Why are qbs white

They're trained to polish their mechanics, improve their footwork, fit the profile that colleges—and ultimately, pro teams—are looking for. Overwhelmingly, players groomed to the second track are barely "groomed" at all. Their coaches build the offense around their athletic gifts. They're not expected to hone their craft as passers; that's just wasted time. They're human weapons, whose strengths are systematically maximized and faults systematically minimized.

Look at Terrelle Pryor. Coming out of high school, Pryor was listed at 6'6", lbs. He was one of the most athletically gifted quarterback prospects of all-time and recruited to Ohio State, a traditional Big Ten school with a "pro style" offense.

Despite being blessed with prototypical size and a cannon arm, Pryor was used like a gimmick. Instead of grooming Pryor within the existing system, Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel deployed Pryor in specific packages designed to exploit his athleticism. Pryor was brutalized en route to a road defeat—not the way an elite "pro style" quarterback prospect is ever developed.

Pryor's career at Ohio State disintegrated along with the rest of the program, but after three full seasons of college football, he was barely more polished a quarterback than when he left high school. Pryor's dazzling, but raw tools were enough to convince the late Al Davis to park him on the Raiders' bench. It's been nearly a half century after Howell was drafted as a safety, and nearly a quarter century after Williams led the Redskins to the mountaintop.

The ban mirrored the status of black Americans at the time: separate, unequal and living in a de facto apartheid state via Jim Crow in the South and a patchwork of exclusionary laws and customs everywhere else. The ban also was rooted in the widespread, racist beliefs about black inferiority that underpinned segregation. In the early part of the 20th century, said Jay Coakley, an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and sports sociologist, whites assumed that African-Americans lacked the physical stamina and emotional courage to excel at contact sports like boxing and football.

Though the NFL lifted the ban in , opportunities for African American quarterbacks were almost nonexistent. In , the Chicago Bears inserted him for a single drive against the San Francisco 49ers — and after Thrower completed three of eight passes to put his team in the red zone, replaced him with white starter George Blanda.

Take it down. As such, they were seen as too cerebral for African American athletes, who additionally were thought to lack the leadership and grit to lead other players and perform under duress. Of course, this was balderdash. Nevertheless, stacking had a pernicious, two-pronged effect: drastically reducing the pool of African American college quarterbacks who conceivably could be signed by a NFL team, and making it almost impossible for one of them to get a fair shake in the league.

Ken Shropshire, who competed with and against African American quarterbacks in a predominantly black high school league in Los Angeles, experienced stacking for the first time while playing for Stanford University in the s. Black teammates James Lofton and Tony Hill both had been prep signal-callers. Both were converted to wide receivers in college. James Lofton would win every year. Briscoe had other ideas. But all I wanted to do was showcase my skills.

The tryout, Briscoe said, went as he expected. Seven other quarterbacks, all of them white, got to make 10 throws during drills. At the end of camp, Denver named Briscoe a starter — at cornerback. Raye, a consultant to NFL Vice President Troy Vincent, doesn't believe the league has moved beyond race being a factor in the evaluation of quarterbacks. At least not totally. Byron Leftwich, offensive coordinator of the Super Bowl-winning Bucs, also has a unique perspective.

An African American who grew up in Washington, D. He started 50 games over a nine-year career and knows the position from both a player and coach perspective. The fact that we're still saying 'African American quarterback' and we have to have that conversation, it kind of answers that question for us, right? I hear people say, 'Well, Mike Tomlin is one of the best Black coaches,' but the fact that we're saying that -- just think of that. The fact that we're having that conversation and saying it in that way …".

Last November, Tomlin won his th game as coach of the Steelers, moving him into 22nd place on the league's all-time list. Tomlin is currently tied at 21st with Seattle's Pete Carroll, with wins. But many of the headlines focused on the fact that he had passed Tony Dungy for most wins by an African American coach.

Race may still be in the back of some people's minds when it comes to evaluating the quarterback position, but it's interesting to note that the stereotypical assumption that Black quarterbacks are more athletic could, in a perverse way, be leading to more opportunities for Black players.

Colleges -- which serve as the league's feeder system -- aren't producing as many traditional drop-back passers, as the game is now populated with programs using run-pass option systems that require greater athleticism at quarterback. It's impossible not to notice that this shift has coincided with an increase in Black quarterback prospects, with the effects trickling up to the NFL level.

