Why backup quarterbacks matter more than ever — and why some NFL teams still lack a plan

JOSH JOHNSON THOUGHT he had somebody open. But then Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh flew into the quarterback’s view with his hands raised. Suh grabbed Johnson’s right arm and threw him backward to the ground. Johnson’s helmet bounced off the field, and he knew it felt different than the other 30 sacks he had experienced in his career. He sat up unsteadily and was ushered to the San Francisco 49ers locker room to be put through the concussion protocol. But Johnson was dead set against coming out of this NFC title game.

“I was trying to stay in,” Johnson said. “I didn’t see my body language. I didn’t see what everybody else externally saw. I was just fighting hard to do whatever I can to try to put us in position and win the football game.”

Part of that resistance was because, as the Niners backup quarterback, he wanted to maximize every opportunity he had to play. He also knew he was the only other quarterback dressed that day. Brock Purdy, who began the season as the third-stringer, hurt his elbow in the first quarter and Johnson was all they had left.

But when one of the concussion tests made Johnson feel like he was going to puke, “That’s when I conceded that I might be messed up,” he said.

Running back and emergency quarterback Christian McCaffrey went in, followed quickly by Purdy, who returned out of necessity but was unable to pass the ball with his injured elbow. It was unwatchable football, and the Eagles easily defeated the Niners 31-7.

NFL owners recognized a quarterback crisis was brewing. In response, they voted that offseason to bring back a variation of the emergency third quarterback exemption for game day, which gave teams the ability to dress one if he is on the 53-man roster without him counting toward the 48 game-day actives.

Despite the rule’s adjustment, and even in a league where more quarterbacks are playing than ever, fewer capable ones are seemingly available. The New York Jets‘ lack of a backup quarterback plan derailed their 2023 season. The Cleveland Browns‘ fortunes only rose after they signed Joe Flacco off the street and elevated him to the starting role in desperation.

Sixty-seven quarterbacks started games last season, one year after a Super Bowl era-record 69 started in 2022. The spike isn’t just because the league added an extra game in 2021. The trend line from 2000 to 2020 predicted a 17th game would yield 59.6 starting quarterbacks per season — the average from 2021 to 2023 was 66. Three teams started at least four quarterbacks last year, and the Browns started five, tying an NFL record for a non-strike year.

Several general managers and club employees who spoke to ESPN this preseason couldn’t point to one reason why more quarterbacks are starting games, or why there are fewer capable backups to replace them. More flexibility to return players from injured reserve, a tougher concussion protocol and a tendency to keep only two quarterbacks on the active roster, which makes it harder to develop a third, are among the cited reasons why the benches have gone cold.

Backup quarterbacks aren’t ceremonial anymore. They have to play. For coaches and general managers, quarterback strategy is under increased scrutiny. An analytics staffer told ESPN their department had multiple conversations with its head coach this summer about this trend and the development of quarterbacks beyond their starter. One general manager told ESPN he would be looking for a veteran with starting experience as his QB3, because he didn’t feel comfortable with the young and untested QB3 and QB4 he had on his 90-man roster.

“You’re on the right topic,” Commanders head coach Dan Quinn said. “People are probably going to protect themselves more.”

TYROD TAYLOR TOOK a seat at a high-top table on the suite level at Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium. At 34 years old, playing for his seventh NFL team, he had just shown off his still impressive deep ball at joint practices with the Panthers, and now the Jets buses were waiting on their backup quarterback to go to their afternoon team meetings. Taylor had just a few minutes to talk about his new job.

“I’m looking forward to helping uplift the quarterback room and sharing my knowledge and leadership amongst the team,” he said.

Uplift is the perfect verb for what the Jets’ quarterback room lacked last season. The 13-year veteran with 59 starts is the Jets’ protection against the problem that doomed them in 2023. After Aaron Rodgers‘ season lasted four snaps, the inexperienced and inconsistent Zach Wilson took over, then got injured. The team wound up cycling through QB3 Tim Boyle and QB4 Trevor Siemian, neither of whom provided average quarterback play (Boyle’s QBR was 10.9 and Siemian’s was 14.4. Wilson’s 30.6 was 30th in the league).

