The Canadian football championship, the Grey Cup, is running this weekend.
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are the Eastern team. Kevin Glenn was their starting QB all season, racked up big numbers, and was the East nominee for Most Outstanding Player.
Unfortunately, Glenn broke his arm in the East Final and is out. That means the back-up, Ryan Dinwiddie, is going to be the starting QB for Winnipeg in the Grey Cup.
Dinwiddie is a rookie in the CFL and has never started a pro game before, although he was a starter in college football.
Has this ever happened before? That the first time a rookie QB started a pro game, he was leading his team in the championship?
It at least hasn’t happened in the Super Bowl era. I’m not 100% confident on earlier NFL championships, but I’ll be back to let you know after a bit of googling.
All I’ve got is Tom Matte, Baltimore’s running back. He started at QB for the first time in the final game of the 1965 season, and then in the championship game when Johnny Unitas and his backup were both injured. He had only attempted 29 passes in his NFL career.
My hazy memory suggests to me that he was a “quarterback” in college, but his college team ran the single wing in which quarterbacks called signals but didn’t do a lot of running or passing.
Matte was a QB at Ohio State, but in the Woody Hayes system - essentially a halfback who took snaps and either handed off, ran himself, and only threw just to prove he was too a QB, dammit.
nitpick: Matte did not play in the championship game. He started in the playoff game against the Packers, and the Colts lost that game so did not advance to the championship game. Matte ran 17 times and was 5/12 passing for 32 yards. Coach Shula came up with the idea to write the plays on Matte’s wristband – a standard practice today.
As to the OP… going back to 1932, I can’t find any instance of an NFL/AFL/AAFC/USFL quarterback making his first start in a championship game.
The only other Super Bowl that would be a remotely close parallel would be Super Bowl VII, where Bob Griese started for the Dolphins after missing much of the season with a broken leg. Griese started the first five games and then suffered a broken leg. Earl Morrall started the final for Miami’s 14-0 season.
Morrall started the first two playoff games, but was benched in the second half of the AFC Championship. Griese started the Super Bowl. Morrall won the MVP award.
On a slight tangent, a fellow called John Rhienberger played his first and only game of top flight Rugby League as a starting player in the 1975 Grand Final, for Easts v St George (He did play a few minutes as a replacement the week before). The following year he got injured in pre-season training and was never heard from again.
The real question to me, (admittedly not a football fan) is how could you run a team with such a precarious QB situation? Star QB on whom you rely heavily and after that, no proven journeyman, no promising rookie with at least a few games under his belt, no experienced old guy who’s been doubling as a QB coach – nothing but a guy who has never started a pro game. Maybe I don’t have all the facts, but boy, that seems risky to me. Didn’t Montreal have about three hundred QBs on the roster at one point? Is that why no one else has any?
This is either going to be one for the ages or a complete disaster. I think I’ll tune in.
qwest can probably give more details, but I think the Bombers have been going through a re-building cycle. Plus, good QBs are always in short supply in the CFL, let alone good back-ups.
It is not that uncommon, even in the NFL. The back-up quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts is Jim Sorgi, who has never started a pro game before. I believe the thinking is they would rather have someone who understands the system and is content with never playing than a “name” QB as back-up. That is why Colts fans often say an extra prayer for Peyton Manning’s health.
It’s hard to get a backup QB who’s above average who is willing to sit on the bench. It’s generally a recipe for discontent. The guy sitting will complain a lot. And if the team starts losing, then the fans suddenly fall in love with the backup.
Not always true, of course. There was this guy Steve who was backup for another guy, Joe, for the San Francisco 49ers. Steve was Joe’s backup, and as it turns out, Steve was pretty good too.
And if you’ve got a championship calber team, odds are you’re pushing the salary cap limit. In order to pay the star players you really NEED to keep, it’s tempting to save money by dumping a highly paid kicker or a highly paid backup QB (guys who are VERY important, but whose value isn’t apparent until you desperately need them!).
