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Marlin Briscoe left a great, if incomplete, pro football legacy

Marlin Briscoe left a great, if incomplete, pro football legacy

On Monday, Marlin Briscoe died at age 76 in Norwalk, California, due to pneumonia. Many football fans may not know Briscoe’s name, but they should. Briscoe remains an important — if shaded — part of professional football history as the first Black starting quarterback of the modern era. Fritz Pollard had played quarterback in the earliest days of the NFL, but as the league started to filter Black players out, a “strategy” that led to the outright banning of all Black players from 1934 through 1945, it would be a very long time before any Black quarterback had any shot at all in the American professional leagues. No matter the talent of the player, no matter the potential, Black players were not allowed to play the “positions of intelligence” (quarterback, middle linebacker, certain offensive line positions, certain defensive back positions), and Briscoe was unfortunately caught in the crosshairs of that reality — even and especially after he showed the ability to play credibly at the highest level.

After a rookie season in 1968 when he set a rookie franchise record for touchdown passes for the Denver Broncos that stands to this day, Briscoe was in for a rude awakening.

That season, Briscoe stood in relief for injured starter Steve Tensi, and in 11 games and five starts, completed 93 passes in 214 attempts for 1,589 yards, 14 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. The pick total and 41.5% completion rate imply that the Nebraska-Omaha alum had some things to work on at the quarterback position, but Briscoe put up his first-year totals in an American Football League in which Tensi himself completed just 40.3 percent of his passes and threw five touchdowns to eight interceptions, and John Hadl of the San Diego Chargers was the league’s most prolific quarterback with a 47.3% completion rate, 27 touchdowns and 32 interceptions. It was not the nature of the AFL in 1968 to have quarterbacks with the efficiency that would be required in the modern game—those quarterbacks were throwing it deep more often and playing against defenses that could be far more aggressive.

So, Briscoe’s statistics weren’t out of the ordinary for his league, and certainly for his experience. He had been selected in the 14th round of the 1968 AFL draft as a defensive back and was only allowed to compete as a quarterback—the position he played very well in college—because Al Caniglia, his college coach, told him to ask for an adaptation to his contract.

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