I’m still not sure what to make of the fact that Devlin Hodges is universally referred to as “Duck.”
At this point, you’re probably familiar with the undrafted rookie who’s won both of his starts as Steelers quarterback, helping lift a seemingly doomed team to a 7-5 record and the forefront of the AFC wild-card race. Hodges is known for his background as a competitive duck caller, as he won a junior world championship before his football-playing days and an Alabama state title before his senior season at Samford—hence, “Duck.” Hodges embraces the nickname, even tweeting out cartoons that depict him as a duck flying over Heinz Field.
On a base level, this moniker tracks—Duck is a duck caller called Duck because he imitates ducks and therefore is ducklike. But the reason he’s good at imitating ducks is because hunters make duck noises to prompt ducks to take flight so they can then shoot ducks. There is no ambiguity about whether Duck shoots ducks; he captioned one Instagram post “I love killing ducks!” and added “this duck”—meaning himself—“was not harmed in the making of this pic” to another post. But I remain confused. Would we call an exterminator “Roach”? A lumberjack “Trees?” I haven’t been this thrown off since Ghostface Killah switched his name to Ghostface.
Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin seems to be avoiding potential mixups by calling Hodges “Duck Dynasty,” which, because everything in the world is apparently linked to unusual backup quarterback situations, is a reference to a show about a guy who once started over Terry Bradshaw at Louisiana Tech and later founded a company that manufactures duck calls. But most people know Hodges as Duck—it was joked that if somebody asked for “Devlin” at Samford, “people don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
While Hodges’s nickname may be a source of great personal confusion, it’s clear that he can play. Despite going undrafted, the 6-foot-1 210-pounder has significantly outperformed Mason Rudolph, the QB the Steelers picked in the third round of the 2018 draft. Last week, Duck bypassed Rudolph on the depth chart even though both are fully healthy. The Steelers are 2-0 with Hodges under center—really 3-0, considering that he led them to a victory after supplanting Rudolph early in the third quarter of a game in which Pittsburgh was trailing the Bengals 7-3 at halftime.
Hodges’s persona may be one of a kind, but his emergence is part of a larger trend. Quarterbacks who put up exceptional college numbers in Air Raid systems are stepping in at the pro level and thriving right away. Duck’s background and rise may have the feel of an inexplicable legend, but his success is grounded in genuine football talent.
It is rare, but not unheard of, for an undrafted quarterback to start NFL games as a rookie. In fact, Hodges isn’t even the only one who will start this weekend; David Blough will be Sunday’s starter for the Lions. According to Pro-Football-Reference, 52 undrafted QBs have received starts in their first NFL season accumulating stats, but that number is misleading. It includes Warren Moon and Jeff Garcia, who served stints in the CFL before finding NFL gigs, and Nick Mullens and Jake Delhomme, whose first game action came several years after they entered the league.
Hodges stands out in a few ways. Most undrafted rookies on that list started only when their teams were out of options. For example, Blough will start for Detroit only because the Lions’ franchise QB, Matthew Stafford, and backup, Jeff Driskel, both suffered injuries. Last season, Kyle Allen started in Week 17 for the Panthers after Cam Newton and Taylor Heinicke both went down; in 2014, Connor Shaw started in Week 17 for the Browns after Brian Hoyer and Johnny Manziel both got hurt; in 2007, Matt Moore took over for the Panthers after Delhomme, David Carr, and a 44-year-old Vinny Testaverde just signed out of retirement were all ruled out. While Hodges got his first start as a result of injuries to both Ben Roethlisberger and Rudolph, he has now surpassed a healthy Rudolph on the depth chart.
Secondly, Hodges is getting multiple starts. Of the 52 undrafted players on that list, 23 started just one game and 11 started two. Since 2000, only three quarterbacks have seemed to genuinely fit the criteria of being undrafted first-year players with more than three starts: Max Hall, who started three games for the 2010 Cardinals; Matt McGloin, who started six games for the 2013 Raiders; and Moore, who started three games for the 2007 Panthers.
