The Best Undrafted Quarterbacks in NFL History

Quarterback is the most heavily scouted position in American sport, and the draft still gets it wrong every single year. Two of the men below are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. One won two Most Valuable Player awards and a Lombardi Trophy after a year spent stocking grocery shelves on the night shift. Another threw for more than 49,000 NFL yards after starting his career in Canada because nobody in the NFL wanted him. None of them heard their name called in any round. These are the best undrafted quarterbacks in NFL history, ranked, with every number checked against Pro-Football-Reference before it went on the page.

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What Counts as an Undrafted Quarterback

The bar is strict: no team spent any pick on him, in any round. He arrived as a free agent off the street, out of a rookie camp, or from another league entirely. That matters more at quarterback than anywhere else, because quarterback is the position the draft is organized around. Teams trade whole draft classes to move up for one. Going undrafted at quarterback means every evaluator in the sport watched the tape and decided he was not worth a seventh-round flier.

Almost everyone here entered the league before 2010, and that is not nostalgia. Nine of the ten came in between 1975 and 2003, when scouting departments were smaller and a small-college arm could genuinely go unseen. The same machine that produces the biggest NFL draft busts of all time produced these men too, running in the opposite direction.

Kurt Warner - Undrafted 1994, Northern Iowa

Nobody else is close. Warner went undrafted out of Northern Iowa in 1994, lasted a summer in a Green Bay camp whose staff included Mike Holmgren, Steve Mariucci and Andy Reid, was released, and spent the rest of that year stocking shelves at a Hy-Vee in Cedar Falls for $5.50 an hour, working nights so he could train in daylight. Three seasons in the Arena Football League with the Iowa Barnstormers followed, then a spring with the Amsterdam Admirals.

In 1999 he threw for 4,353 yards and 41 touchdowns, was voted first-team All-Pro and league MVP, and then beat the Titans 23 to 16 in Super Bowl XXXIV as the game's MVP. He won a second MVP in 2001 behind 4,830 yards and 36 touchdowns, and carried a different franchise to a third Super Bowl start in 2008, throwing 11 touchdown passes in that postseason, still the NFL record for one playoff run. He retired with 32,344 yards, 208 touchdowns, a 93.7 passer rating and a 9 and 4 record in 13 playoff starts. The Hall of Fame inducted him in 2017.

Warren Moon - Undrafted 1978, Washington

Moon was the Pac-8 Co-Player of the Year in 1977 and the MVP of a Rose Bowl his Huskies won 27 to 20 over Michigan. NFL teams still were not interested, and six weeks before the 1978 draft he signed with the Edmonton Eskimos instead. What happened next is the most emphatic rebuttal any passed-over quarterback has ever written: five straight Grey Cup titles from 1978 through 1982, two Grey Cup MVP awards, CFL Most Outstanding Player in 1983, and 21,228 CFL passing yards.

He finally joined the Houston Oilers in 1984, six years after the draft that ignored him. He then made nine Pro Bowls, was named Offensive Player of the Year in 1990 after leading the league in both passing yards and passing touchdowns, led the NFL in passing yards again in 1991, and finished with 49,325 yards and 291 touchdowns across 17 NFL seasons with four teams. The one blank on the resume is January: Moon went 3 and 7 in ten playoff games and never reached a conference championship. He went into the Hall of Fame in 2006, the pro career split in half by a border nobody should have made him cross.

Dave Krieg - Undrafted 1980, Milton College

Krieg is the answer to the hardest version of this question. He came out of Milton College, a small private school in Wisconsin that no longer exists, where he started as the seventh-string quarterback. No NFL team drafted him in 1980 and the Seahawks signed him anyway.

He then played in 213 games from 1980 to 1998, started 175 of them, and went 98 and 77 as a starter for six different franchises. He threw for 38,147 yards and 261 touchdowns. He made three Pro Bowls, in 1984, 1988 and 1989, led the league in completion percentage in 1991, and had his best season in 1984 with 3,671 yards and 32 touchdowns. Seattle put him in its Ring of Honor. He is the clearest proof on this list that the draft's misses are not always spectacular one-year stories. Sometimes they are two decades of competent starting quarterback that nobody wanted to pay a pick for.

