NFL will see a record number of Black players start at this position
- A record 16 Black quarterbacks will start in Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season.
- This represents half of the league’s starting quarterbacks and breaks the previous record of 15 set in 2024.
- This milestone comes after Super Bowl 57, which featured two Black starting quarterbacks for the first time in history.
During the lead up to Super Bowl 57, Patrick Mahomes reflected on the historic moment that was about to occur.
Two Black quarterbacks were set to start a Super Bowl for the first time ever.
“It is history. It’s come a long way,” Mahomes said in 2023 in advance of the game. “To be the first for something is pretty cool.”
“It’s history,” Hurts said.
Flip the calendar to the present. As the NFL gets ready to kick off a new year, a record 16 Black quarterbacks are slated to start Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season, breaking a record of 15 Black quarterbacks who started Week 1 of the previous season.
Bryce Young, Caleb Williams, Cam Ward, C.J. Stroud, Dak Prescott, Geno Smith, Hurts, Jayden Daniels, Jordan Love, Justin Fields, Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson, Michael Penix Jr., Mahomes, Russell Wilson and Spencer Rattler. Half the NFL’s starting quarterbacks in Week 1 are Black for the first time in league history.
“I said about a year and a half ago half the league gonna be Black quarterbacks before long. I said probably within the next five years, and it happened before five years,” Doug Williams, the first Black quarterback to win a Super Bowl, said to USA TODAY Sports. “If you write the top quarterback in the league, I think majority of them would be black.”
Marlin Briscoe was the first Black quarterback to start in modern pro football history in 1968. Williams became the first Black quarterback to win a Super Bowl in 1988. Warren Moon was enshrined as the first Black quarterback to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006. Mahomes and Hurts became the first pair of Black quarterbacks to start in the same Super Bowl in 2023. And in 2025, a record 16 Black quarterbacks are prepared to start Week 1.
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“Just like last year and even the years prior, it just makes you proud to see the number just continue to keep rising. Because I know what that position used to be thought of for African Americans to be able to play, and I was part of that. It’s great that the league and ownership and society and everybody is bought in and sees that these guys can play at a very, very high level, and they continue to keep giving them more opportunities,” Moon told USA TODAY Sports. “The more opportunities they give them, they’re turning them into a starting quarterback position. I love it.”