Thirdly, even most undrafted players get at least some looks from NFL teams. Shaw and Hall were draft combine participants; Allen and Moore were so-called “preferred free agents” who signed with teams immediately after the conclusion of the draft. Even the few players who fell into neither bucket were generally invited to postseason college showcases, like the Senior Bowl or Shrine Game. Yet none of this happened for Hodges. He didn’t sign with the Steelers until May 13, two weeks after the conclusion of April’s draft, when he outperformed Keller Chryst during a 19-person rookie minicamp. And even then, the Steelers cut him after training camp. Hodges returned to Alabama, where he tried to scheme a way into the CFL or XFL.
However, it now seems clear that Hodges should have gotten looks from NFL teams based on his college résumé. At Samford, a small school in Homewood, Alabama, Hodges broke the career FCS record for passing yards set by Steve McNair. Don’t be surprised to see big names on FCS leaderboards—while the talent in the FCS is far below that in the FBS, the best of the best at that level often prove themselves to be stars. Other FCS record-holders include Jerry Rice, Cooper Kupp, and Adrian Peterson—OK, the other Adrian Peterson, but roll with it. When Hodges won the Walter Payton Award, the FCS version of the Heisman Trophy, he joined a list of winners that counts Jimmy Garoppolo and Tony Romo. (Carson Wentz just won FCS titles, not individual trophies.) Hodges had a few FBS offers coming out of high school and initially committed to play at Southern Miss, but chose to go to the college about 20 miles from his hometown.
And it turned out for the best when Samford hired Chris Hatcher, a coach with deep roots in the Air Raid offense, before the 2015 season. Hatcher once played quarterback at Division II Valdosta State, where his head coach was Hal Mumme, the man who invented the Air Raid, and his offensive coordinator was Mike Leach, the man who popularized the system among larger programs. Hodges got starts as a redshirt freshman and became the team’s full-time starter as a sophomore. Between 2016 and 2018, Hodges averaged 4,118 yards with 33 touchdowns and 11.7 interceptions per season. For his Samford career, he completed 69.1 percent of his passes.
NFL teams apparently ignored Hodges’s four years of gaudy passing numbers due to the weak competition—what, exactly, does it mean to throw 562 yards against Western Carolina? But in the few games that Hodges played against top-tier competition, he made some wild things happen. Florida State paid Samford big money to come to Tallahassee in September 2018 in hopes of blowing out the Bulldogs. Instead, Duck threw a 54-yard touchdown on Samford’s first play from scrimmage.
For 53 minutes, the Bulldogs clung to a lead against one of the premier programs in the sport, with Duck giving the Seminoles everything they could handle. Although Florida State won 36-26 by scoring two touchdowns in the final five minutes, Hodges racked up 475 yards while putting the college football world on upset notice. The same thing had happened two years earlier, when Hodges threw for 468 yards and four touchdowns in a 56-41 loss to Mississippi State.
FCS teams have 63 scholarship players. FBS teams have 85. Even if we don’t account for the fact that Florida State and Mississippi State generally get more highly touted recruits than Samford, the rules of the sport literally give a competitive advantage to the big schools. And yet Duck tore through his brand-name competition. It’s baffling that he barely got a look out of college after this.
Hodges clearly wasn’t allowed to let loose in his debut NFL start. He went 15-of-20 passing in a Week 6 showdown with the Chargers, but his deepest completion was just 10 yards downfield, and his only legit deep shot was intercepted. The strategy made sense. The Steelers had cut Hodges after training camp and then traded away third-string QB Josh Dobbs, only for Roethlisberger to get injured and inspire the team to re-sign Hodges. When Rudolph later went down with a concussion in a game against the Ravens, Hodges stepped in, and of course Pittsburgh wasn’t going to open up the playbook for a guy who had been on the street weeks earlier. The plan worked, as the Steelers beat the Chargers 24-17.
