Ballers and Shot Callers
Jason Johnson: This is a word, a podcast from Slate. I’m your host, Jason Johnson. It’s football season. And in America’s most popular sport, the most important player is arguably the quarterback. After decades of essentially being shut out of the role, more African-American quarterbacks are shining on the field.
Speaker 2: A black quarterback had not even been drafted in the first round until 1978. If you’re a team owner, if you’re a general manager, if you’re a head coach, you no longer can ignore someone at that position because of the color of his skin.
Jason Johnson: The rise of the black quarterback coming up on a word with me, Jason Johnson. Stay with us. Welcome to a word, a podcast about race and politics and everything else. I’m your host, Jason Johnson, for football fans. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. We’re wrapping up the NFL’s preseason and we’re just about a week away from the teams taking the field for real. And when they do, many of them will be led by black quarterbacks. Just a few decades ago, African-Americans rarely had the opportunity to play in that position. And while great strides have been made on the field, less than a third of quarterbacks are black in a sport where 70% of the players are African-Americans. Joining us to talk about it is Jason Reid. He’s the author of the new book Rise of the Black Quarterback What It Means for America. He’s also the senior NFL writer for ESPN. Jason Reid, welcome to a work.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you for having me.
Jason Johnson: So back in 2019, you declared that season, the year of the black quarterback and said that it was the best time ever for black quarterbacks. What inspired you to write about that and ultimately write this book?
Speaker 2: Well, back in the 2019, 2020 NFL season, the NFL was commemorating its 100th season. And from talking to people in the league, there appeared to be more superstar black quarterbacks or black quarterbacks who could be superstars who were on the verge of superstardom than ever before. And just looking at how historically this was the most marginalized group in the NFL, black men who aspired to play quarterback. I thought it would be interesting to look at, okay, if I’m right about this. Well, let’s take a look all year at these black quarterbacks and what they could do in this monumental season for the NFL, its 100 season. So I went to my editors at ESPN and I said, Hey, I’d like to do a season long project tracking what these black quarterbacks do in the league this year. And they thought it was a good idea.
Speaker 2: Well, we know what happened. Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, who was going into his first season as a week one starter, became only the second quarterback to win the MVP award, unanimously joining Tom Brady as the only other quarterback to do that. The guy who won the award the previous season, Patrick Mahomes. That season, he led the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl championship in 50 years and also won the game’s MVP award. Then it only 24, becoming the youngest player in NFL history to have a league MVP award, a Super Bowl MVP award, and a Super Bowl trophy.
Speaker 2: Kyler Murray, who was the number one overall draft pick that year, won the AP offensive Rookie of the Year award. Dak Prescott with the Dallas Cowboys had a great year. Russell Wilson with the Seattle Seahawks, then with the Seattle Seahawks, had a great year. Deshaun Watson then with the Houston Texans. So it truly was the year of the black quarterback in the NFL.
Speaker 2: When the season ended, I’m going from my hotel after the Super Bowl to the airport, and a literary agent called me and just said, Hey, I’ve been following this series and I think there’s a book here. And I saw my book. I’m going to the airport. We can talk about it, you know. And I took his information. I get to the airport, I’m waiting for my flight. And another little literary agent called me and said, Hey, there’s a book here. And so I took that as a sign that maybe there’s a book here. So longer story a little bit shorter. I signed a contract to write the book and about 70 to 75 interviews and 88,000 words or so later, we have rise of the black quarterback, what it means for America.
Jason Johnson: What’s interesting, I look back just ten years. You say that 2019 was sort of this great year for quarterbacks. But you talk about in your book how 1999 was the best year there had ever been for black quarterbacks. Up to that point, you had Donte Culpepper, who eventually had his greatest years with the Vikings. You had Donovan McNabb, who was very close to possibly being a Hall of Famer for his years with the Eagles. There was only sort of one outlier with Smith. What do you think has changed and the attitudes of NFL coaches and NFL team owners, 90% of whom are still white from 1999 to 2019? That has allowed these black quarterbacks to be more successful.
