Yes I meant during a game.
If your down to your 3rd or 4th string QB, I think the losing almost goes without saying at that point.
I believe every team is also allowed to suit up a “emergency quarterback” that is only allowed on the field to play QB and only in in case all other QBs are injured. In exchange for the limitation, he doesn’t count against the team’s active 45 man roster.
I’ve never heard of this rule in the NFL.
The Cardinals were very close to having to use Boldin last year when both Leinart and Warner got hurt in the same game.
I can see there could be situations where the team could be winning and still be on a 3rd string qb. Let’s say the 1st stringer was playing well and leads the team to a lead the he gets hurt. The 2nd stringer is already slightly injured and aggravates the injury when he goes in. The coach then has to go to the 3rd stringer and would be likely to do so if continuing to play the second stringer could cause even more injury.
If your team was leading when your third QB went down, you’d just throw someone there and say, “just try to keep things going long enough to give the defense a breather.”
A team can play only 45 of the 53 players on the active rosters - the other 8 are selected before the game (a stupid rule, but one for another thread). Only 2 QB’s can be among the 45. A QB on the inactive list (“the emergency QB”) can be brought into the game, but not until the 4th quarter, and if he does, neither of the others can come back in. Another stupid rule, btw.
But yeah, a lot of players have enough QB experience from their earlier days, and know the playbook well enough, to step in if all 3 regulars go down. In high school, for instance, the best athlete in school generally plays QB, and often gets moved to another position in college when the job competition stiffens up. Some college QB’s get moved in the NFL, too.
So the OP answer is: “Somebody else will take the snaps and hand off, and maybe throw a few tosses while the refs let the clock mercifully run down. The team will sign Vinny Testaverde the next day.”
You can put the emergency QB in the game anytime you want. However, once he goes in, the first two QBs can’t reenter the game until the fourth quarter.
I imagine many of us have; the Jets under Parcells pressed punter Tom Tupa into service during a game when all the QBs went down. He actually looked pretty good, too.
That wasn’t an act of desperation. Tupa had been a decent QB at Ohio State, and earlier in his career had been the Arizona Cardinals’ *starting *QB. Even as a punter, he was always a danger to fake it and pass for the first down - I recall him doing it several times.
Thanks for the clarification of the emergency QB rule. It’s still stupid.
Now that you mention it, I think Tupa was the emergency QB.
I can see the logic behind it, though, since the emergency QB has the special dispensation of not counting against the 45 player limit. I think it would be worse to abolish the “nobody ahead of you back in until the fourth” requirement at the cost of counting him against the 45.
Can someone clarify exactly what defines the quarterback position? Could a team play without a quarterback? Maybe by hiking the ball to some other back position?
As far as I am aware, the only QB-defining rule is that a QB must wear a jersey number between 1 and 19.
I do not believe that you have to have a quarterback on your team. You could line up in the single wing all day long if you like. Hell, Herm Edwards looks like he’s getting ready to implement that over in Kansas City right now.
The whole point of an emergency QB is that he doesn’t count against the 45 men dress rule. So you could list your 3rd QB as, say, a WR, thus getting around the rule about not putting the starter back in until the fourth. But this is a pyrrhich victory in rules lawyering, because you’ve now cost yourself a roster spot.
And only QB’s (and a single defensive player, normally the/an ILB) can have radio receivers in their helmets - that’s what the green sticker on the back means.
There are plenty of trick plays involving direct snaps to a running back - not to mention normal ones to a punter or holder. Way back in the single-wing days, every snap did - a quarterback was just another blocker.
The greater stupidity is the Eight Men Out rule, not the emergency QB rule which is just a limited exception to it. What’s it for - to protect players with nagging but not season-ending injuries from being forced to play anyway? If that’s it, that’s a blunt-instrument approach. Better enforcement of the practice-injury reports, something that Belichick’s gamesmanship has already helped happen, have to be a better approach.
Trivia item: The first time in four seasons that the Pats’ report did not list Tom Brady was the game where he blew out his knee. It had been a running joke - “Probable: QB Tom Brady (right shoulder)”, week after week.
I think it’s more likely that a safety will be mic’d instead of an ILB, since the latter tends to get pulled off the field in passing situations.
I always assumed it was just there as another layer of strategy.
If any NFL teams find themselves in Dire Straights…well the band just got a whole lot bigger, but I digress.
In any event, assuming Vinny is already taken, I am available. And I’m cheap. I’ll cheerfully concede that the starter is 10 times better than I am, so I’ll do it for 1/10 whatever the starter was making + full medical, the grooviest pain meds available, and a video of my painful death when a D-lineman kills me.
Wasn’t Roger Staubach’s backup on the Cowboys also the punter?
You mean Danny White? Sure was, early in his career.
In 2006, this sort of situation happened to the Carolina Panthers… kinda.
The starting QB, Jake Delhomme, was injured at the start of a game against the Atlanta Falcons. The Panthers only had Chris Weinke on their roster as a backup, and apparently no other players who had ever played QB. Weinke wasn’t hurt in the game, but he stank to high heavens. He was sacked several times, threw terrible passes, and looked essentially like what you or I would look like if tossed into a uniform and told to go run an NFL offense.
Carolina ended up switching their game plan to a run-only offense, and eventually pulled Weinke off the field, and let halfback Deangelo Williams field the snaps directly. Good, old fashioned 1950’s style single-wing.
They won the game, too.
Your memory is good. Hippy Hollow refers to the infamous Body Bag Game Buddy Ryan’s Eagles D at their peak - they knocked Jeff Rutledge and Stan Humphries out of the game (and 7 others) & the 'Skins had to go with Mitchell, then a Rookie who had played QB in College. The Redskins did indeed lose that game but would beat the (understandably based on the whipping they dished out in this game) overconfident, strutting Eagles less than two months later in Philly in the WildCard game in Playoffs.
It was posted upthread that punters are commonly pressed into service as emergency QBs. That may have been more prevalent at one time, but over the past 25 years or so, “dire-emergency” QBs have tended to come from the wide-receiver or running-back ranks.
Like Brian Mitchell, former New Orleans Saints WR Lonzell Hill was once called into service after the first two QBs were knocked out during a game.
I might buy that the strong safety on a team with a Steelers-like pressure D might be mic’d but a LB still makes the most sense because you need someone who can actually communicate to the entire field from their position. As the LB you can give hand signals to the secondary and talk directly to the other LB’s and the D-line if necessary. It is also a heck of a lot easier to see what the offense as a whole is doing from the LB position.
Back to the OP, off the top of my head both the Chargers and the Redskins would be in at least decent shape if their QBs went down because of Tomlinson and Randle El. Particularly, the Redskins would be fine because Randle El played QB in college.
Anquan Boldin also played QB in college. But, I think the Cardinals would rather keep him as a receiver!