“If you’re going to trim costs, the backup quarterback is a tough, tough position to trim costs on. Because you don’t think you’re going to need it, but when you do, you’re s— out of luck.”

AFC scouting director

Last season, Taylor was quarterback No. 39 of 67 who started games and was part of two of four changes the Giants made at the position (Daniel Jones to Taylor to Jones to Tommy DeVito to Taylor), which matched the Jets 2023 quarterback carousel (Rodgers to Wilson to Boyle to Wilson to Siemian) and was just short of the Vikings (five changes) and the league-leading Browns (seven).

“You have to have insurance at the quarterback position,” Taylor said. “Football is only 17 games. Each week is pivotal to how your postseason can look, so you don’t really have room to have a week where it doesn’t go through for you.”

Taylor started five games for the Giants last season, first after Daniel Jones injured his neck and then again after Jones tore an ACL and became the fourth of seven starting quarterbacks lost for the season with injury. Taylor was injured last season, too. The Giants wanted him back, but he signed with the New York team which needed him more.

After suffering through the consequences of being ill-prepared behind a big-money starter, the Jets are now spending a guaranteed $8.5 million on a veteran backup and have the most experienced quarterback duo in the league.

“We’ve seen a lot of ball,” Taylor said. “Between us two, 34 years of experience, that’s very rare.”

Top backup contracts go to the bridge starter types, who earn around $10 million per year. Sam Darnold signed with Minnesota for $10 million per year (after they cycled through four quarterbacks last season), Gardner Minshew signed with Las Vegas for $12.5 million and Jacoby Brissett went to New England for $8 million. All three players are now their team’s Week 1 starters.

In a similar move to the Jets bringing Taylor aboard, the Browns signed Jameis Winston in free agency to back up Deshaun Watson after rotating through both their backups last season and resorting to signing an unemployed Flacco to the practice squad in Week 12.

Flacco played well enough to save Cleveland’s season, and head coach Kevin Stefanski won Coach of the Year because he made the playoffs despite using four different quarterbacks in multiple games. But an AFC scouting director said the Browns shouldn’t have ever been in that situation.

“That was poor planning on their part,” the scouting director said.

In 2022, Brissett started 11 games for the Browns while Watson served his suspension, and he played better than Watson did when he returned. But Brissett was looking for a chance to start in 2023, so he signed with the Commanders for $8 million, nearly double what Cleveland had paid him. The Browns signed Joshua Dobbs in his place for $2 million, half the cost of Brissett’s 2022 deal, and then drafted Dorian Thompson-Robinson in the fifth round. Thompson-Robinson had a good camp, so, just before the season started, they traded No. 2 quarterback Dobbs to Arizona for a fifth-round pick.

“They got greedy,” the scouting director said. “They know they don’t have assets, and they were like, ‘OK, we can just trade this guy for a pick, and we have DTR,’ who, in their eyes, could do the same stuff that Dobbs was doing.”

But Thompson-Robinson threw three interceptions in his first start against the Baltimore Ravens, so it was on to PJ Walker the following week, who Cleveland signed to the practice squad on Aug. 30 after trading Dobbs. The Browns 2023 quarterback room: an injured starter, a veteran backup who had just arrived and a rookie who was too raw. Cleveland overestimated Watson’s durability.

“If you’re going to trim costs, the backup quarterback is a tough, tough position to trim costs on,” the scouting director said. “Because you don’t think you’re going to need it, but when you do, you’re s— out of luck.”

Enter Flacco, who had been waiting for this exact scenario. He was well aware of the recent trend of starting quarterbacks getting injured. He’d been among the first 32 of 69 quarterbacks who started games in 2022. And the only reason he was the Jets’ Week 1 starter that year is because Wilson hurt his knee in the preseason.

