When Mike Sando of The Athletic released his annual NFL Quarterback Tiers article, in which he spoke with 50 NFL coaches and executives to get a sense of how those in the know see the men who play the game’s most important position, it was clear that Black quarterbacks still face an evaluation gauntlet that white quarterbacks generally do not. We’re used to the old-school opinions in which Black quarterbacks were seen as more athletic, white quarterbacks as more cerebral. If you think we’re past that at this point, we’ll start with one evaluator’s opinion of the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes.
“We love Mahomes because of his unorthodox throws, not because of his natural pocket presence,” one anonymous source told Sando. “And when that disappears, that is when they lose games. I don’t think that is a 1. I think that is a 2. Nothing against the guy. I love the kid. But take his first read away and what does he do? He runs, he scrambles and he plays streetball.”
For Josh Allen of the Bills, a quarterback who shares a lot of the “streetball” characteristics of Mahomes and Jackson, there appears to be the automatic assurance that he’ll figure it out.
