Let’s say Josh McCown starts 6 games for the Jets this season. That will give McCown 66 career starts, and shockingly, half of those starts will have come after McCown turned 34 years old. That is remarkable no matter how you slice it, because at the start of the 2013 season, the odds would have been infinitesimal that McCown would start 33 more games in his career. Take a look at his career through 2012: the most likely outcome, I suspect, would be him never starting another game:

This isn’t me building a straw man: after completing one pass during the 2008, 2009, and 2010 seasons — and spending 2010 in the United Football League — McCown’s NFL career looked finished when he was cut by the 49ers at the end of training camp in 2011.  That fall, he was teaching gym class in North Carolina when the school year — and the NFL year — opened.  No, really.

With Jay Cutler hurt, McCown was signed in November as the Bears backup, and when Caleb Hanie couldn’t do much of anything, McCown started the team’s final two games.  But in 2012, Chicago added Jason Campbell and released McCown in training camp.  He was signed in November when Cutler suffered a concussion, but didn’t take a snap that season.

McCown turned 34 years old on July 4th, 2013.  And from age 27 to 33, he alternated between being out of the NFL entirely, a backup, or on the field producing some of the worst stats of any passer in the NFL.  So in 2013, McCown entered the season as the Bears nondescript backup quarterback.  Here’s what Dan Pompei wrote in May 2013:

Bears fans may be more panicked about Josh McCown being the team’s backup quarterback than they were about the Chicago-area water levels being higher than sled hills last month.

Understandable.

McCown is a quarterback with a 71.2 career passer rating. He has been cut twice and traded twice in his NFL career, and his last regular professional paycheck from a pro team before his joining the Bears was from the Hartford Colonials of the United Football League.

But wait, it gets better.  Pompei’s article goes on to say that hey, McCown isn’t bad even if he isn’t one of the good backup quarterbacks in the league, because he’s cheap!

[If] you can get one of the best, it’s worth paying more. Otherwise, there isn’t much difference between McCown and the others. And there is a benefit to having McCown as the backup. He is taking up $580,000 of cap space. Last year, the player in his spot, Campbell, took up $3.5 million.

With the cap space gained at backup quarterback, the Bears were able to buy two veterans who could be starters. Many Bears fans were happy to see Campbell go. But the Bears weren’t. They wanted him back. He preferred to sign with the Browns, with whom he has a better chance of playing.

As a rule, the best and most sought after veteran backups aren’t going to be interested in playing behind Jay Cutler because what they want more than money is opportunity. They are going to migrate to teams like the Browns, where the starter could be on a short leash.

This is what people thought of Josh McCown as he was about to turn 34 years old.  So how in the world is he possibly entering the 2017 season as a starting quarterback?

When Jay Cutler suffered groin and ankle injuries in 2013, McCown was pressed into duty…. and performed like a superstar.  McCown finished the season with just enough passes to qualify for the passer rating crown, and after throwing 13 touchdowns and just one interception, McCown had the third best passer rating in the NFL in 2013.

That performance, of course, was a fluke. McCown promptly suffered one of the worst single-season declines in passer rating in history, finishing with the second-worst passer rating in 2014 and going 1-10 as the Tampa Bay starter in 2014.  After that disaster of a season, McCown went to Cleveland in 2015, where he actually played pretty well despite his 1-7 record.  Last year, the bad version of McCown appeared again. And now he’ll be 38 years old in July.

I wrote at the top of this article that if McCown starts 6 more games, it will mean that half of his 66 career starts came at the age of 34 or older. That’s an interesting number, because it represents the number of career starts by Doug Flutie.  Flutie joined the Bills in 1998 at the age of 36; at that time, he had just 14 career starts to his name. But from age 36+, he would start 52 more games, with over half of his career starts coming after Flutie turned 37 years old.

In addition to Flutie, only four other quarterbacks in NFL history (minimum 50 starts) have made at least half of their starts at age 34 or later.  This, of course, is the list McCown would join if he starts 6 more games in his career.  Of that group, McCown would be the one with the least straightforward story.  Flutie spent most of his career in the CFL, as the NFL discriminated against him due to his height.  Warren Moon also spent much of his career in Canada, as the NFL discriminated against him due to his race. Moon started 203 games in his career, but he was 34 years and 302 days old on the day of his median, or 102nd, NFL start.

Roger Staubach also got a late start in the NFL due to extenuating circumstances: in his case, it was a service commitment. Staubach’s second year as a starter didn’t come until 1973, due to his time in the United States Navy, the presence of Craig Morton on the Cowboys in ’69 and ’70, and a separated shoulder that caused him to miss all of the 1972 regular season.

The other two players both benefited from the presence of the AFL, which helped extend their careers.  Everyone knows that George Blanda played forever, retiring as a kicker at the age of 48.  Blanda was drafted by the Bears in 1949, but was stuck behind Johnny Lujack for his first three years in Chicago. In 1952, Blanda took a more prominent role in the Chicago passing attack, and was the team’s main passer in ’53 and ’54.  Then in ’55, Ed Brown pushed Blanda out of a job; by the late ’50s, he was relegated to kicking duties only, and after 1958, he retired.

Yes, retired.  He was out of football in 1959, but when the AFL came calling, Blanda — at the age of 33 — went to Houston and became a star. He started 23 games and threw just 988 passes in the NFL from ’49 to ’59, but started 82 games and threw 2,784 passes in 7 years with the Oilers. He then went on to Oakland and had a longer run as a kicker/backup quarterback, although he only started one game as a quarterback in his nine years in Oakland. ^[1]Though he did have some memorable moments as a backup. Blanda started 106 games at quarterback in his career, and only 45 of those games came before Blanda turned 35 years old.  He turned out to be a hidden gem and a late bloomer, but if not for the AFL, he likely would have been done with pro football after 1959.

Finally, we have Babe Parilli. In 1952, with a still young Tobin Rote on the team, the Green Bay Packers used the 4th overall pick on Parilli. For the two first seasons, the two split time at quarterback, with Rote unsurprisingly outperforming him. ^[2]The two were fantastic in ’52 but terrible in ’53. As a team, Green Bay ranked 1st in passer rating and ANY/A in ’52, and then dead last in both categories the following season. Parilli left to go fulfill an Air Force committment after the season, and wound up spending time with the CFL’s Ottawa Rough Riders. The Packers cut Parilli in the interim, but he returned to the NFL in ’56. With Otto Graham having just retired, Parilli joined the Browns as the potential heir apparent, but was injured after just five games.

After the season, the Browns traded Parilli back to Green Bay, where he served as the backup to another young quarterback: Bart Starr. He returned to the Rough Riders in ’59, and then like Blanda, joined an expansion AFL team in 1960. In Parilli’s case, this was the Boston Patriots, where he and 36-year-old Butch Songin shared duties. By ’62, the 32-year-old Parilli was the main man in Boston, and he was the Patriots starter until 1967. And that’s how Parilli started 101 games in his career, with 52 of those games coming after he turned 34 years old. Parilli remains in 4th place on most of the Patriots all-time passing totals (completions, yards, touchdowns) behind Brady, Bledsoe, and Grogan.

Conclusion

As you know, Josh McCown isn’t black. He isn’t short, and he didn’t have to forego years in the NFL to serve his country. And he didn’t get thrown a life line by professional football expanding by 8-10 teams after his 30th birthday. As a result, I’ll just say it’s really freakin’ weird if over half of McCown’s career starts come after turning 34 years old.