Then again, none of that would matter if these dual-threat quarterbacks -- Black and non-Black -- didn't produce. And what we've seen over the last decade is Russell Wilson win a championship and go to two Super Bowls with Seattle, Cam Newton take Carolina to a Super Bowl, Jackson help the Ravens to 35 wins and three playoff appearances over the last three seasons, Deshaun Watson and Dak Prescott establish themselves as two of the game's best, Josh Allen turn Buffalo into a contender, Baker Mayfield help make Cleveland respectable again, Ryan Tannehill turn Tennessee into a threat, and Justin Herbert win Offensive Rookie of the Year this year.

It represents a significant departure from what was taking place in the late s. Early in high school, there was talk of him earning a scholarship, and in his mind, he was going to continue playing the position he had come to love.

Then, as a year-old, he spent time coaching a few kids who lived up the street. One of the kids asked him if he was going to get a scholarship. History repeats itself.

There's nothing new under the sun. I think that there's always gonna be someone in the cut that just is not happy or has roots of hatred or something like that. But I think for the most part, yeah, we're in a new era.

And I think that people want to see good things, and I think we're at the point now where the fans don't care who's on the field, they just want their teams to win. And when people win, everybody's happy. No one is happier than Williams to see the progress that's been made. He can still remember the hullabaloo in the week he appeared in the Super Bowl, when reporters would form tight circles around him, seemingly constricting and expanding with each breath he took.

They were there to document history as much as the game itself. After all, if sport is a microcosm of society, then might the tearing down of a significant racial barrier within football portend a larger change within the country? Williams thinks about that moment and what it meant, then he is asked if what's taking place today means we have pushed across the finish line and reached definable progress as it relates to race and the most important position on the field.

Before Tom Brady returns to Foxborough, Brooke Cersosimo talks to former NFL players about their own firsthand memories of facing off against the teams they once fought for. Like countless others, those who work for the NFL were deeply impacted by the events of Sept. Players, coaches and executives who were in the league at the time share with Judy Battista their firsthand accounts of that tragic day and its aftermath. Mahomes is the highest-paid player in the NFL, having signed a contract extension during the off-season with the Kansas City Chiefs reportedly worth nearly half a billion dollars.

Alongside Wilson, the trio are the top three highest earning players in the NFL. Are we seeing a change in attitudes and treatment, or is the struggle still as prevalent as ever?

Historic experience. Few know the battle African American quarterbacks have faced like Warren Moon. The year-old Moon, is the only Black quarterback in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but didn't have an easy route into the league. He says what he experienced wasn't racism, but rather racial stereotyping stacked against him.

You know, be the face of a franchise, all those different things that go along with being a franchise quarterback. While Moon believes things have improved for Black quarterbacks since he entered the league, has enough changed? According to Pro Football Reference , when Tom Brady entered the NFL in , eight of the 31 starting quarterbacks during each team's opening game of the season were Black.

In , 10 Black quarterbacks started for the now 32 teams in their respective first games. This was down to nine by week two after an LA Chargers team doctor accidentally punctured one of the quarterback Tyrod Taylor's lungs when attempting to administer a shot to Taylor's ribs.

In a response to CNN, the league in a statement said: "There are a record-setting 10 starting Black quarterbacks this season.

The two highest-paid players in the NFL are Black quarterbacks. The last two seasons' MVPs have been Black quarterbacks. League entry. The battle for Black quarterbacks begins with entry into the NFL. According to a leading academic, Black quarterbacks have historically found it more difficult being drafted into the league than their White counterparts. Judson L. Jeffries, a professor of African American and African studies at the Ohio State University, says Black quarterbacks have been historically perceived as less intelligent, seen instead as simply athletes.

A quantitative study by Jeffries and Matthew Bigler showed that "draft experts buy into and perpetuate racial stereotypes about Blacks that adversely impact Black college quarterbacks' chances of matriculating to the National Football League.

Jones, a contributing writer and journalist, published in the book " Africana Race and Communication ," went as far to say that the "study is evidence of the modernized social construction of Black quarterbacks by mass media, with a primary focus on their physical attributes and descriptions that better resemble auctioned slaves than chosen leaders of men.

Though Jeffries thinks a lot has changed in the intervening 12 years since his study, he continues to have reservations about whether perceptions of Black and White quarterbacks are equal. Jeffries cites the treatment Jackson received when he entered the league.

A Heisman Trophy winner as a sophomore at the University of Louisville, Baltimore Ravens' Jackson was seen by doubters as just a runner, rather than someone who could throw, make critical decisions and lead too.