What Colleges are NFL Quarterbacks from?

Northern Iowas Kurt Warner — Northern Iowa's Kurt Warner

We’ve all heard terms like “Quarterback U” and we’ve heard people make the assertion that if you want to play quarterback you need to go to this school or that school. Here are the facts, if you want to play quarterback in the NFL, it’s more about what you do and less about where you go to school. As the table below shows, NFL quarterbacks come from all over. In the list below, I have listed the starters for all of the NFL teams for the 2008 season. Now before you go all haywire, I went with either the individual that started the majority of the games or the quarterback that was supposed to start the season for the team.

Only three schools have more than one NFL starter and that’s USC (Palmer and Cassell), Purdue (Brees and Orton) and Boston College (Hasselbeck and Ryan). One of the schools had this happen due to injury (USC with Cassell) and another when the slated starter failed to live up to expectations (Orton – Purdue replacing Rex Grossman).

As far as a conference breakdown, the SEC, the conference noted for defense, has the most quarterbacks starting in the NFL with six, followed by the Pac-10 with five, the ACC with four and Conference USA with three. Three NFL QB’s are from Division I-AA schools (Romo, Flacco and Warner). One is from a NAIA (Kitna-Lions).

Here’s the list:

Team	Quarterback	College
49ers	Alex Smith	Utah
Bears	Kyle Orton	Purdue
Bengals	Carson Palmer	USC
Bills	Trent Edwards	Stanford
Broncos	Jay Cutler	Vanderbilt
Browns	Derek Anderson	Oregon St.
Buccaneers	Jeff Garcia	San Jose St.
Cardinals	Kurt Warner	Northern Iowa
Chargers	Phillip Rivers	NC State
Chiefs	Brodie Croyle	Alabama
Colts	Peyton Manning	Tennessee
Cowboys	Tony Romo	Eastern Illinois
Dolphins	Chad Pennington	Marshall
Eagles	Donovan McNabb	Syracuse
Falcons	Matt Ryan	Boston College
Jaguars	David Garrard	East Carolina
Jets	Brett Favre	Southern Miss.
Lions	Jon Kitna	Central Washington
NY Giants	Eli Manning	Ole Miss.
Packers	Aaron Rogers	California
Panthers	Jake Delhomme	SW Louisiana
Patriots	Matt Cassell	USC
Pittsburgh	Ben Rothliesberger	Miami of Ohio
Raiders	Jamarcus Russell	LSU
Ravens	Joe Flacco	Delaware
Redskins	Jason Campbell	Auburn
Saints	Drew Brees	Purdue
Seahawks	Matt Hasselbeck	Boston College
Texans	Matt Shaub	Virginia
Titans	Kerry Collins	Penn St.
Vikings	Tavaris Jackson	Alabama St.

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Chad Wilson

Chad Wilson is a college football recruiting expert and creator of the GridironStudsApp which allows high school football players to gain exposure to college football coaches and fans. Wilson is a former college football player for the University of Miami (92-94) and Long Beach St. (’90-’91) and played briefly for the Seattle Seahawks (’95). He is also a former youth and high school football coach for over 15 years most recently for 5-A State of Florida Champs American Heritage. He runs All Eyes DB Camp a defensive back training company located in South Florida IG: @alleyesdbcamp. Wilson’s oldest son Quincy plays in the NFL for the New York Giants and his younger son plays cornerback for the Arizona Cardinals.