I had a good time putting together a list of the unsung backup quarterbacks in Saints' history, and I hope you enjoyed it too. In our case, nostalgia isn't always awesome considering our team's pathetic history.
That, of course, got me thinking: who is the worst quarterback of all time? With the historical habit the Saints made of losing, there are a number of worth candidates!
Karl Sweetan - the 1968 backup completed just 34.6% of his passes and threw just 1 touchdown against 9 interceptions. Awful.
Archie Manning - I'm half kidding, he's obviously not the worst Saints quarterback of all time. Still, he was sacked 340 times (more than any other Saint by over 100). He did play in 11 seasons and his offensive line was atrocious, so that's part of the reason for that. He was also intercepted 156 times, which is almost double any other quarterback in Saints' history. Again, that has more to do with his longevity than anything else. Still, he is just third all time with 115 touchdown passes despite playing all those seasons, so his TD to INT ratio is pretty abysmal.
Richard Todd - In 1984 he showcased his skills with 1 TD and 19 INT's. No joke.
Heath Shuler -Ditka signed him to a huge contract, and he rewarded him with a 2 TD 14 INT season. I wasn't old enough to remember the Richard Todd year, so to me Shuler turned in the worst season in Saints' history. He was just horrible.
Doug Nussmeier - The career backup thankfully never really got a shot. Still, his limited action and putrid preseason play is all I ever needed to witness. His career rating was 55.69 (average is like 80) and it featured just 1 touchdown pass and 4 interceptions.
Billy Joe Tolliver - He had some okay games and he wasn't that bad, but he was never good. His career QB rating of 67.7 still isn't very impressive, though. He finished with just 15 touchdowns and 20 interceptions in his Saints stint.
Those are some pretty God-awful players listed above. I could have added Danny Wuerffel, Billy Kilmer, Gary Cuozzo and Ken Stabler - but those guys were all at least decent at times. Mike Buck is another one who was pretty bad but his numbers were actually passable. They weren't consistently awful like the guys listed above (except Manning who I just put up there based on bad numbers). And no, Aaron Brooks has no place on this list, sorry. Billy Joe Hobert doesn't belong on this list either. He was pretty good, just got hurt a lot. He often gets roped in with Billy Joe Tolliver and I always thought that was completely unfair as he was a much better passer/leader.
So which one is the worst? I think it's between Heath Shuler and Richard Todd. I didn't get a chance to watch much of Todd (thankfully) as I was four years old during his throw-to-the-other-team festival. I got to watch Shuler and Nussmeier, sadly. I actually thought Nussmeier was much worse but his body of work is too small to throw him under Shuler. That's why Heath Shuler is my pick as the worst quarterback in Saints' history.
Who's your pick? Who have I left out?