The Year of the Third Stringer

Clearly, this is the year of the third-string quarterback. 

Usually, nobody knows who these guys are and, apart from their immediate families, agents, and alumni associations, nobody cares. They're rookies who didn't get drafted with glamor picks, coming out of school without the sheen of Mel Kiper Jr.'s slightly unsettling approval to grease their way into reps with the first team. They're journeymen who never made it big, bouncing from clipboard to clipboard around the NFL because they're known quantities. 

These are the guys whom you never want to see on the field, but if they get out there they won't fumble every snap or throw every pass into the middle of the cheerleaders. They're safe, and nothing more; they're Tony Pike and Koy Detmer and Scott Tolzien and Tyler Bray. And year in and year out they get flipped and swapped and cut and picked up, and only the most obsessive fans and fantasy players ever really bother to learn their names.

Until this year.