Your Mt. Rushmore of journeymen QBs

[JiffyJag]

2 minutes ago, scar988 said:

If Moon and Favre are Journeyman, then, they're definitely on the mt rushmore of it.

 

Yeah, which kinda defeats the purpose imo. The question of “who are the greatest QBs who played on 3+ teams” is different to me than “who are the guys that embodied being a journeyman” 

[Billy86]

On 3/7/2021 at 6:20 PM, Trojan said:

Rich Gannon (maybe short on number of teams but peaked in late thirties going to SB and winning MVP on his fourth team is pretty epic), Doug Flutie (I would think he'd be near most popular), Jon Kitna (Seahawks, Bengals, Lions, and Cowboys always felt like the elite tier of journey man that sticks an extra couple years before his next stop) and Josh Johnson (tons tons tons of teams, like Josh McCown/Ryan Fitzpatrick number of teams without ever getting mentioned) all deserve shout outs for guys not yet mentioned.

edit: Josh Johnson "Despite playing for sixteen teams across four leagues during his professional career, he did not win his first game as a starter until his 11th season as a member of the Redskins in 2018. "

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2008–2011) San Francisco 49ers (2012)* Sacramento Mountain Lions (2012) Cleveland Browns (2012) Cincinnati Bengals (2013) San Francisco 49ers (2014) Cincinnati Bengals (2015)* New York Jets (2015)* Indianapolis Colts (2015) Buffalo Bills (2015) Baltimore Ravens (2016)* New York Giants (2016) Houston Texans (2017) Oakland Raiders (2018)* Washington Redskins (2018) San Diego Fleet (2019) Detroit Lions (2019) Los Angeles Wildcats (2020) San Francisco 49ers (2020–present)*

* Offseason and/or practice squad member only

With a career passer rating of 61.7, that screams of "future college/nfl coach", dude must bring some serious value in training/aith the clipboard (not something to be scoffed at) to still be going.

If you had asked me, I would have guessed he flushed out of the league like 7 or 8 years ago, but I looked him up and see he even played a few games for Holy WFT back in 2018. 

[JiffyJag]

3 hours ago, Billy86 said:

With a career passer rating of 61.7, that screams of "future college/nfl coach", dude must bring some serious value in training/aith the clipboard (not something to be scoffed at) to still be going.

If you had asked me, I would have guessed he flushed out of the league like 7 or 8 years ago, but I looked him up and see he even played a few games for Holy WFT back in 2018. 

I watched him play live in person in 2018

it was terrible

he won 

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

I think Matt Schaub could definitely be on this list, but yeah Josh McCown and Ryan Fitzpatrick are pretty much THE guys when you think of journeymen QB's who just went around the league starting/backing up in various places and doing somewhat well on occasion.

[JiffyJag]

3 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

I think Matt Schaub could definitely be on this list, but yeah Josh McCown and Ryan Fitzpatrick are pretty much THE guys when you think of journeymen QB's who just went around the league starting/backing up in various places and doing somewhat well on occasion.

Schaub only played on 3 teams though, right? Falcons twice but still. 

[Billy86]

3 hours ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

I think Matt Schaub could definitely be on this list, but yeah Josh McCown and Ryan Fitzpatrick are pretty much THE guys when you think of journeymen QB's who just went around the league starting/backing up in various places and doing somewhat well on occasion.

While Mccown is about as definitive a journeyman as can be in terms of his ceiling, production and even playstyle, I think Fitzmagic gets bonus points for the stretches he has where someone new to the game might mistake his as being in the prime Brady/Rosgers/Brees/Peyton/Mahomes level of player, and maybe even above it... or they could be left wondering how this comical ky awful player they are watching is even a pro. 

He genuinely has been one of the very, very most entertaining QBs of the last 20 years. Any given throw at any moment could be a borderline impossible play for a 50+ yard touchdown, or the most mind-boggling pick 6 of the season. 

The whole Harvard economics 'with flying colours' graduate, with 1580 (out of 1600) on his SATs and 3rd highest ever wonderloc score bit while looking like a lumberjack just adds to the whole conundrum. 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Billy86

[bucsfan333]

Chase Daniel has played in the NFL for 12 years. He's played for five different teams. He has 261 career passing attempts. He's only started five games.

He's made $38M.

He's the center of my Mt. Rushmore in this category.

[JiffyJag]

Alright, so I did some math to determine who is, in fact, the greatest journeyman QB of all time. As I've indicated previously in this thread, I describe a true journeyman as being someone who plays for many different team (I'd say a minimum of 4), and finds a way to start a relatively high number of games for each team. 

With that in mind, I created, out of thin air, a metric to determine who best embodies my personal definition of a journeyman QB. The metric is as follows:

Average number of starts per season over the course of their career

divided by

average number of years spent with any given team

As I said, I consider starting games to be a very important aspect of being a journeyman, so this standard skews heavily against guys like the aforementioned Chase Daniel, who barely ever starts, and even guys like Mccown, who have sporadically started games or even had a full season or two of action, but primarily served in a backup capacity for a majority of their career. 