Speaker 2: Green finally completely trump black. The team owners desire to continually expand profits for very self-serving reasons for coaches and general managers wanting to keep their jobs to maintain their livelihood. They looked at these guys, these black quarterbacks, who, again, historically NFL history had been shunned. They were supposedly too stupid to play the position. They were supposedly too lazy to play the position. White players supposedly would not follow them.
Speaker 2: But in 1999, there was an acknowledgment within the league because of the NFL draft, when, as you just mentioned, three black quarterbacks, Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith and Donte Culpepper, were taking the first round. A black quarterback had not even been drafted in the first round until 1978. If you’re a team owner, if you’re a general manager, if you’re a head coach, you no longer can ignore someone at that position because of the color of skin, because the pressure to win is so immense and the desire of owners to continue to drive these profits. You know, the NFL is the £800 gorilla in American popular culture and there’s so much money to be made. If a black quarterback can help you do that, they’re no longer saying, no, we don’t want black quarterbacks.
Jason Johnson: Marlon Briscoe, who died earlier this summer, was the first black quarterback of the Super Bowl era. Way back in 1968, he led the Denver Broncos after their starter went down. Here’s a clip of Briscoe talking about that in the NFL Network documentary Skin Deep.
Speaker 3: I knew that the world would be looking at, but I didn’t dwell on it. But you have to remember, this is 1968. My entire life was white. They were from the south, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. And prior to coming into the pros. Not only had they not played with a black quarterback, they didn’t play with any black players, period. They stood by me and played for me. They would always have the same. Don’t let them touch the.
Jason Johnson: Just after Briscoe left that team, he went on to have a successful career, but nobody wanted him as a quarterback. We’ve heard similar stories about African-American quarterbacks achieving success on the field, but not being able to get the endorsements. The work opportunities as other people. What has changed between sort of Briscoe’s experience and what we see in the quarterbacks that you focus on in your book?
Speaker 2: When we look at the period after Marlin Briscoe, what we see is it goes a long time from Marlin Briscoe in 1968 to Doug Williams becoming the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl while to start the Super Bowl as a black man and win the game’s MVP award in 1987 when Washington crushed Denver. So we’re talking about a span of basically 20 years.
Speaker 2: Okay. And during that time, there was still just this aversion team owners and executives and coaches. What Marlin did did not resonate enough to where there was a sea change and all of a sudden you saw black quarterbacks everywhere. It was a very gradual, very slow, very painful progression. But by the time we get to Doug Williams being drafted in 1978, which is ten years after Marlin did what he did in 1968, we see that the league is still not accepting of black quarterbacks, but there is beginning to be a little bit of a change in the minds of some of these decision makers.
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, we do need more quarterback. We do need more top level quarterbacks. So when Doug did what he did in the Super Bowl and then Warren Moon, who didn’t get drafted in 78, comes from Canada and he starts lightened up with Houston in the early 1990s and Randall Cunningham in Philadelphia. So what I really point to is Doug Williams, Warren Moon and Randall Cunningham in the late 1980s, early to mid 1990s. And that really is what changed. It wasn’t just that there was one guy and you could write it off and say, Okay, yeah. Marlin Briscoe had a nice rookie year, but he’s just one guy. All of a sudden, you had a Super Bowl winning black quarterback. You had a Pro Bowl black quarterback to Pro Bowl, black quarterbacks in Warren Moon and Randall Cunningham. And that really made the league finally have to say, well, we’re not there yet, but maybe we’re going to have to get there at some point.
Jason Johnson: We’re going to take a short break. We come back. More on black quarterbacks. This is a word with Jason Johnson. Stay tuned.
Jason Johnson: You’re listening to a word with Jason Johnson today. We’re talking with sports journalist Jason Reed about his new book, Rise of the Black Quarterback What it Means for America. So the eighties ushered in this sort of new era of black quarterbacks like you mentioned, you had your war Moone yet Randall Cunningham, Rodney Peete, of course, Doug Williams, who was the first black person to star and actually win a Super Bowl. I want to play this clip of Williams looking back on that win. When I was walking off the field.
