From the wire services: “Third-string rookie QB Ryan Fitzpatrick was 19-of-30 for 310 yards and threw three touchdown passes as the St Louis Rams rallied to beat the Texans 33-27 in overtime.”
I am a total Rams fan (and a total Texans non-fan) so this game was a joy to watch, though I think the rollercoaster-ride comeback took a few months off my lifespan.
The coolest part of the victory (aside from the victory itself, of course) was that Fitzpatrick, who apparently was drafted well into the triple-digits, was the first Harvard QB ever to play in the NFL. I found that hard to believe, given that Harvard has been playing football since, like, the 1880s(!), but that’s what they said on Sports Center. (The claim reminded me that Pat Haden, a long-ago Rams QB was a Rhodes Scholar.)
That is hard to believe. Especially since there was a period of time (mostly pre 1960) when Harvard was actually a really good football program right up there with Notre Dame.
But are you sure they technically played for the NFL?
I assume you got your info from Dewey’s link. That page seems to make a distinction between “NFL Draftees” (with one player going back as far as 1942) and “Professional Players.” The “Professional Players” list contains some recent NFLers (probably free agents) but it also has a lot of players from the Teens and Twenties who played for teams that no longer exist. I suspect it was a catch-all category and, as such, may contain players who played pro ball but not for the NFL. Just a theory.
He’s not the only recent Ivy League QB, either, nor the best - Jay Fiedler of Dartmouth, mediocre though he is, still has had a career almost any fan would want to live through.
It should be more surprising that Harvard has produced a current NFL center and linebacker, Matt Birk and Isaiah Kacyvenski, than that it’s produced a current QB, especially considering that it’s a hockey school. Or that Columbia, perenially the worst Ivy League team, produced defensive lineman Marcellus Wiley.