“I was thinking, alright, if I just sit at home, somebody’s gonna need somebody,” Flacco said after a Colts training camp practice on a misty gray morning. “I’ve played a lot. I have experience, so maybe they’ll come to me.”

Flacco was drafted in 2008. Since then, he has seen two collective bargaining agreements decrease practice time, meaning the reps were more and more scarce for non-QB1s, and the emergency QB3 exemption eliminated.

“It’s become such a win-now league, that the development of people, there’s no real incentive for it,” Flacco said. “You either win now with your starter, or maybe a couple games with your second-string guy, or you didn’t win and you’re gone, so you didn’t have time to develop a third guy anyway.”

So Flacco waited as Rodgers got hurt, then Anthony Richardson, then Kirk Cousins, Jones and Watson.

In late November, Flacco finally got a call, and he signed to the Browns practice squad thanks to another recent rules change that may be a factor in the rising number of quarterbacks starting games. Veterans like Flacco are now eligible to be part of practice squads.

When Thompson-Robinson went into the concussion protocol, Flacco became the Browns’ fourth starting quarterback for 2023, No. 53 of the 67 quarterbacks who started games.

And this offseason, the 39-year-old quarterback didn’t have to wait for a call. Indianapolis needed to replace its backup Minshew, who had played well enough in relief of Richardson that he signed for an opportunity to start with Las Vegas.

“[Head coach Shane Steichen] values having a veteran in the room that can help out a younger guy,” Flacco said. “And he also values a guy that can go in there and play well if he has to.”

Under general manager Chris Ballard’s leadership, the Colts have consistently invested in the quarterback room. After Richardson’s season ended in Week 2, Minshew played well enough to get the Colts within a game of making the playoffs. Sam Ehlinger has been the Colts’ QB3 since he was drafted in the sixth round in 2021, and his transaction history is spotless. He’s never been relegated to the practice squad, where most teams hold their third but risk subjecting them to a waiver claim. The Colts thought a third quarterback on the active roster was important even when veterans Matt Ryan and Nick Foles were QB1 and QB2 in 2022.

“It is very rare,” Ehlinger said. “I’ve been fortunate to have very little transactions and be able to stick on the roster this long.”

Ehlinger was No. 46 of the 69 quarterbacks to start games in 2022. He lost all three of those starts, but said the experience was “invaluable” for his development.

“Understanding what the speed of the game looks like, what practice during the week looks like, how much film you need to watch,” he said. “It also adds a level of credibility. It’s like, ‘OK, he has played, and he’s put good things on tape,’ so it’s a little more justification for keeping somebody like that around.”

The Colts used five of their 90 roster spots on quarterbacks this preseason. “You can never have too many,” quarterbacks coach Cam Turner said. “Especially three good ones you like. You don’t want to cut them and expose them on the practice squad. They’ve put in so much time. You’re comfortable with them. You don’t want to develop guys for other people. You want to develop guys for yourself.”

BUCCANEERS GENERAL MANAGER Jason Licht described the prevailing train of thought when it comes to quarterbacks like this: “If your starter goes down, then your season’s over, most people think anyway for most teams.”

Veteran NFL agent Mike McCartney represents Dobbs, who raised eyebrows around the league in November when he entered on the second drive for Minnesota in place of injured Kirk Cousins (another of McCartney’s clients) and Jaren Hall five days after being acquired — and won. Although the Eagles and Nick Foles proved it wrong, McCartney said he fights the “can’t win big with a backup” battle with general managers every year.

“As an agent I have heard it hundreds of times, ‘If you lose your starter, you are done,'” McCartney said. “In the offseason the backup QB is not valued as much as it is in-season.”

Licht said he doesn’t subscribe to that philosophy. Which is why he signed QB3 John Wolford from the practice squad to the Bucs active roster during Week 9 of last season, when Licht said they were about to lose him to the Rams or the Vikings.

