College Football: How Senior Bowl MVPs have fared in the NFL

Since 1950, the Senior Bowl has featured top graduating college football talent. How have the MVPs of the annual contest performed as professionals?

We are now a week removed from the 2019 Senior Bowl, the 70th edition of the contest that produced a come-from-behind 34-24 victory for the North team against the South. A game that began in the post-World War II period, when the game really started to transform from a regional fixation into a truly national phenomenon, continues to offer a compelling last look at players on the field before they go into the grinder of the NFL Combine and the NFL Draft.

The top player in the contest has gone on in most cases to have some kind of professional career. But not all pro careers are created equal. Some players have flamed out quickly. Others have eked out journeyman careers. A select few went on to become the titans of their eras, with Super Bowl victories and Hall of Fame careers.

What does that mean for Duke quarterback Daniel Jones, who walked away with the 2019 MVP award? After throwing for 115 yards and a touchdown and adding a rushing touchdown in the third quarter, Jones walked away with the honors. Outplaying Drew Lock, Trace McSorley, and Ryan Finley, Jones was the catalyst for the comeback after falling behind 12-3 in the first half.

Jones could ultimately fall into five different camps. There are the Hall of Famers and the Pro Bowlers in the top two groups, players whose careers earn them accolades as being among the top talent of their generations. A middle tier comprises those players who put together solid careers of respectable length between seven and 11 years in the pro ranks. There is a large block of players that spent four to six seasons in the NFL or other pro leagues of their eras. And, of course, there is also a group that fizzled out or never made it to the pros at all.

There is no hard and fast line for any one of these quintiles, and they don’t exactly correspond to perfect 20 percent splits. But let’s try to group out the 75 different Senior Bowl MVPs (the bowl declared co-MVPs in 1959, 1962, 1982, 1983, and 1984) and see if we can project where Jones might fall in that hierarchy.

Tier 1: The Senior Bowl MVP pantheon of Hall of Famers

In seven decades of Senior Bowl history, seven different Senior Bowl MVPs went on to earn a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That includes a half-dozen offensive stars and one defensive dynamo.

Jim Taylor, the great Green Bay Packers fullback, was the first to go from the Senior Bowl to the Hall of Fame after he won the MVP award in 1958. With his LSU career completed, Taylor was part of a cast of seniors that included fellow Packers Hall of Famer Ray Nitschke and period stars like Alex Karras, Jerry Kramer, and Charley Krueger. Taylor went on to win the 1962 MVP award in the NFL, five Pro Bowl appearances, four NFL championships, and the first Super Bowl with the Packers.

A dozen years after Taylor won the MVP award at the Senior Bowl, 1970 MVP Terry Bradshaw became the second to go on to a Hall of Fame career in the NFL. Bradshaw won four Super Bowls in the 1970s with Pittsburgh, after dueling with San Diego State quarterback Dennis Shaw in a Senior Bowl where the two combined for 653 yards through the air. Bradshaw won two Super Bowl MVPs and a league MVP award over the course of a 14-year career.

James Lofton, the Stanford wide receiver who was named the 1978 Senior Bowl MVP, was the third Hall of Famer to emerge from the list of most valuable players. Lofton came out of California and landed in Green Bay, where he twice led the league in yards per reception and racked up 49 receiving touchdowns as a Packer. After nine years in Wisconsin, Lofton bounced from the Los Angeles Raiders to Buffalo before finishing out his 16-year career in Philadelphia and back in LA with the Rams.

Five years later, Dan Marino won the Senior Bowl MVP award before embarking on a Hall of Fame career with the Miami Dolphins. Marino was the 1984 offensive player of the year in the NFL and the league MVP, leading the Dolphins to Super Bowl XIX where they lost to San Francisco. While Marino never managed to lead Miami back to the title game, he still ranks in the top five in passing yards and passing touchdowns after a 17-year career in south Florida.

Thurman Thomas won the 1988 Senior Bowl MVP and then went on to join up with a Buffalo Bills team that was a juggernaut in the making. In 1991 Thomas became the offensive player of the year and the league MVP as he helped lead Buffalo to the second of their four straight Super Bowl appearances. Thomas led the league in yards from scrimmage four straight years between 1989 and 1992, proving a key part of the AFC juggernaut of the early 1990s.