So, for say, Kerry Collins, he played 17 seasons in the NFL. He started 180 games over the course of those 17 seasons. This puts him at an average of 10.59 starts/season.

Over 17 seasons, Collins played for 6 teams, putting him at an average of 2.83 seasons per team. 10.59/2.83 gives Collins an OFFICIAL JOURNEYMAN RATING of 3.74.

I'll also note that I did count second stints with the same team as "playing for a separate team", a point that will prove important later on.

With that in mind, I have determined this number for almost every QB thus far listed in this thread. I present to you all, the totally definitive (based on a faulty metric I just made up that serves a definition that I also made up) list of greatest all time journeymen QBs:

HONORABLE MENTIONS

the aforementioned Kerry Collins with a score of 3.74 came in at number 6 on this list. Collins' hindrance was ultimately his fairly lengthy stints with Tennessee and Carolina. 

Jeff Blake came in 7th with a 3.57. Blake had a relatively low number of starts compared to others on the list, and played most of his time in Cincy, which again proved to hurt his score.

Steve Deberg was number 8 at 3.45. 

 

and now, for the moment you've all been waiting for: 

THE TOP 5:

5. Vinny Testaverde-3.88-Testaverde is obviously helped by the fact that he played 10 million years in the NFL. He did have long stretches with a few different teams, notably Tampa and the Jets. However, at the end of his career, Vinny hopped around team to team and started sporadically, and his longevity ultimately got him on the list.

4. Nick Foles -4.07- I was somewhat surprised to see Foles on here, though obviously he is helped by the fact that I did count his 2 stints with the Eagles as having played for 2 different teams (and in fairness, it was 2 very different Eagles regimes). Foles is liable to fall on this list if he hangs around the league for a while as a backup, but if he retires soon (which seems like a possibility given that he almost retired once already), he will have punched his ticket to the journeyman QB hall of fame (his SB ring helps his case a lot).

3. Chris Chandler-4.2- I also didn't expect Chandler to make the list, since I largely associated him with being a Falcon, but his stints as starter in Phoenix, Indianapolis, and Houston really helped him here, as well as his late career stop in St. Louis. 

2. Jeff George-4.31- George ranks highly here because his career was, by journeyman standards, relatively brief. He played 12 seasons, played for 5 different teams, and saw significant playing time at each stop. He pretty much is exactly the kind of career that I was looking for when I did this, and he is almost the perfect embodiment of a journeyman QB in my eyes, and he'd be top dog if it wasn't for....

 

1. Ryan Fitzpatrick-4.56- Fitzmagic won this metric by a pretty decent margin. His longevity, his uncanny ability to find his way onto the field, and his insistence on moving all around the country to play are all truly admirable. As if we all didn't already know it, Ryan Fitzpatrick IS, indeed, the greatest journeyman QB of all time.

 

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk. 

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by JiffyJag

[AZ_Eaglesfan]

Jeff Garcia deserves a mention imo.

[ThatJerkDave]

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/O/ODonNe00.htm

How about it?  (incoming triggered Steelers fans)

[Malik]

Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brad Johnson, and Vinny Testaverde have to occupy 3 of the spots. They all played with a large enough variety of teams to qualify as journeymen without debate and actually have legitimate peaks in their career outside of simply being an average starting QB. I don't know if we're including Rich Gannon, but definitely Rich over some dudes like Kerry Collins who was never good anywhere.

[Trojan]

The President that should be on Mt Rushmore that isn't is James Polk. Mt. Rushmore is the Presidents that added the most land to the United States (with Washington being credited for the 13 colonies, Jefferson Louisiana Purchase, Teddy Roosevelt for overseas possessions & Islands, and Lincoln for bringing the Southern states back) [just to clarify why Polk should be the 5th is he added the West, Texas to California].


JT OSullivan might be another guy to list that hasn't been mentioned. He was on the Saints, Packers, Bears, Vikings, Patriots, Panthers, Bears again, Lions (completing the NFC North), 49ers (where there was a mini-controversy is he better than Alex Smith), Bengals, Chargers, Raiders, and had a German league and Canadian league stop along the way as well. Talking about CFL Kevin Glenn was on every CFL team, but never NFL.

[CP3MVP]

Deberg is the all time goat with play action 

[TecmoSuperJoe]

12 hours ago, Malik said:

Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brad Johnson, and Vinny Testaverde have to occupy 3 of the spots. They all played with a large enough variety of teams to qualify as journeymen without debate and actually have legitimate peaks in their career outside of simply being an average starting QB. I don't know if we're including Rich Gannon, but definitely Rich over some dudes like Kerry Collins who was never good anywhere.

Well then Dave Krieg would have to take up a slot then.

[Zycho32]

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/MorrEa00.htm

Here's your Elder Statesman of the group.