Tony Romo - Undrafted 2003, Eastern Illinois

Romo won the Walter Payton Award in 2002, was a first-team Division I-AA All-American that year, and was named Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year three years running, and still went undrafted in 2003. Dallas signed him, held him for three seasons, and got the most productive quarterback in franchise history out of it.

He made four Pro Bowls, in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2014, threw for 4,211 yards and 36 touchdowns in 2007, and led the NFL in both passer rating and completion percentage in 2014 while going 34 touchdowns to 9 interceptions. His career line reads 34,183 yards, 248 touchdowns, 117 interceptions and a 97.1 passer rating, which is a higher rating than Warner, Moon or Krieg managed. He holds the Cowboys records for passing yards and passing touchdowns. The postseason is the asterisk everyone reaches for first, and it is real: 2 and 4 in six playoff starts for 1,316 yards. It is also six playoff starts more than any team expected from a free agent out of Eastern Illinois.

Editorial illustration: The Best Undrafted Quarterbacks in NFL History

Jon Kitna - Undrafted 1996, Central Washington

Kitna won an NAIA Division II national championship at Central Washington in 1995 and was an NAIA All-American, which in 1996 was worth exactly nothing on draft weekend. Seattle signed him, sent him to the Barcelona Dragons in 1997, and watched him win the World Bowl and its MVP award.

Fourteen NFL seasons followed with the Seahawks, Bengals, Lions and Cowboys: 141 games, 124 starts, 29,745 passing yards and 169 touchdowns. His signature year was 2003 in Cincinnati, where 3,591 yards and 26 touchdowns made him both the Associated Press and the PFWA NFL Comeback Player of the Year. Almost 30,000 passing yards is a strange total to call underrated, but that is the shape of Kitna's career: never a star, never out of work, and the owner of more career passing yards than five of the nine other quarterbacks on this list.

Jeff Garcia - Undrafted 1994, San Jose State

Garcia took the Moon route. Undrafted out of San Jose State in 1994, he went to the Calgary Stampeders, spent five years there, threw for 16,442 CFL yards, and won the 1998 Grey Cup as the game's MVP before an NFL team would give him a job.

San Francisco did, in 1999, and inherited a quarterback who made three straight Pro Bowls from 2000 to 2002, including a 4,278-yard, 31-touchdown season in 2000. He made a fourth Pro Bowl in Tampa Bay in 2007, at 37, after stops in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. His NFL totals are 25,537 yards, 161 touchdowns and only 83 interceptions, with 2,140 rushing yards and 26 rushing scores on top, and he shares the NFL record for the longest touchdown pass ever thrown, 99 yards. Put the CFL and NFL ledgers together and Garcia threw for nearly 42,000 professional yards that no team wanted to draft.

Jim Zorn - Undrafted 1975, Cal Poly Pomona

Zorn is the oldest entry here: a left-handed scrambler out of Cal Poly Pomona who went undrafted in 1975, failed to stick in a Dallas camp, and then became the first starting quarterback in Seattle Seahawks history when the franchise began play in 1976.

He made the PFWA All-Rookie Team that year and was a second-team All-Pro in 1978, when he threw for 3,283 yards on an expansion roster, following it with 3,661 yards in 1979. The totals are modest by modern standards and honest for the era: 21,115 passing yards, 111 touchdowns, 141 interceptions, plus 1,504 rushing yards and 17 rushing touchdowns from a quarterback who ran because the protection required it. Seattle put him in its Ring of Honor, and he returned to the league as Washington's head coach in 2008.

Jake Delhomme - Undrafted 1997, Southwestern Louisiana

Delhomme spent six years as a New Orleans afterthought, including two seasons abroad with the Amsterdam Admirals and the Frankfurt Galaxy, winning a World Bowl in 1999. Carolina signed him in 2003 as a stopgap, and in his first season there he took the Panthers to Super Bowl XXXVIII.