Derrick Brooks became the only defensive MVP to go from Senior Bowl glory to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The former Florida State Seminoles star spent all 14 of his pro seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The linebacker was named a first-team All-Pro five times and was selected for 11 Pro Bowls in his career. Brooks was named the 2002 defensive player of the year, as he was an instrumental part of a shutdown defense that won Super Bowl XXXVII over the Oakland Raiders.

That makes LaDainian Tomlinson the most recent Senior Bowl MVP to go on to a Hall of Fame career in the NFL. Tomlinson, the MVP at the 2001 game after rushing for 88 yards and adding 28 receiving yards as the catalyst of a 21-16 victory for the South. In 11 seasons with the San Diego Chargers and New York Jets, Tomlinson went on to win the 2006 league MVP and offensive player of the year awards while earning five Pro Bowl appearances and three first-team All-Pro selections.

These seven players represent the pinnacle of Senior Bowl MVPs. Other stars of the game also went on to Hall of Fame careers, but they were superseded in the Senior Bowl itself by these most valuable players. Getting to this level will require 2019 MVP Daniel Jones to land with a team that is able to develop his talents quickly and effectively, along with a lot of luck.

Tier 2: The Senior Bowl MVPs good enough to reach a Pro Bowl

Not every player who makes the NFL needs to reach the Hall of Fame to put up a notable career. While the Hall of Fame is the culmination of a career’s worth of success, plenty of former Senior Bowl MVPs went on to put up high-profile seasons over the course of careers that fell just short of Hall of Fame status.

This group includes a tier of Pro Bowl-level players like quarterbacks Steve Bartkowski, Neil Lomax, and Tommy Kramer. Bartkowski started 127 games, all but six of them for the Atlanta Falcons, over the course of a 12-year career. Lomax played for eight seasons, starting 101 games for the Cardinals. His last season with the franchise was the transition year from St. Louis to Phoenix. And Kramer earned 110 starts for Minnesota between 1977 and 1989, finishing his career on the New Orleans bench in 1990.

The group also includes running backs Chuck Foreman, Larry Johnson, and Matt Forte. Forte is the only one of the trio who is still a few years away from eligibility for Hall of Fame consideration. His eight years with the Chicago Bears and two with the New York Jets finished 204 yards shy of 10,000 for his career. His productivity far outpaced the other two Pro Bowl running backs who won Senior Bowl MVPs, but he also falls far short of the productivity of LaDainian Tomlinson, his closest contemporary among Hall of Fame comparables.

Also in this group are defensive stalwarts Bubba Smith and Terry Kinard. Smith transitioned from Michigan State to a career where he started six seasons for the Baltimore Colts and Oakland Raiders while playing for nine seasons overall. Kinard went from Clemson defensive back to an eight-year career with the New York Giants and Houston Oilers where he nabbed 31 interceptions. Between them, they posted three Pro Bowl appearances.

One receiver made the cut, with Arizona State star J.D. Hill going from Senior Bowl MVP to a Pro Bowler in his second of five seasons with the Buffalo Bills in the early 1970s before ending his time in the NFL with two seasons in Detroit.

Reaching at least one Pro Bowl isn’t exactly simple, especially as a quarterback in a league where passers are the most scrutinized and most lionized players on the field. But if Jones lands with a quality franchise that provides opportunities to develop and work with compatible talent, he could reach at least one Pro Bowl game and join this tier of Senior Bowl MVPs.

Tier 3: The Senior Bowl MVPs who made pro football a full career

Outside of the 20 percent of Senior Bowl MVPs who reached a Pro Bowl game and fewer than 10 percent who made it to the Hall of Fame, there is the middle tier of MVPs who went on to play seven or more seasons of pro football with at least five of them in the NFL.

This group encompasses guys who mostly spent their careers with one franchise. Among the Senior Bowl MVPs in this group of players are college stars like Indiana quarterback Antwaan Randle El, who transitioned to wide receiver and split an effective nine-year career between Pittsburgh and Washington.

