The 2022 season will not be remembered as the year of the quarterback with injuries and inconsistency conspiring to undermine many of the league’s top signal-callers. This chain of events has led to unprecedented turnover with teams benching underachieving veterans—Derek Carr and Matt Ryan among them—for young upstarts on a weekly basis.
David Blough, who last started for the Lions in 2019, will quarterback the Cardinals in Week 17, spelling Colt McCoy (who had already been filling in for injured starter, Kyler Murray) following a recurrence of concussion symptoms. Blough will be the NFL’s 64th different starter this year, tying 2007 for the most quarterbacks used in a non-strike season. With much of the league’s playoff hopes dashed, the quarterback carousel has never been busier with teams like the Cardinals and Raiders content to trot out backups and third-stringers, rewarding hungry players in need of opportunity.
It's not a particularly groundbreaking approach, though the trend toward late-season experimentation seems more pronounced than in years past with Blough, Jarret Stidham, Brock Purdy, Gardner Minshew and Teddy Bridgewater all in line to start this weekend. Recently promoted from the Titans’ practice squad, Joshua Dobbs was also under center Thursday night, throwing for 239 yards in his NFL starting debut.
While it won’t approach the record number of starters used during the 1987 players’ strike (87), there’s no denying this has been an unusually fluid year for the quarterback position with countless benchings, demotions and injuries, many resulting from the league’s new concussion protocol, with more rigorous tests meant to protect players who have exhibited “gross motor instability.”
Whether it’s pure coincidence or symptomatic of a fundamental flaw in our talent evaluation (coaches, out of job preservation, displaying a lack of patience with young quarterbacks could be one possible explanation), this movement represents a drastic departure from the stability of past seasons with 21 of the league’s 32 teams starting multiple quarterbacks this year. Regardless of what conclusions can be drawn from this particular phenomenon, it’s clear quarterback has become a revolving door, a vicious crucible reserved for a select handful of difference-makers, an esteemed fraternity inhabited by the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow.
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