The NFL's all-time clipboard kings
Power ranking the league's greatest career backup QBs, and the richest. Also, what about Love (Jordan)?
Brian Hoyer isn’t done yet.
The veteran backup quarterback, best remembered in 2020 for leading the world’s most frustrating two-minute drill for the Patriots, wasn’t displaced when New England re-signed Cam Newton and drafted Mac Jones. Instead, he’s back in New England on a one year deal that gives Bill Belichick a little extra veteran insurance in case his QB room collapses like a dying star once more.
It’s a deal that will keep the former undrafted free agent on the NFL’s books for a thirteenth year. Over that span, Hoyer has started 39 games and will have earned, if Spotrac is to be believed, more than $30 million in that span. That’s a formidable haul for a guy who threw 53 passes over his first three seasons and hasn’t won a game as a starter since 2016 (he went 1-4 for the Bears).
Hoyer’s done a great job turning his passion into the kind of career that can sustain his family for generations. But in terms of living that backup life, he’s worked a little too hard. The NFL’s greatest backups are the guys who’ve maximized their earnings while spending the bulk of their Sundays holding clipboards and corralling long snaps on special teams. The truly great backup quarterbacks aren’t the ones who lead their teams to unexpected glory like Frank Reich or Jeff Hostetler. Instead, they’re cashing checks and planning a retirement that doesn’t require constant trips to the chiropractor.
Who’s made the most money while doing the least? I’ve got just the list for you.
Players eligible for these rankings cannot have started more than 25 percent of the games they’ve been eligible to play. Otherwise they wouldn’t be backups. This means notables like Matt Cassel and Nick Foles weren’t included.
A player also cannot have been drafted in the first round. A Day 1 selection suggests a team had hopes for you at some point. We’re more interested in the guys who outperformed expectations, but only slightly. Finally, I’m limiting the list to guys who were on NFL rosters in 2016 or later. As much as I’d like to write 1,000 words on Scott Zolak and Brian St. Pierre, that feels a little niche … even for me.
Also, Nathan Peterman wasn’t included on account of being Nathan Peterman.
So who was the NFL’s clipboard king over the past decade? No. 1 will (not) surprise you!
1. Chase Daniel
$$$ per start: $7,565,694
$$$ per pass: $144,937
Daniel is the gold standard for #BACKUPLIFE. He’s made five NFL starts in his career and made just under $38 million over 11+ seasons. His career passer rating of 85.0 would have ranked 27th among 36 qualified starters last year. His two career wins came over the Chargers in a meaningless Week 17 game and a Matt Patricia Lions team.
Despite all this, he has enough money to own and operate his own failing theme park. I’m not saying he does, I’m just saying he should.
2. A.J. McCarron
$$$ per start: $3,600,492
$$$ per pass: $82.770
A standard bearer in the “Alabama quarterbacks suck in the pros,” McCarron is about to enter his eighth season in the league with the Atlanta Falcons. He’s en route for an NFL pension despite throwing an average of 25 regular season passes per year. Also, his wife is a former Miss America contestant whom Brent Musberger famously lusted over a decade ago. Dude keeps winning.
3. Joe Webb
$$$ per start: $2,199,136
$$$ per pass: $55,324
Webb has *only* earned around $8 million in his NFL career, but that comes with only 159 regular season passes to his name. He’s also the rare backup with a playoff start when the Vikings threw him into the fire in place of an injured Christian Ponder in 2012. It went poorly!
4. Drew Stanton
$$$ per start: $1,879,513
$$$ per pass: $48,845
Drew Stanton earned a Super Bowl ring last year as a 36-year-old member of the Buccaneers practice squad. DREW STANTON, WORLD CHAMPION.
5. Scott Tolzien
$$$ per start: $1,641,754
$$$ per pass: $44,980
Tolzien is the only member of this list to go his entire career without a single win as a starting quarterback. Having followed his career at Wisconsin closely, I can say this 100 percent makes sense.
6. Charlie Whitehurst
$$$ per start: $1,949,647
$$$ per pass: $44,310
It wouldn’t truly be a list of backup kings without Clipboard Jesus. Two NFL wins in nine starts for the former zero-time All-ACC honoree.
7. Mike Glennon
$$$ per start: $1,169,183
$$$ per pass: $32,212
Nothing quite sums up the Bears’ futility quite like signing Glennon, oft mistaken for a Goosebumps villain, for three years and $45 million, then trading up to draft Mitch Trubisky weeks later.
8. Josh Johnson
$$$ per start: $903,983
$$$ per pass: $26,985
Johnson appears in the NFL with the same regularity Venture Bros. seasons get produced. Every few years they pop up and it’s delightful. He was drafted in 2008 and somehow still wound up on the Niners’ practice squad in 2020. He threw zero regular season passes from 2012 to 2017 before stumbling up Washington’s injury-riddled depth chart in 2018 for three forgettable starts. Look for him next year in whatever failed spring football league comes next.
9. Matt Moore
$$$ per start: $859,984
$$$ per pass: $25,623
Moore is a sigil of the Dolphins’ failed quarterback dreams, but he’s also the guy who threw for 659 yards, four touchdowns, and zero interceptions in 2.5 games of fill-in duty for Patrick Mahomes in 2019. He’s football autopilot.
10. Matt Barkley
$$$ per start: $1,264,271
$$$ per pass: $24,380
Barkley has a career 11:22 touchdown-to-interception ratio and is one or two seasons away from earning eight figures of NFL salary.
That’s the dream.
Honorable mention: Shaun Hill, Derek Anderson, Hoyer, Colt McCoy, Chad Henne, and the backup god himself Josh McCown
What about Love? (Jordan Love that is)
A thought occurred to me reading over Christian’s backup QB power rankings, a thought about Jordan Love.
The greatest Packers backup QB in the last generation or so has to be Matt Flynn. I’m obviously not counting the years Aaron Rodgers sat behind Mr. Gunslinger. I’m starting to wonder if Jordan Love has any hope of approaching Flynn’s career achievements, which mostly consist of turning two career starts in relief of Rodgers ito a three-year, $20 million contract with the Seahawks in 2012, the same year they drafted Russell Wilson.
Love has been lost (god, the puns just write themselves here) in all the Rodgers-Green Bay drama. But reading between the lines, I’d venture a guess that if Love—a first-round pick last year—was ready to start, none of this would be happening. Did Rodgers, having seen his would-be heir in practice, feel empowered to press the team to get his way a bit? And if the Packers were confident in Love’s ability to take over this season, would they be at all bothered by Rodgers’ latest public threat? If that were the case, surely they would have dealt Rodgers by now, me thinks.
As with most situations like this, there’s probably more nuance behind the curtain than what we see, especially with both sides working to shape the narrative by selectively leaking information. Still, this would be a tempest in a tea pot if Jordan Love were any good, and at this point, he may be Green Bay’s next Brett Hundley rather than Matt Flynn. —RVB