It also includes six other quarterbacks who stayed at the position in the pros. Among the half-dozen is Chad Pennington, who finished with a .543 winning percentage in 81 starts over an 11-year career spent entirely in the AFC East with the New York Jets and Miami. 1960 Senior Bowl MVP Jacky Lee and 1980 MVP Marc Wilson both spent 10 years under contract with AFL andNFL teams.

On the other end of the spectrum, Craig Penrose spent five years with Denver and the New York Jets before ending his career with two seasons playing for the Denver Gold of the USFL. Pat Sullivan bounced from Atlanta, Washington, and Chicago before closing out his career with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the CFL.

Alvin Harper and Howard Twilley were the two receivers who put together pro careers of eight and 11 years respectively. Harper started his career with Dallas in 1991, winning back-to-back Super Bowls with the Cowboys in his second and third pro seasons before spending the back half of his eight seasons in the NFL with Tampa Bay and Washington. Twilley spent his entire career with the Miami Dolphins, first in the AFL and then in the NFL after the merger. He was a veteran presence on the back-to-back Super Bowl winners in the 1970s.

Largely interchangeable fullback careers from 1959 MVP Don Bosseler and the 1962 co-MVPs Ronnie Bull and Earl Gros trump the far-lower productivity at the pro level of 1957 MVP Theron Sapp. All four still translated their MVP performances into a longer-than-average NFL career among the 75 Senior Bowl MVPs. Defensive linemen Steve DeLong, Bill Kollar, and Doug Smith also turned MVP performances into careers that included time in the NFL as well as the AFL and USFL for DeLong and Smith respectively.

Jones will merely need to prove himself worthwhile as a backup quarterback to put together the type of career put together by Jacky Lee, who was a starter just one season in his 10 years of AFL service with the Houston Oilers, Denver Broncos, and Kansas City Chiefs from 1960 through 1969. Reaching that backup lifer status is potentially manageable for the senior who just finished up his time at Duke.

Tier 4: The Senior Bowl MVPs who reached veteran status

What constitutes veteran status? In this case, it is playing at least four seasons in the NFL or one of the comparable leagues of the moment (AFL and USFL) with at least some on-field action in the regular season. That is the baseline for making the tier of journeyman among Senior Bowl MVPs that is currently 17 members and counting.

Perhaps the most interesting of the group is John Fourcade, the Ole Miss quarterback who won the 1982 Senior Bowl MVP award. Fourcade put together 15 seasons playing in a wide range of professional football leagues between 1983 and 2001. Sandwiched around four years in the NFL with New Orleans between 1987 and 1990 was playing time in the CFL, USFL, Arena Football League, Indoor Professional Football League, and National Indoor Football League. His last years were played out as a player-coach with the Mobile Seagulls in the NIFL in 2001 when he was 41 years old.

Then there is Napoleon McCallum, the former Navy running back whose first season with the Los Angeles Raiders was played out while also simultaneously serving the first of his four years of active duty in the Navy. Relocated after his rookie season, though, McCallum was forced to take a three-year leave of absence from the NFL before returning for five more seasons with the Raiders in the early 1990s.

Also in the group is Pat Barnes, who bounced from time with Kansas City, Oakland, San Francisco, and Cleveland to seasons in NFL Europe, the XFL, and the CFL. 1998 Senior Bowl MVP Dameyune Craig spent four years with the Carolina Panthers before finishing his career with Indiana in the Arena Football League, and 2006 MVP Sinorice Moss spent four seasons with the New York Giants before closing out his time as a pro with Saskatchewan in the CFL.

Quarterbacks like Bobby Hoying, Charlie Frye, Cade McNown, and Christian Ponder fall in this group of past Senior Bowl MVPs. So too do running backs Cleveland Gary, Blair Thomas, Isaiah Pead, Paul Ott Carruth, Don Smith, and Ode Burrell. Trailblazing SMU receiver Jerry LeVias, the first black player in the Southwest Conference, and former Utah defensive lineman Steve Clark also fall in this tier of veterans who went beyond the minimum three seasons required to become vested in the NFL pension plan.

Just as the easiest way to reach career status is through backup status, so too is that true of reaching the veteran tier for 2019 Senior Bowl Daniel Jones.

Tier 5: The Senior Bowl MVPs who faded away quickly or never made it

Players who faded away or never really made it at the pro level are those who never really broke through in the NFL or comparable leagues of each era.  But to be more specific, this group really breaks into two subgroups.

