Who's our new favorite journeyman quarterback?
Now that Ryan Fitzpatrick is retired, it's time to pick his journeyman successor.
This past week, we saw a few notable retirements in the NFL. One, Stephon Tuitt, is still young (29) and played for the same team (the Steelers) his entire career. Another, Alex Mack, is 36 and after two lengthy stints with the Browns and Falcons, he was with the 49ers for his final season. A third, Frank Gore, is 39 and is best known for his long tenure with one franchise (the 49ers), even as he bounced around in his last six seasons in the league. And finally, Ryan Fitzpatrick, is also 39 and spent his time in the NFL hopping from team to team.
In other words, he was a journeyman quarterback — and probably, up until his retirement, the most well-known active journeyman quarterback.
What made Fitzpatrick’s career so memorable wasn’t just that he was a seventh-round pick out of Harvard who suited up for nine different teams in 17 years. It wasn’t that he started, at some point, for all nine, even though he was only signed to be a starter for three of them. Nor was it how quickly and often he would vacillate between a turnover-prone bonehead and an air-it-out genius.
It was his resilience, his longevity, his love of the game. Or as Fitzpatrick would describe it, the true definition of “Fitzmagic”:
"I try to play with passion, I try to make sure that rubs off on my teammates and, if you talk to a lot of my former teammates, I think they would tell you they enjoyed playing with me. For me, it's real, it's who I am, I just try to bring guys around me up. That's what I've tried to do for the majority of my career."
Well, that and his beard:
I don’t subscribe to a strict set of rules about what determines a journeyman quarterback. I think someone can be a journeyman his whole career. I think others can begin as a starter, then transition to a journeyman. I think the opposite can happen.
However, Fitzpatrick’s retirement leaves a void in the NFL for a specific kind of journeyman quarterback: the one who may not stick around in one city for long, but who can rally guys around him and compete for a starting job.
There are a few candidates who could pick up his mantle, and I’d like to figure out which one has the most Fitzmagic potential. For the purposes of this exercise, I will only include quarterbacks who have played for at least five teams and spent at least seven years in the NFL.
That immediately excludes a few names who have journeyman capability but who aren’t quite there yet, with their current team in parentheses: Jacoby Brissett (Browns), Andy Dalton (Saints), Marcus Mariota (Falcons), Mitchell Trubisky (Steelers), and Carson Wentz (Commanders). Maybe one day!
By my calculations, that leaves us with 11 active quarterbacks who fit the broad definition of a journeyman. Let’s narrow that list even more so we can focus on the Fitzpatrick-type contenders.
The ones who were never good enough to be more than a backup quarterback
Matt Barkley (Bills), Chase Daniel (Chargers), Blaine Gabbert (Bucs), Brian Hoyer (Patriots), Josh Johnson (Broncos), Colt McCoy (Cardinals), Trevor Siemian (Bears)
And just like that, we’ve eliminated over 60 percent of the candidates. These guys might be what you think of as the quintessential journeyman QB — for instance, Josh Johnson’s transactions page takes about a year to scroll through, and in between NFL jobs, he played in the UFL, AAF, and XFL. They can fill in as an emergency starter (and have done so), but none of them have that Fitzmagic ability to then steal the job.
Fitzpatrick started 147 games in his career, all the way until his final appearance (which sadly, was Week 1 of 2021, when he suffered a season-ending hip injury). He threw for 34,990 yards and 223 touchdowns in his 17 seasons and became the first modern-day NFL player to start for nine different teams.
The quarterbacks on the list above with the numbers closest to Fitzpatrick’s are Blaine Gabbert and Brian Hoyer … and they are really not comparable at all. Gabbert has started 48 games and passed for 9,273 yards and 50 touchdowns, while Hoyer has made 39 starts with 10,631 passing yards and 53 touchdowns. Their experiment as QB1 petered out in the middle of the 2010s, and since then, they’ve found a living as a veteran backup, like the rest of the names in this section.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, either. In fact, it can be one of the best gigs in the NFL. Chase Daniel has made $41 million while starting just five games, and he, Hoyer, Gabbert, and Trevor Siemian each won a Super Bowl ring without breaking a sweat … or any bones.
This group lives under the radar, and that’s fine. It just means none of them are a Fitzpatrick-like journeyman.
The ones who are no longer good enough to be more than a backup quarterback
Nick Foles (Colts), Case Keenum (Bills)
Nick Foles and Case Keenum have had higher peaks than anyone in the previous section. Foles led the league in passer rating in 2013, boasts a 4-2 record in the postseason, and has a Super Bowl MVP award. Keenum went 11-3 under center for the Vikings in 2017 and was partly responsible for one of the greatest moments in playoff history:
At one point, both were competent, at times even good, starters who were capable of outplaying the injured quarterbacks they replaced. Those days ended in 2019, when Foles sported an 0-4 record with the Jags and Keenum stumbled to 1-7 with Washington. Still, they’ve found a niche as a useful backup: Both started games last year and even went undefeated (Keenum was 2-0 for the Browns, Foles was 1-0 for the Bears).
That trajectory doesn’t meet the Fitzpatrick qualifications, though. Even though his play could be erratic, his ability to compete remained consistent throughout his career. Between 2008 and 2020, Fitzpatrick started at least seven games in every season but one (2017, when he started three games in place of Jameis Winston in Tampa). If he hadn’t gotten hurt last season, that streak would have extended another year.
At least Foles and Keenum have bragging rights over Fitzpatrick in one area: each has a signature playoff win. Fitz never managed to get to the postseason.
The ones with the most Fitzmagic promise
Tyrod Taylor (Giants), Teddy Bridgewater (Dolphins)
And then there were two.
Tyrod Taylor’s career began in a similar fashion to Fitzpatrick’s. He was a late-round draft pick who played sparingly until he got his chance to be in the starting lineup. Taylor didn’t put up huge numbers in Buffalo, but he did make the Pro Bowl one year and helped the Bills end their 17-year playoff drought. Since then, Taylor has signed with four teams and has started at least one game for all but the Giants, his newest squad.
Teddy Bridgewater entered the league as a first-round draft pick and started early in his rookie year due to an injury to Matt Cassel. From then on, the team was his. He had to deal with the usual learning curve, but Bridgewater’s season was better than most rookie quarterbacks at the time. He built off that in his second year, leading the Vikings to an NFC North title. Unfortunately, a devastating knee injury in the offseason prematurely put an end to his time as Minnesota’s star quarterback.
After that, Bridgewater has been both a reliable backup who was occasionally thrust into the lineup (with the Saints) and an average starter who is not in any team’s long-term plans (Panthers, Broncos). He enters this season on his sixth team since 2017.
Both Taylor and Bridgewater have lengthier injury histories than Fitzpatrick, but they are currently backing up two other quarterbacks — Daniel Jones and Tua Tagovailoa, respectively — who missed time last season. They also have the skills to outperform those youngsters, thus following the Fitzpatrick cycle:
But only one of them has that certain finesse, the one that can make his teammates and fans alike gravitate toward him:
While I think Taylor is a well-respected presence in the locker room, I think Bridgewater is the one who still has more starting potential and who has the charisma necessary to follow in Fitzpatrick’s footsteps.
So congrats (?) to Teddy Bridgewater, our new favorite NFL journeyman quarterback.