Speaker 2: I thought I had done what Martin Luther King used to always say, Get to the mountaintop. I thought I had reached the mountaintop of my profession. You can’t go no higher.
Jason Johnson: So this is the thing, Jason. Doug Williams goes and wins. The biggest game in the biggest sport in America, pretty close to the world is pretty much the Super Bowl and the World Cup. And yet he kind of fell off the map after that. At the same time, you had Warren Moon, who arguably was a more talented quarterback than Doug Williams, who was forced to play in Canada for four years because there was no American NFL team that was willing to give him the opportunity. When you look back at some of those quarterbacks, then how do they look at their legacies? Did they tend to be frustrated saying, Man, if I could have played longer, look at the success I could have had to Doug Williams say, you know, if they had made me a starter in 84, maybe we made three Super Bowls. How how do these guys look back on their legacies now 30, 40 years later?
Speaker 2: You know, Jason, I’m so glad you asked me that because Marlin Briscoe, Doug Williams and Warren Moon all gave me a lot of time for the book. I couldn’t have written this book without those three. And obviously I knew about racism existing and how pervasive it was at that point. And Marlon, you know, talked about the Jim Crow South and how all of his offensive linemen, they didn’t play with black players because they all were from the South. I went into it prepared for there to be some bitterness. Quite frankly, I thought that I would hear that. And Jason, what was so I don’t know if refreshing is the word or heartwarming. It blew me away, though, that that didn’t exist. They all talked about how happy they were for these guys today.
Speaker 2: In Marlon’s case, Marlon, up until his passing recently was sit in his home in Long Beach on Sundays and I guess on Mondays and Thursdays also because the games every day and a week now basically and watched Kyler Murray and watch Patrick Mahomes and watch Lamar Jackson. And I remember I called him one weekend and he was like, Oh, Jason, you know, I got to watch the game. I’ll call you back. And it was a great feeling to know that these guys were not bitter about it. Like, they looked at what they did and they burst in with pride or they burst with pride because these guys stand on their shoulders, these guys today, and whether or not all these guys recognize them doesn’t matter to them. What they care about is they persevered. And now these guys today have benefited from it.
Speaker 2: And really, you know, that’s what each one help one, you know, lift up the people who come after you, pull them up. Not everybody believes in that and not everybody practices that. But I can honestly say that these three men, based on my conversations with them and I had a lot of conversations with them for the book, I did not sense any bitterness. It was really just a feeling of like, Hey, I’m proud that I could have helped facilitate what’s occurring today.
Jason Johnson: We are now in the 50 something Super Bowl. That’s what we’re going to be playing in 2023. And it’s amazing to think that in all of these Super Bowls, there have only been three African-American winners. You had Doug Williams, you had Russell Wilson, and then Patrick Mahomes, who is biracial but identifies as black. My question is, when you talk to these quarterbacks, some of them who may have won Super Bowl, some of whom have not won Super Bowls, people who may know them, are they aware are they conscious of the way in which the fans root for them different?
Jason Johnson: I know then when Russell Wilson was in the Super Bowl, black folk were like they hadn’t even cared about the Seattle Seahawks, you know, in years because they hadn’t been a good team. But black folk were root for and black people were rooting for Colin Kaepernick. Black people were rooting for Donovan McNabb, and some white people were very explicitly against them because they wanted the white quarterback to win. Are these quarterbacks aware of that when they get to the big game? It may not matter week 12 to week 15, but when you’re in that big game, do they know that?
