The Art of Quarterback Revenge
When quarterbacks get the chance to face the franchises that drafted them and then moved on from them.
The last time I deviated from my stated assignment to write about something unrelated, I had some questions to review about the RFK Jr. Dumps A Bear In Central Park story. I’m sure Mr. Kennedy has not been the subject of any other bizarre stories since then.
Today, I am breaking the rule again, though this time it’s to talk about sports, which is at least closer to the work I’m theoretically supposed to be doing in this space. Specifically, I want to discuss the Quarterback Revenge Game.
In the Quarterback Revenge Game, an NFL quarterback drafted* by one franchise but later released, traded, or not re-signed by said franchise winds up playing for someone else and lining up against his original team. This is a rare phenomenon. Starting with the 2004 season through Week 3 of this year, there have only been 67 total Quarterback Revenge Games. Malik Willis just enjoyed winning one, as he and the Green Bay Packers stomped his former team, the Tennessee Titans, 30-14. Willis, it should be noted, refused to endorse the revenge angle, even though he was on the Tennessee roster a month ago.
(*I limited this group to QBs drafted in the first three rounds for two reasons. 1) It feels like these are the quarterbacks more likely to have been picked with the hope that they’d eventually become a starter. 2) I just wanted to exclude Tom Brady.)
Given the circumstances that cause a team to draft a gunslinger and then not retain him – that he’s not very good at being a quarterback – this makes a lot of sense. Franchises don’t usually move on from talented QBs, which means they have fewer opportunities for Revenge Games, and less-talented QBs who hit the open market face a difficult path to becoming a starter for someone else.
The quarterbacks who make it to a revenge game arrive there in different ways. First, there are the formerly effective starters who are supplanted by someone new. Examples include:
- Drew Bledsoe, former Patriot
- Drew Brees, former Charger
- Andy Dalton, former Bengal
- Peyton Manning, former Colt
- Alex Smith, former 49er
Then there are the quarterbacks who simply washed out with the team that welcomed them into the NFL, but who managed to catch on elsewhere (at least for a little bit), like:
- Sam Darnold, former Jet
- Blaine Gabbert, former Jaguar
- Joey Harrington, former Lion
- Colt McCoy, former Brown
- Geno Smith, former Jet
A smaller group got to Revenge Games by demonstrating talent as a backup with their original franchise but never leapfrogging the established starter:
- Jimmy Garoppolo, former Patriot
- Kevin Kolb, former Eagle
- Matt Schaub, former Falcon
But you don’t want lists! You crave GRAPHS, specifically of the scatter plot variety.
Those are the 67 Quarterback Revenge Games from the last 20 NFL seasons and change, mapped out by the Revenge Quarterback’s passer rating in the game. (Alex Rubenstein, a colleague at my former haunt, Secret Base, recently put out this excellent video about the nonsensical elements of the passer rating formula, but bear with me all the same.)
That game way down in the bottom left corner? That’s Buffalo quarterback Drew Bledsoe completing eight passes on 19 attempts for 76 yards with three interceptions in his second 2004 showdown with the Patriots. Not a very effective revenge attempt, as the Bills lost 29-6.
Revenge Quarterbacks have lost 36 of these 67 games. Quarterback wins may be questionable as a statistical measure, but the QB Revenge Game is not about analytics. It’s about feelings.
So let’s wipe away the losses and just look at the Revenge Games where a quarterback beat the team that drafted and discarded him.
Look at Malik Willis way up in the right hand corner, sporting one of the best performances on this list! With 202 yards, one touchdown, and no interceptions on 19 throws, Willis finished with a passer rating of 120.9. I’ll get to how that compares to some of the other impressive ratings on this chart, but let’s look at a few other bits of data first.
You can see four Drew Brees wins over the Chargers on here (one of them is hiding behind a Broncos defeat at the hands of Jay Cutler). They represent every game he played against his former franchise, beating them every four years like some kind of messed up Presidential Election but for roster regret. Brees torched the Chargers in basically all of these Revenge Games, throwing for at least 300 yards in three of them. He also made sure to twist the knife as often as possible. In 2012, 2016, and 2020, the Saints and Brees erased fourth quarter deficits on the way to a win.
Then there’s that super low passer rating for Alex Smith in 2020 against San Francisco. Smith only played in the first half of a 23-15 win for Washington, completing eight of 19 passes for 57 yards and a pick before leaving just before halftime with soreness in his surgically repaired right leg. Doesn’t matter! Still won.
The Saints have the most losses to a quarterback they drafted, but the Jets and Lions have the most losses to distinct quarterbacks they drafted, each losing to three former signal callers they selected. New York’s suffered defeat at the hands of Geno Smith, Sam Darnold, and Chad Pennington, while Detroit’s losses came against Matt Stafford, Joey Harrington, and Drew Stanton. I will let you decide which trio feels more agonizing.
The thing that’s really impressive about Willis’s effort is how early it came in his career. Only five quarterbacks have exceeded his 120.9 passer rating in a Revenge Game. Jared Goff put up a rating of 121.8 against the Rams in last season’s Wild Card round, Brees hit 121.9 in his 2008 defeat of the Chargers, Andy Dalton made it to 122.6 when he beat the Bengals as a member of the 2020 Cowboys, Ryan Tannehill climbed to 127.1 in his Revenge Game win over the Dolphins in 2022, and Kevin Kolb, former Eagle, beat Philadelphia in 2012 with a passer rating of 127.4
Willis is 25 years old, and the Titans game was the fifth start of his career. Almost every quarterback above him on the Revenge Game list was at least 29 in their victory, and they’d each started at least 100 games in the NFL. Kolb is the exception, but even he was in his sixth year in the league and had thrown 607 passes before he beat the Eagles. Willis had only attempted 81.
It’s probably healthy that Malik Willis didn’t consider this game important for revenge reasons. But I’m not going to let that stop me from making my graphs, especially when he put up such a standout effort in this made-up category.