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Interesting Fact of the Day Mercifully Not Related to Vinny Testaverde’s Age

By Brinson | October 11, 2007

So we got a voicemail from Stamos earlier this morning saying something about David Carr and Vinny Testaverde being the only pair of quarterbacks drafted number one overall to ever play for the same team. (We aren’t positive whether he heard this as fact or conjecture on some talk radio show and we don’t know where he heard it either so pardon the lack of citation.) We did, however, decide to postpone studying for the morning and do a little investigation. Really, trying to weigh “grades” against “Mr. Mittens” is pretty comical. Sigh.

Turns out, the list of quarterbacks drafted number one overall since the beginning of time (1936) is actually shorter than we thought it would be (and in the interest of word counting, we won’t list them all). There have been 23 quarterbacks taken in the number one slot, and eight out of the last 10 drafts have seen a signal caller go number one. Five from the 2000’s (Carr, Alex Smith, Lil’ Peyton Archie Elisha, Carson and Vick), four from the 90’s, three from the 80’s (Vinny, Elway and Aikman), three from the 70’s, three from the 60’s, two from the 50’s and three from the 40’s. But none of them have ever ended up on the same team (kind of). Which is really surprising when you consider the fact that quarterbacks, particularly those with large bronzed trophies, have not had a kind history in the NFL in recent years. Surely Tim Couch could have landed as the backup somewhere. Oh right, you have to make the roster without using steroids to be a backup. Nevermind.

Now, Pro-Football Reference only has players listed from 1950 on, and the Boston Yanks drafted Angelo Bertelli and Frank Dancewicz from Notre Dame in 1944 and 1946, respectively. But Bertelli never played for the Yanks (Dancewicz played three season), leaving for the Marines after college and then spending his pro career with the Los Angeles Dons and Chicago Rockets.

In a similarly odd situation, the Los Angeles Rams took Roman Gabriel with the second overall NFL pick (he was the first overall AFL selection) in 1962; a year later they took Oregon State quarterback Terry Baker with the first overall NFL selection, but he served as a running back for that squad. (Please note shit like this is exactly why you always hear that classic statistical caveat, “since the merger”.)

Other than that, though, there hasn’t been any even mildly controversial crossover. Which is really surprising when you consider that between Drew Bledsoe, Jeff George and Vinny, they’ve got 13 separate stops not counting Vinny rolling into the Cackalacka. (It’s probably worth further researching the fact that George essentially put a two or three year minimum curse on the quarterback position wherever he’s stopped through his career.)

But, as it stands Mittens and Vinny are the first number one drafted quarterback combination to grace the same roster, at least in the modern era. And it’s certainly arguable that the Gabriel-Baker combo doesn’t count. It would be like making up a Heisman Trophy stat like this and then trying to call either Jason White or Eric Crouch “football players” or something like that, just because they were quarterbacks in college.

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