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is a great question because when I approach Patrick Mahomes people about him participating in the book, one of the reasons I did it was because at that Super Bowl that the Chiefs won in Miami, Patrick was asked about being a black quarterback and what that means, and he gave a really thoughtful answer about being the son of a black man and a white woman and identifying as a black quarterback. But what that representation means, not just for black kids, but for white kids, too. It was something that he had thought about because to be asked something like that in a group interview, in a massive interview, he could have been caught off guard. It was something that he had been thinking about.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I can’t speak to what all of them think, but I know, you know, talking to Kyler Murray for the book, talking to Patrick for a book, they have a consciousness about it. It’s not something that I would say that they think about every second of the day. But on that Super Bowl stage, whether he knew he’d be asked about it or not, he clearly was thinking about it because of the thoughtful response he gave. And it was clearly a massive stage and it clearly puts a quarterback under a different spotlight. So, yeah, I know that some of them do think about it, and Mahomes clearly did.
Jason Johnson: I want to do a little contrast here between Colin Kaepernick, a guy who made it to the Super Bowl and lost to the Baltimore Ravens in one of the strangest Super Bowls ever where there was a blackout. Patrick Mahomes, who’s been to back to back Super Bowls and is still in the prime of his career. We all know that Colin Kaepernick began taking a knee in protest to police brutality in 2016 and basically got drummed out of the league just a couple of years since being a Super Bowl contending quarterback. And yet less than three years later, you’ve got Patrick Mahomes basically making an underground protest video with other black quarterbacks saying we’ve got to do something about police brutality. And the death of George Floyd should be a wake up call to all of us and the league basically buckle.
Jason Johnson: What happened between Kaepernick in 2016 and Patrick Mahomes in 2020 that empowered black quarterbacks in this way? Was it just society as a whole is attitudes had changed? Was it the fact that Patrick Mahomes was a Super Bowl winner and Colin Kaepernick wasn’t? Because that’s a very, very short window of time for people to basically be speaking about the exact same issue. One guy gets drummed out and everybody else who participated in that video or Patrick Mahomes, they ended up fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is a big part of the book for me. I mean, the chapter that I wrote on Patrick, because Patrick Mahomes is the answer to what would have happened to Colin Kaepernick if he was as good as Tom C, because make no mistake, Colin Kaepernick is a good NFL quarterback and there are a lot of sportswriters, white sportswriters, who carry the league’s water on this nonsensical narrative that Colin Kaepernick wasn’t good enough to be in the league. We can have a debate on how many teams Colin Kaepernick could start. All right. We can have a debate. I mean, at least with me, we can have a debate about, well, where does he rank among all the league’s quarterback? But I will not engage in the discussion. I used to get into it in my younger days on Twitter with some white writers. You can’t have a credible discussion with me that this guy wasn’t good enough to be in the league.
Speaker 2: 58 Career starts still to this day. One of the best touchdowns to interception ratio in the history of the game helped a team reach a Super Bowl, helped a team reach an NFC championship game or two NFC championship games. So Colin Kaepernick was a good quarterback, but he was not good enough to overcome the fact that he angered team owners to a point of like being enraged that he shined this light on systemic oppression and police brutality and had the audacity, the temerity to do this during the playing of the national anthem. If Colin Kaepernick had been Patrick Mahomes, he’d still be in the league.
Speaker 2: But you see, Colin Kaepernick was just not good enough, right, to where they couldn’t live without him. Colin Kaepernick soften the ground for Patrick Mahomes and the players who came out in that video and demanded that the league say Black Lives Matter and demanded that the league partner with them in doing more in their communities.
Speaker 2: The morning that the thing dropped by rankings that commonly called mean, he says we’re actually texting and he said it’s about to change. I’m like, Well, what do you mean? He’s like, Well, at the time, Patrick Mahomes had just come off a league MVP award, a Super Bowl MVP award, and won the Super Bowl. Right. He was the unquestioned guy. He was the number one guy in the NFL. And what this executive said to me was that the league can’t be on the opposite side of Patrick Mahomes.