Tampa Bay starter Baker Mayfield didn’t miss any games last season, but he was a little banged up at the time, so it was easy roster math for Licht, and an easy decision for Wolford, too.

“They want you now, because they need you now,” Wolford said of the outside suitors. “But they didn’t value you enough in the offseason to try to sign you, so …” Wolford was released last week by the Bucs, who are carrying Mayfield and Kyle Trask on the 53, and rookie Michael Pratt on the practice squad. By the end of the week, Wolford had signed to the Panthers practice squad, reunited with ex-Buccaneers offensive coordinator Dave Canales.

“That’s always the part that you struggle with the most; it’s a player that hopefully isn’t even going to touch the field …” Licht said, “eating up a roster spot that another lineman or another skill position could help.”

The Vikings found themselves back in quarterback hell before the season even began, but this year they were prepared. Rookie first-rounder J.J. McCarthy‘s injury meant Darnold officially became the starter, Nick Mullens the backup and Hall the QB3. At roster cut-down, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah released Hall in order to sign fifth-year quarterback Brett Rypien to the active roster because he felt better about Rypien’s experience in the QB3 role than Hall, who he said needs more development.

“I’ve learned from last season that you’re either one snap away or one snap from being one snap away,” Adofo-Mensah told reporters. “Adding Brett to the room feels good.”

The biggest current QB3 success is Purdy, who made San Francisco’s 53-man roster as a rookie because Niners brass knew Purdy had played well enough in the preseason that at least two other teams were planning to submit a waiver claim for him, per an NFL front office source with direct knowledge of the interest in Purdy.

Licht was working in New England in 2000 when the Patriots kept four quarterbacks at roster cut-down that year because they didn’t want to lose QB4 Tom Brady.

Back then, loading your roster with quarterbacks wasn’t uncommon. In 2000, 30 of the then-31 NFL teams had three quarterbacks on their 53-man roster for Week 1. But by 2023, that number had dwindled to 15 teams, less than half of the NFL. It hit an all-time low of 14 in 2018 and again in 2019 and 2021. Many teams opted to use that 46th game-day active spot for another position.

This season, 14 teams kept three quarterbacks on roster cut-down day.

The QB3-on-the-practice squad reality means the job has become more transient, and it’s harder to develop a late round or undrafted quarterback.

This offseason, NFL owners voted again in favor of increased access to quarterbacks on game day. They passed an update to 2023’s emergency third quarterback rule, which would allow the emergency third to come from the practice squad with an unlimited number of elevations (the current limit is three elevations per player). The NFLPA vetoed that update, because, per an NFLPA source, that “would treat a class of player differently than others and it would allow for a type of legal stashing, which we do not believe is fair.”

David Blough went undrafted out of Purdue in 2019 and built a five-year NFL career as a QB3. He started games for the Lions in 2019 after Matthew Stafford and backup quarterback Jeff Driskel got hurt, and for the Cardinals in 2022 after Kyler Murray tore an ACL, Colt McCoy suffered a concussion and Trace McSorley got benched. The Cardinals signed Blough as their fourth starter that season off the Vikings practice squad.

“I was, what quarterback 64 that year to start a game?” Blough said, after a training camp practice with the Commanders, where he is now the assistant quarterbacks coach.

Blough was actually QB63, and the Cardinals were his third team that season. “I think about how important continuity is for a quarterback to play well,” Blough said. “It might be the most important thing, from learning the ins and outs of the system, knowing where all the bones are buried in the offense, and having answers for every situation.”

Now that he’s on the coaching side, he took a long pause to think about what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it before answering a question about the decrease of QB3s on 53-man rosters and how that affects their development.

“It is a unique shift,” Blough said. “It’s really important to develop young guys. And I think sometimes, I don’t know if the easier way is to just go and take somebody who has a little experience that you trust.”

Someone like Flacco or Taylor or Winston.