Two weeks ago, Jeff Tuel became the Buffalo starting quarterback after Thaddeus Lewis (who was replacing an injured EJ Manuel) couldn’t play against the Chiefs due a ribs injury. Today, former Penn State quarterback Matt McGloin will start for the Raiders, as Terrelle Pryor will miss the game against the Texans due to an injured knee.

This is a mind-boggling development for fans of college football. McGloin was a walk-on at Penn State who co-starred with four-star recruit Rob Bolden in one of the least-competent quarterback battles in recent memory. In 2010 and 2011, the duo seemingly alternated every other week, which was about how long it took for one of them to lose the job. Among the 90 quarterbacks who threw for at least 3,000 yards over that two-year period, McGloin ranked 87th in completion percentage. Then, Bill O’Brien arrived, and McGloin turned into a real quarterback, and led the Big 10 in both passing yards and passing touchdowns.

McGloin joins Tuel, Max Hall, and Matt Moore as the only undrafted free agent rookies to start a game at quarterback in the last ten years. The table below is a bit overinclusive: it includes all undrafted quarterbacks who started a game during the first season in which they played a game. That’s not quite the same thing as starting as a rookie, of course, but it’s the best I can do. Brock Berlin, for example, went undrafted in 2005, so he wouldn’t count, but he appears on the list below. To help you filter through the “sat around for a few years but didn’t get into a game/played in another league” issue, I’ve included an age column.
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