to be that guy. I want to be it [Vick]” says Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, the white dual-threat QB reporting on the 2024 edition of the Madden video game. “I wore your shoes at Pop Warner.”
When black quarterbacks were first accepted as starters, teams often had a white quarterback as a backup, just to ensure that some parts of their fan base’s “traditions” were maintained. But now, the commitment to the post-racial style of play is so deep that teams sign Black QBs to complement Black starters and give them plenty of runway to fly or crash — an approach that was validated when Andy Reid, the dean of NFL coaches, told Vick signed from prison to back up Philadelphia Eagles starter Donovan McNabb. Players like Tyrod Taylor and Tyler Huntley are living a reality their ancestors could only dream of: black QBs who have carved out long – and lucrative – careers as veteran backups. During his media tour to promote the docuseries, Vick has made an effort to frame the modern NFL as a benevolent force for progressive ideals. But his groundbreaking interview subjects in Evolution always remind the viewer of the tremendous individual efforts it took to get to this point.
Vick’s college reunion with Williams was laden with meaning, which doesn’t translate as well on screen as it does in Moore’s book. Grambling State University, a historically black university, did more than any other institution to make the black quarterback an American staple. In Great Black Hope, Moore recalls how coach Eddie Robinson committed to developing a quarterback for the NFL, abandoning his run-option schemes for a more pro-style passing offense based on timed routes where QBs explore the width of the field had to read. He recruited former pros for his coaching staff to understand the basics and nuances of the position – and he succeeded. Before Williams, a classic pocket passer, Grambling produced Harris – Pryor’s favorite who led the Rams to the 1974 NFC Championship on his way to becoming the first Black QB ever named Pro Bowl MVP. The game won’t get to where it is today without Robinson, who died in 2007.
But even as black quarterbacks have been accepted into the most symbolic leadership position in American sports, some things had to be compromised. Black quarterbacks shy away from going full LeBron James and using their lofty platform to expose institutional racism in and around their sport, for fear they will offend their white billionaire bosses, turn off fans and, along with Colin Kaepernick, be kicked out of the league be banished. (“It’s hard when you can’t go out on your own terms,” Kaepernick tells Vick.) University of Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola, who is of Italian and Polynesian descent, pushes taste to the extreme with his sartorial cosplay of Mahomes.
Even Vick appears to be backing away from his legacy as the NFL’s ceiling-shattering black quarterback, not least because there are animal lovers who haven’t forgiven him for launching Bad Newz Kennels. While Vick continues to be criticized through a racist lens, Brett Favre nevertheless retains hero status are many controversies. It turns out that QB privileges don’t work both ways.
In his conversation with Vick, Williams is proud that the word “Black” is no longer used as a modifier for Black quarterbacks. “Now you just have a chance to watch them play,” Williams said. The black quarterback is no longer the only revolutionary. He is the face of the league, born from a decades-long drive for conformity – for better or perhaps for worse.
