- [Narrator] The NFL is a quarterback-driven league.
Fans are drawn like a moth to a flame
when games have back and forth finishes punctuated
with tons of points, yards and downfield passing attacks.
But one day, we got such a disastrously boring outing
from the game's quarterbacks that watching paint dry
on a wall while in line at the DMV
would have been exponentially more stimulating.
This is the NFL's worst quarterbacked game.
Metlife Stadium.
Tropical East Rutherford, New Jersey, December 2nd,
the Year of our Lord 20.12 centuries
after something happened,
the 4-7 Cardinals visit the 4-7 Jets.
The Cards are led by Ryan Lindley,
a rookie 6th-round pick appearing
in his 3rd career game.
His first ever start was just a week prior,
in which he threw no touchdowns,
but, in his defense, he did throw 4 picks.
And enters this game dead last in passer rating.
The Jets are captained by Mark Sanchez,
a man 10 days removed from running
into his right guard's ass,
so this is probably the first time
he's shown his face in public since.
He's also now fully exposed as a fraud
after some early career misconceptions
when the Jets defense made the AFC title game
in each of his first two seasons,
and is just mediocre enough to maintain
a tenuous hold on his job.
So we brace ourselves and enter this game
with aerial expectations lower
than Tom Haverford's credit score.
Surely it can't possibly under-deliver, right?
We even get a nice start, too, with Lindley connecting
with Larry Fitzgerald for 23 yards
on the game's first pass.
They'd soon punt, meaning now we get to punish our eyes
with some Sanchez action.
On New York's very first offensive snap,
Sanchez drops back, gets some pressure in his face,
and decides to throw a lame duck off his back foot
that finds its way into the waiting arms
of his former teammate, Kerry Rhodes.
Two Jets possessions later, Sanchez killed their drive
with this brilliant pass that was nearly intercepted
by Quentin Groves before actually being intercepted,
once again, by Rhodes.
It takes something special to sling a pass
in the direct path of a linebacker,
luck out when he doesn't snag it,
but still get picked because it's also in the direct path
of the safety 10 yards behind him.
After his next pass rainbowed down
into the arms of Pat Peterson,
the Sanchize had thrown just 9 balls,
and 3 were caught by Cardinals.
Fortunately, Sanchez's counterpart
is the true lord of quarterback incompetence,
and after trying his best to give the ball back
on his next pass, Lindley successfully gets
the job done on the one after that,
lofting a pass deep downfield to Mike Floyd,
who is about as open as a bar in Utah at midnight.
As bad as it's been so far,
this is just the tip of the iceberg.
We'd reach the 2-minute warning of the 1st half
with 'Zona still looking to move the chains
for the first time since the opening minute of the game.
Desperate for a spark that their QB
was clearly incapable of providing,
this Rashad Johnson fake punt picked up 40 yards,
setting up a Jay Feely field goal
and a thrilling 3-0 ballgame at the break.
But what's a key ingredient to
any poorly quarterbacked game?
A benching!
And after Sanchez went 1-5 for 2 yards
across the Jets' first 3 drives of the 2nd half,
it was time for sexy Rexy to make a change
and yank the man whose jersey his wife
is wearing on a bicep tat.
Ordinarily, this would be time to move
their personal punt protector to QB,
but one Timothy Richard Tebow is sidelined
with broken ribs and thus relegated to praying for the Jets.
So instead, Rex scrapes the bottom of the barrel
to find Greg McElroy, aka the quarterback who beat Tebow
in the '09 SEC championship game,
and McElroy immediately leads
a lengthy 69-yard touchdown drive.
Credit McElroy if you want, but Bilal Powell
and defensive penalties accounted for over 80%
of that series’ yardage.
Meanwhile, Lindley's led his team to nothing
but 3-and-outs on each of their first 4 drives
of the 2nd half, and in fact,
this 16-yard completion to Floyd in the fourth quarter
is the first time Lindley's right arm eked out
a first down since that initial pass of the game,
and after a field goal, they trailed by just one.
They'd get another chance, but after sending
a ball flying in some zip code other than
where his wideout was, that would be all she wrote.
McElroy tried to give the Birds one last chance
by chucking up this flaming pile of garbage,
but a Cardinal penalty negated it,
and they'd never see the ball again.
Lindley wound up throwing for just 72 yards on 31 attempts,
in what was one of the lamest passing outputs
since the AFL-NFL merger back in 1970.
After his first pass of the game was completed
to Fitzgerald, he threw another 21 passes
to his wide receivers, completing just four of them
for 35 yards.
And remember, he came into this game
as the lowest rated passer in the league.
What did that leaderboard now look like after?
Shield your children's eyes, folks, it's that ugly.
The gap between him and the runner-up is stunning.
With Sanchez playing recklessly enough
that the Jets were forced to turn
to sub-Tebow levels of the depth chart,
the amalgam of these two teams' quarterback play left
any viewers remaining hoping that the weirdos
who thought the world's demise would come
later that month were spot on.
Now, to be fair, there were other remarkable stinkers
from an era of explosive passing attacks,
like a 2005 game at Soldier Field
that saw the 49ers complete but a single pass
under the stewardship of Cody Pickett,
with Kyle Orton, uh, not a whole helluva lot better.
Or a game there the next year,
in which starting QBs Brad Johnson
and Rex Grossman each failed to complete half
their passes with the defenses hauling in 7 of them.
The Bears took that show on the road
on a lovely 2010 day in Charlotte featuring
two squads that couldn't even combine
to cover a football field and a half through the air.
Jimmy Clausen was so bad the tanking Panthers
benched him for Matt Moore,
who promptly threw picks to cap both of his drives,
enabling Todd Collins to be the only QB
that season to have tossed 4 INTs in a win.
Gross.
And in 2011 in Oakland, Kyle Boller combined
with arguably 2 of the greatest pro quarterbacks from USC
to produce a stench so repulsive it surpassed that
of the literal shit-filled stadium that housed the game.
But that first Soldier Field game
had historically strong 50-MPH wind gusts
and the second one was freezing,
with single-digit temperatures.
The terrible USC quarterbacks at least were able
to move their teams and get some first downs
once in a while, and that Collins-Clausen disaster
gets a bit of a pass as the lone game Jay Cutler missed
in an otherwise very strong season.
Slice it any way you want, Ryan Lindley squaring off
against Mark Sanchez had everything any masochist
would hope to get from a football game.
For everyone else, the only light at the end of the tunnel
was to hope the Mayans were right.
Hey folks, thanks so much for watching
this episode of The Worst.
In case you're wondering what Ryan Lindley's up to nowadays,
he's actually the quarterbacks coach of the Browns,
so, Godspeed to Baker Mayfield.
As always, don't forget to like and subscribe,
because every time you do, an angel gets its wings.