That game is his monument. Carolina lost 32 to 29 to New England, but Delhomme threw an 85-yard touchdown to Muhsin Muhammad that is still the longest touchdown pass in Super Bowl history. His whole 2003 postseason was 987 yards and 6 touchdowns against 1 interception across four games. He made the Pro Bowl in 2005 with 3,421 yards and 24 touchdowns, and retired with 20,975 yards and 126 touchdowns. For a quarterback nobody drafted, one of the great Super Bowl performances is a long way past expectation.

Erik Kramer - Undrafted 1987, NC State

Kramer was the ACC Player of the Year in 1986 and went undrafted in 1987, played three games for Atlanta that year as a replacement during the players' strike, and then went to Canada for three seasons with Calgary. Detroit brought him back, and in 1991 he became the surprise starter after injuries sidelined Rodney Peete, played 13 games, and led the Lions to a 12 and 4 record, their first playoff win since 1957 and a trip to the NFC Championship Game.

His best season came in Chicago in 1995: 3,838 yards, 29 touchdowns and only 10 interceptions in 16 starts, more than double the touchdown total of any other season he played. Injuries bracketed almost everything else, and he finished with 15,337 yards and 92 touchdowns across ten seasons. The peaks were brief and they were genuinely high.

Case Keenum - Undrafted 2012, Houston

Keenum left Houston holding the NCAA FBS career records for passing yards (19,217) and completions (1,546), and a share of the record for touchdown passes (155), and went undrafted in 2012 anyway, which remains one of the stranger lines in modern draft history. He has since drawn a paycheck from eight franchises.

One season made him permanent. In 2017 he started 14 games for Minnesota, threw for 3,547 yards with 22 touchdowns against 7 interceptions, and took the Vikings to the NFC Championship Game. On January 14, 2018, trailing New Orleans 24 to 23 in the last seconds of an NFC divisional playoff, he threw a 27-yard pass to Stefon Diggs, who broke a missed tackle by Marcus Williams and ran it in for a 61-yard touchdown as time expired. It was the first playoff game in NFL history to end on a touchdown as the clock hit zero, and it has been called the Minneapolis Miracle ever since. His career totals stand at 15,530 yards and 81 touchdowns.

Honorable Mentions

Jay Fiedler, undrafted out of Dartmouth in 1994, threw for 11,844 yards and went 37 and 23 as a starter, most of it in Miami, which is a long professional career for an Ivy League quarterback. Brian Hoyer, undrafted out of Michigan State in 2009, lasted 15 seasons and 79 games across nine franchises for 10,899 yards and owns a Super Bowl LIII ring. Damon Huard, undrafted out of Washington in 1996, and Shaun Hill, undrafted out of Maryland in 2002, both built careers past a decade from the same starting point. That is its own argument: the draft does not only miss the great ones.

Which Undrafted Quarterbacks Have Won a Super Bowl?

The honest answer is short. Of the quarterbacks in this guide, exactly one won a Super Bowl as the starter: Kurt Warner, with the Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV. He went back twice and lost both, 20 to 17 to New England in XXXVI and 27 to 23 to Pittsburgh in XLIII. Jake Delhomme started Super Bowl XXXVIII and lost it by three. Brian Hoyer has a ring from Super Bowl LIII as a backup, which counts for jewelry and not for snaps. Everyone else here, Moon and Krieg and Romo included, never started one at all.

Closing illustration for The Best Undrafted Quarterbacks in NFL History

What the Misses Have in Common

Line the ten up and the pattern is almost embarrassing. Scouts miss quarterbacks from the wrong schools: Northern Iowa, Milton, Central Washington, Cal Poly Pomona, Eastern Illinois, Southwestern Louisiana. Six of the ten had to prove it in the CFL, in NFL Europe or in Arena ball before an NFL team would hand them a roster spot. And almost all of them needed a door to open that nobody opened on purpose, which means the scarce resource was never arm talent. It was opportunity.

The other half of the pattern is what these men did not have: pedigree. None of them was a famous recruit, so none of them got the three free seasons of benefit of the doubt a first-round pick gets automatically. That is what makes these careers the sharpest test of real football memory. Anyone can name the first overall picks. Knowing that the Seahawks' first quarterback was undrafted, or which of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history was stocking shelves five years before his MVP, is what separates a casual fan from somebody who can survive genuinely hard NFL trivia.