The Draw Play

A very rare club membership was on the line this past Sunday night. There are only 4 Quarterbacks to have beaten every single NFL team. Brett Favre, noted criminal, sex pest, and I guess quarterback, managed it first by beating the Packers as a Viking. Not long afterward, Peyton Manning would accomplish the feat, defeating the Colts as a Bronco. A few years later, because Tom can’t let anyone else have something he doesn’t have, also managed the feat, beating the Patriots as a Buccaneer. Drew Brees is the odd one, having beaten the Saints much earlier in his career, but it took him to nearly the end of his career to finally finish off Baltimore.

Rodgers had a chance to be the 5th. To complete the cycle, Rodgers had to beat his former team. The Steelers blew it. Despite Pittsburgh having a decent team, being at home, and Rodgers playing fairly well this year, the Packers took them out back and shotgunned them in the second half.

Unless we get an unexpected Super Bowl rematch with Rodgers on the other side, this was probably his last chance. He’d have to keep playing next year and join a team that needs a QB that plays Green Bay. This was his chance. It’s over. He’s gonna retire with 31 teams beaten.

A few other players are also sitting at 31 teams beaten. Mahomes will at some point need to leave KC and beat the Chiefs, which if it happens will be many many years from now. Russell Wilson needs to beat the Seahawks, and that’s unlikely to happen because Russ sucks and he missed his big chance to do that in Denver. Russ will presumably keep playing for a bit because he seems stubborn, but the stars will need to align for him to  end up facing Seattle as a starter again. The curious one is Matthew Stafford. Stafford has beaten the Lions. He has not beaten…the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Rams do not play the Steelers this year (barring Super bowl lol) and Stafford seems to be teetering on the brink of retirement so I’m not sure this one will happen either.

What I was trying to find but seemed unable to do was figure out if any Non-QB has accomplished the feat. I feel this has to have happened, but nobody has done the work to figure it out. I feel the criteria is probably similar: a successful, quality player who was on a good team for a long time, but then left and and had success at a second location. I also feel like, with how kickers move around so much, that a kicker may have accomplished the feat as well.

I tried with a few guesses to see what I could scrounge, and I found one. On only my third guess too, but it required some effort. Jason-Pierre Paul, who I assumed might have a good record thanks to good seasons with the Giants and then the Brady superteam. I was right.

Statmuse only lists 25 teams when checked without a subscription. I made a list of all 32 teams, crossed off the 25 that were already confirmed, and individually hunted the rest. Statmuse thankfully does not restrict information about which games the player played in every year, so I was able to go through each season and find the remaining teams on the list. It took some time, but he did it. He beat most of the AFC west in the 2020 SB year, and the last win I found was a final, single win against Baltimore, when he was a Giant in 2016. JPP has beaten every team. So now I know it’s probably been done by more than just him.

The other players I tried to check was Rob Gronkowski, who has not beaten Arizona, and John Carney, who sadly had zero information online. So I once again did the thing where I manually checked every season and checked off teams as he won. He has two teams he never beat: The Chargers and, of course, Jacksonville.

This method is way too tedious to do for everyone I think has potential, so since I found 1, I’m happy. JPP, I want you to know, I see you, and I love you.

If you have a statmuse subscription for whatever reason, see if you can find more dudes. I’d start with anyone who played with Brady for a while but also went to other teams.