This list of Black starting NFL quarterbacks includes Black and African-American quarterbacks who have started in a regular-season or post-season game in the National Football League (NFL). The quarterback is the leader of a team's offense, directing other players on the field. Some authors have contended that Black players have been excluded from playing quarterback in the NFL because of the belief that white players would not follow their leadership and the perception that Black quarterbacks lack intelligence, dependability, composure, character, or charisma. Promising Black quarterbacks at the high school and college levels were often transitioned at the professional level to other positions, such as running back or wide receiver. While a ban on Black players in the NFL ended in 1946, the quarterback position was among the last to be desegregated.
Although Black quarterbacks and other quarterbacks of color vary in physical size and playing style, racial stereotyping persists. A 2015 study found that even when controlling for various factors, black quarterbacks are twice as likely to be "benched", or removed from play, as white quarterbacks. Other studies have found that sports broadcasters are more likely to attribute a Black quarterback's success to superior athletic attributes and a white quarterback's success to superior intellect. It was not until 2017, when the New York Giants started Geno Smith in place of the benched Eli Manning, that all 32 active NFL teams had started at least one Black quarterback. That year, nearly 70% of NFL players, but only 25% of starting quarterbacks, were black. 14 of the league's 32 starting quarterbacks were Black at the start of the 2023 NFL season, the most in a single week in NFL history.
Pre-Super Bowl era
The quarterback position has changed over the years and did not exist in its modern form in the early 20th century. In the early days of football, quarterbacks were called upon to throw the ball, run the ball, and kick the ball; the forward pass was not adopted widely until the 1930s. However, tailbacks who played in the single-wing formation are "the equivalent of a modern-day quarterback" or "the closest thing to it."
Single-wing tailback Fritz Pollard, a key figure in the early days of the NFL, became the league's first black quarterback when he started playing the position for the Hammond Pros in 1923. By that time, he had already become the first Black head coach in the NFL, and prior to his professional career, the first Black quarterback All-American and the first to appear in the Rose Bowl. Pollard faced racism throughout his career, including from his teammates. In college, fans were reported to sing "Bye Bye Blackbird" when he took the field. Pollard would sometimes have to enter the field through a separate gate, or be driven onto the field in a car for his own safety, in order to avoid fans who chanted "kill the nigger" and threw bottles and bricks at him. After retiring from football, Pollard started the first black tabloid newspaper, the New York Independent News. In 2005, Pollard was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The demise of the competing American Football League (AFL) in the 1920s left a "glut of available white players eager to sign on with the NFL, rendering Black players expendable." In 1926 there were five Black players in the NFL, in 1927 only one. With the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, economic pressures led to a further deterioration of race relations, and minorities were often vilified and scapegoated. When the Chicago Cardinals signed Joe Lillard in 1932, the same year a rule change expanded the forward pass and Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the US presidency with 75% of the Black vote, he was the NFL's only Black player at the time. Lillard started 12 games with the Chicago Cardinals, and although he threw passes, ran the ball, kicked the ball, and returned punts, he was used sparingly as a quarterback.