Rudolph was reinstalled as the starter when he was cleared from his concussion, but he disappointed, leading to widespread calls for Duck. And since the Steelers benched Rudolph in Week 12 against Cincinnati, Duck has looked like college Duck. Pittsburgh didn’t score a touchdown in the first half of that game against the awful Bengals defense, but Hodges threw a 79-yard touchdown to James Washington on his first drive.
Hodges got the start last week against the Browns, a team that had intercepted Rudolph four times in an earlier meeting. The Steelers were shorthanded: Pittsburgh’s top receiver, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and top running back, James Conner, were out with injuries. But Hodges was often shorthanded in college, too, and that never stopped him from putting up prolific numbers. He let it rip against Cleveland: Here are two perfectly thrown 30-yard bombs to Washington in tight coverage.
Hodges obviously has a natural rapport with Washington—look at this touchdown!—which is funny, because the Steelers drafted Rudolph in hopes of building off their preexisting connection. The two were teammates at Oklahoma State, where Washington won the Biletnikoff Award, given annually to the best receiver in college football, while Rudolph set the program’s all-time passing yards record. The Steelers drafted them in the second and third rounds of the 2018 draft, respectively, but they had no spark: In six NFL games with Rudolph starting, Washington recorded just 295 yards with one touchdown.
That’s changed with Duck. In the three halves since Rudolph was benched in favor of Hodges, Washington has 203 yards with two scores, including a career-high 111 yards against the Browns. Of course, Washington and Duck are now hunting buddies. Sorry you didn’t get the invite, Mason!
The routes that Washington ran at Oklahoma State weren’t dissimilar from those being run by Hodges’s wideouts at Samford. In 2010, Oklahoma State hired Dana Holgorsen—the man who served as Hatcher’s QBs coach at Valdosta State under Mumme and Leach—as its offensive coordinator, and although he stuck around for only a year, Oklahoma State retained many of Holgorsen’s principles. Rudolph may have played alongside Washington in college, but Hodges and Washington share a common football vernacular, and it shows: Hodges is averaging 8.7 yards per attempt, which would put him second among all quarterbacks in 2019 if he were to have played enough to qualify for the NFL leaderboard. Rudolph, meanwhile, ranks 32nd out of 33 qualified quarterbacks.
2019 is the year of the Air Raid backup quarterback star turn. The NFL’s other folk hero of the season, Jacksonville’s Gardner Minshew II, was a sixth-round pick out of Washington State, where he played under Leach. Minshew may have been unheralded during the draft process, but he has clearly outperformed Nick Foles this season. (And while I have the floor: Minshew is incredible, but, like, I have a mustache. If we’re comparing NFL folk heroes, “champion duck caller who went undrafted” is better than “guy with a mustache who was picked in the sixth round.” Sorry, it’s the truth.)
Hodges holds the FCS career passing yardage record. The guy who set the FBS career record, Case Keenum, also went undrafted, and he delivered the miracle that saved the Vikings a few years ago. A quarterback who puts up season after season of top-tier production in the Air Raid is usually capable of reading defenses and making accurate throws. Pro scouts used to scoff at Air Raid QBs as system guys, but now the NFL is using the system. Still, the league has overlooked QBs like Hodges and Minshew because of their measurables. Hodges and Minshew have since demanded attention.
The Steelers shouldn’t be anywhere near the playoffs right now. Their former star running back, Le’Veon Bell, held out for the entire 2018 season before leaving the franchise in free agency. Their longtime star receiver, Antonio Brown, was traded away in March. Two games into this season, Roethlisberger went down with an elbow injury that required surgery and has kept him out for the rest of the year. And the players who replaced Bell and Brown, Conner and Smith-Schuster, are injured too. Yet Pittsburgh would be in the playoffs if the season were to end today, thanks largely to having won three critical games behind Duck.
I’m still not sure whether Duck is supposed to be a bird or a person who shoots birds. But both work. Ducks fly, and the Steelers need someone who can go aerial. And duck hunters hit their targets, and Duck is as accurate with the pigskin as he is with the shotgun.