Speaker 2: Wow. From a business standpoint, it was just untenable. And I was like, Well, yeah, but what about Kaepernick is like, no, trust me on this. It’s about to change, Jason. It was either that night or the next day. Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, made a video in which he said Black Lives Matter. It was such a shocking thing at that time because the league had funded social justice causes in an effort to get players to stop protesting. Black Lives Matter was still like that was a third rail. That was just something that was not going to be touched. So the fact that Mahomes wielded that type of power. And I don’t want to diminish the impact of the other players or other players in the video or other star black players who stepped up. But having Mahomes in that video was a game changer. Not to put myself on the back, but I was the first one to write the story.
Speaker 2: The league says, okay, now we’re going to put much more money into it. We’re going to do social justice causes, and we’re going to let players where patches on their helmets of people who have been slain in interactions with law enforcement. We’re going to sing the Negro. They call it the black national anthem, but it’s actually the Negro national anthem before a game. We’re going to put in the end zone and it takes all of us. Look, you can argue that those are just gestures, because obviously we know racism still exists. But the fact that Patrick Mahomes primarily moved the league that much from when Kaepernick first took a knee, when Captain Hook first took a knee, it was like the anger. It was palpable. Okay. So anyway, that’s what changed. Colin Kaepernick soften the ground for what Patrick and the other players did. But the biggest change was. Patrick Mahomes is a generational talent and Colin Kaepernick is just a good quarterback.
Jason Johnson: We’re going to take a short break. When we come back, more about the history and future of black quarterbacks. This is a word with Jason Johnson. Stay tuned.
Jason Johnson: You’re listening to a word with Jason Johnson today. We’re talking about black quarterbacks with Jason Reid, author of Rise of the Black Quarterback What It Means for America. So right now, one of the biggest news stories in the NFL and outside of the NFL is involving a black quarterback, Deshaun Watson. He’s a Cleveland Browns player who was accused by dozens and dozens of women of sexual assault and sexual harassment. He’s been suspended for 11 games, but he will still one day play very likely in this NFL’s season.
Jason Johnson: There have been other high profile quarterbacks who have been accused or connected with sexual violence or assault. Golden boy Peyton Manning was accused of assaulting, I believe, a team doctor back when he was in college. He claimed it was a prank. Brett Favre was accused of sexually harassing, I believe was a trainer at one point during his career. While sexual assault and violence are not uncommon for NFL players, do you still think that the way that Deshaun Watson has been treated is heavily influenced by race? Or do you think that because he is still considered a very good quarterback, that the race has been less prominent because he’s still going to be able to play this year?
Speaker 2: I look at it as the latter, the Deshaun Watson situation, he was found to be in violation of the NFL’s personal conduct policy. Now, you don’t have to have charges filed against you to be in violation of that and just, you know, to see the facts. For the listeners who may not know, two grand juries in Houston declined to indict him. There were no charges filed. But the NFL disciplinary officer who heard the case based on what she was presented with, she found that he did violate the policy. He found that he didn’t show any contrition. And because of that, she suspended him for six games. We know that. Then that was later in a settlement between the league and the NFL Players Association was increased to 11 games and a $5 million fine.
Speaker 2: So I don’t look at race being a factor here because the number of allegations. Okay, I mean, it was more than 20 women, you know, not that all those women cooperating with the NFL investigation, but there was more than 20 women. I can’t in my mind draw a connection between the racism of the past and the Deshaun Watson situation. And in fact, there was a time in this country not too long ago when if a black man was accused of something. White people say, you see, that’s the way they all are. There was a time in this country where if a black man did something well, it would be said, well, he’s a credit to his race because really the reality is they’re all trash. That’s what undergirded that backhanded compliment.
Speaker 2: So black quarterbacks were looked at collectively and not as individuals. I don’t want to get too far afield here, but when Martin Luther King talked about people being judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I think there’s another inference to take from that. The inference is judge them as individuals. So I do see progress here because there’s no cloud hanging over the other superstar black quarterback because Deshaun Watson is a superstar. Okay. I mean, he is. But that cloud is not hanging over these other superstar black quarterbacks. So I consider that to be progress.
