Here’s The Truth About Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts And Black Quarterbacks In Super Bowls

This Patrick Mahomes-Jalen Hurts thing has been mentioned nonstop through the airways, across cyberspace and in print for more than a week.

But most folks still don’t get it.

Let this sink in: Every season since its birth in 1920, the NFL has held a championship game, but when Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles climbed to their podiums Monday at Footprint Center in Phoenix for Super Bowl LVII Opening Night, they became the first Black quarterbacks ever slated to face each other for a league title.

What’s up with that?

“Oh, that’s amazing, man,” Eagles cornerback Darius Slay told me as he sat a couple of podiums away from Hurts, and they both are among Black players who compose 70% of the league.

Seventy percent!

Yet this is the first time . . .

Hmmmmm.

The NFL has featured Black players since Paul Brown integrated his Cleveland Browns nearly a year before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947. Within the next three decades, white players steadily dropped into the minority around the league, but you couldn’t tell by how they dominated the quarterback position.

Follow the money.

According to Forbes, the 10 highest paid NFL players for 2022 were quarterbacks, and half of them were Black, including Mahomes in fourth place at $51.5 million. It sounds like Jimmy The Greek Snyder said the ugly truth (from his perspective and of those around him, including in the NFL) out loud 35 years ago over lunch in Washington DC with a camera rolling.

Snyder was the popular oddsmaker who picked NFL games for the CBS pregame show. That was until he was fired by the network within hours after claiming during the interview that Blacks were better athletes than Whites because ”the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid, see? I mean, that`s where it all started.”

Here’s what else Snyder said: ”If they take over coaching, like everybody wants them to, there’s not going to be anything left for the white people.”

Snyder’s “they” referred to Blacks. In addition, even though Snyder said “coaching,” his inference was to every NFL job of power such as quarterback. Just like now, a lot of “the white people” during his era played quarterback, and just like now, they dominated their teammates in the payroll department.

Which brings us to the bottom line: Those who thought like Snyder didn’t wish to give up the quarterback position to Black players rising fast and furiously on the scene, because they hadn’t a desire to relinquish all of that power and money.

Doug Williams was there worst nightmare.

I was there during January 1988 in San Diego, where the supposedly invincible John Elway and his Denver Broncos were shredded by Williams’ right arm after he completed 18 of 29 passes for four touchdowns and 340 yards. His Washington team rolled 42-10.

That led the way for Russell Wilson and Mahomes to win Super Bowls as Black quarterbacks. It also set the foundation for Black quarterbacks Steve McNair, Colin Kaepernick and Cam Newton to at least appear in them.

Snyder knew that once somebody like Doug Williams opened the door along those lines, others would keep spriting through at the expense of “the white people,” right into the elite of stuff like Forbes’ list for highest paid NFL players.

Early during that Super Bowl week after the 1987 season, Williams agreed to let me spend a day with him in his hometown of Zachery, Louisiana, for a Sporting News cover story. I had an exclusive, and after a bowl of the family gumbo, I had something else: a souvenir.

Williams’ mother gave me a T-shirt she made in honor of his Super Bowl victory, and the markings on the front ended “Black History.”

But back to Monday night, when Slay nodded across the way from his podium, thinking more about the Mahomes versus Hurts and saying, “It’s amazing, especially with it going on during Black History Month. It’s a blessing, man. I’m glad I’ll be a part of this. This is something I can tell my grand kids that I experienced this.

“I’m thankful both of those guys are so talented with Mahomes leading his team here and Hurts leading our team here. So, a shout out to those two guys for making history.”

Indeed, but here’s what folks don’t get: Other Black quarterback should have made this kind of Black history decades ago.

Blame that Jimmy The Greek thing.