The first subgroup are those who at least became vested in the NFL pension plan by reaching three seasons on active NFL rosters. That amounts to a group of five players: quarterbacks Dick Norman, Kim Hammond, and Stan White, running back Tony Smith, and defensive lineman Willie Jones. White is the one player among this quintet who reached a fourth year, but he also never saw on-field action in his four seasons with the New York Giants.

Then there is the larger subgroup of players who never made it to a third year in the NFL or equivalent league. Two players, fullback Norm Odyniec and quarterback Eric Hunter, never did play professional sports. The third player that never played in the NFL, Harry Agganis, opted instead to try his hand at professional baseball. Agganis spent 157 games over two seasons at first base for the Boston Red Sox. But a bout of pneumonia proved fatal, and the 1953 Senior Bowl MVP was just 26 years old when he passed away from a viral infection that set in as a result of his first illness.

Don Goss, the SMU tackle who remains the only offensive lineman ever to win the Senior Bowl MVP award, only spent one year in the NFL with Cleveland. The same happened to Glynn Griffing, the 1962 MVP who landed with the New York Giants. Bucky Curtis played one year in the NFL with Cleveland after claiming the 1951 MVP before two more seasons in Canada with the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL.

The MVP of the inaugural Senior Bowl, 1950 winner Travis Tidwell of Auburn, and Villanova running back Gene Filipski spent two seasons with the Giants after winning the award. Another Auburn quarterback, Bobby Freeman, and Penn State running back Tony Hunt also only reached two years of NFL service. That was also true of Pat White, the former West Virginia quarterback who started his career with Miami in 2009 and Washington in 2013, never truly recovered from an early concussion at the end of his rookie season.

For Daniel Jones, it is instructive to keep in mind that more than 80 percent of Senior Bowl MVPs at least reach vested status in the NFL pension fund. Only a dozen players in 70 years of the game failed to reach that benchmark, which bodes well for Jones as he assesses what will constitute a successful NFL career in his mind.

Final Thoughts

While we looked at this primarily in the context of hierarchies of MVPs and where Jones might eventually fit in that hierarchy, it might be fun to look as well at the other eight players who are still active in the NFL.

Philip Rivers is the most successful of that bunch as he heads into his 16th season of pro football in 2019, all with the Chargers franchise. Rivers has eight Pro Bowl appearances to date, though the ultimate prize of a Super Bowl has so far eluded the former NC State quarterback. Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott and Kansas City linebacker Dee Ford are the other two in the group of active players that have also earned a spot in the Pro Bowl.

Brandon Graham will enter his 10th season with the Philadelphia Eagles next season, though he has yet to make a Pro Bowl appearance. 2013 Senior Bowl MVP EJ Manuel is actively seeking a new team as a free agent, while the two most recent winners before Daniel Jones, Davis Webb and Kyle Lauletta, have both been relegated to benchwarmer status over the past two years.

Players of all positions are represented in the various tiers, and every tier is represented at the various positions. There is a remarkably smooth distribution across the board however you slice up the data.

Hall of Famers emerge at fairly regular intervals in the chronological record. The tiers are relatively well distributed within each position group. And there is a relatively clear bell curve of players by years professional that coalesces around the median seven years of service.

If history holds firm, a Senior Bowl MVP quarterback like Daniel Jones has a spectacular shot of reaching at least three years of qualified service in the NFL to become eligible for a pension. Jones, who completed just under 60 percent of his passes in three years leading the Blue Devils offense, finished his college career with 52 touchdowns against 29 interceptions.

Of the 35 quarterbacks who won the MVP award, 26 reached vested status in the pension plan. Joining the pantheon of Hall of Famers has low odds, and getting to the Pro Bowl is no guarantee either. But the realm of players like Jacky Lee, Bobby Hoying, Christian Ponder, and Charlie Frye is definitely an achievable goal.

Senior Bowl MVP status is no guarantee of an effective professional career, but it is a strong indicator that a player will get every chance possible to show their skills on the gridiron. The game that enters its eighth decade next season continues to provide a worthwhile function in identifying both well-known talent as well as hidden gems as seniors get one final chance to showcase their skills as representatives of their universities of record.