Jason Johnson: So I always like to end on sort of an optimistic or future question. I think we’re at a point where, you know, black quarterbacks, I mean, it’s clear from the draft that that’s becoming the norm. You know, it’s not even so much of an issue. But here’s, I think, another level that I’m curious about in what your thoughts on we’re now seeing. Yes, African-American and biracial black identifying quarterbacks are coming out of these schools are coming out of California, Texas and everything else like that. But what we still haven’t seen is a rise in black quarterbacks in the NFL coming out of HBCUs. The most prominent is still Steve McNair. And Steve McNair has been gone for almost 15 years now with the sort of increased importance of historically black colleges and universities.
Jason Johnson: Right. Deion Sanders going to Jackson State. Eddie George, former running back for the Titans now at Tennessee State. And you’re seeing HBCU games not just covered for the halftime bands anymore, but there’s actually attention being paid to their wide receivers, to their running backs. Do you think in the future that we might finally start seeing quarterbacks drafted from HBCU’s? Do you think that is the next level of progress? Or do you still think that’s maybe ten or 15 years on.
Speaker 2: How much time we have? I love this part of the discussion. I’m so glad you brought this up. Short answer. Yes, I do. Let me tell you what. Okay. Name, image and likeness. Okay. For people listening to the podcast who may not be aware of this name, image and likeness refers to the ability of players now college athletes to profit off of exactly what it is name, image and likeness. It used to be that for all of college sports history, up until the past couple of years, college sports players were deemed amateurs, which was ridiculous because they were working full time jobs. They just weren’t getting paid for it. And before, you know, anybody gets angry, listen, is I believe in an education. I’m a college graduate. But my opinion about this has evolved over time because of the money that these universities were generating off the backs of these players. A college scholarship is great, and in some schools it’s worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But if you’re generating millions of dollars for the school, well, then I don’t think that’s an equitable split.
Speaker 2: Right. So because of name, image and likeness, college athletes can now benefit. They can strike deals with people who want to pay them for them to be spokespeople, for them to have their pictures used. What that will do is over a period of time and I don’t even think we’re talking ten years here. HBCU that we’ve seen this would be on Sanders to Jackson State become a viable option for top tier high school quarterback recruits who are black.
Speaker 2: And my dad went to Howard. Okay? I went to the University of Southern California, let’s say I’ve been an athlete, and my dad went to Howard and like, you know, I grew up going to Howard homecoming and being on campus. But if I’m a star athlete, I’m like, well, I’m not going to go to Howard because, you know, I mean, how am I going to make it from Howard to make it to the NFL or the NBA? Now you can. Now it’s viable because because you can go there and you can go to these HBCUs and get top tier coaching. But more than that, you can get paid for who you are and the potential of who you are. And you know what? If the stars are going to these schools, then there will be more television cameras there, I assure you that.
Speaker 2: Okay. So are we going to get to the point where like look at today, look at the traditional college football powerhouses. You’re Ohio State, Alabama’s you USC’s all led by superstar black quarterbacks. Now, those guys can potentially make more money in name, image and likeness than they could at, let’s say, a Jackson state right now. But you know what? Maybe in two years it becomes more equal. But I do believe that there are going to be more top tier quarterback recruits, black top tier quarterback recruits who will wind up at HBCU’s in large part because of name, image and likeness.
Jason Johnson: Jason Reid is the author of Rise of the Black Quarterback What it Means for America. He’s also the senior NFL writer for ESPN. Jason, thank you so much. I love this conversation and we’re definitely going to continue it later.
Speaker 2: Hey, thank you for having me.
Jason Johnson: And that’s the word for this week. The show’s e-mail is a word at Slate.com. This episode was produced by Jonny Evans. Ben Richmond is Slate’s senior director of operations for podcasts. Elisa montgomery is the vice president of Audio. Our theme music was produced by Don Will. I’m Jason Johnson. Tune in next week for Word.
