NFL Rosters with All black or near all black starters only

[Dehbashi]

As people may know in the week 4 thread, we were talking about David Carr's injury and how if he is out for a while it would be all black starters on the Raiders except for the kicker Giorgio Tavecchio.

We were wondering if that has ever happened before and some people brought up the Aaron Brooks's Saints and Nick Saban's Dolphins as possibilities.

I decided to take a crack at it to see using Pro Football Reference as my guide.

Starting with the Saints when Aaron Brooks was there,

2000:
Offense: 9 blacks (Only whites center Jerry Fontenot and Right tackle Kyle Turley)
Defense : All black
Kicker: White
Punter: White

2001:
Offense: Same as 2000
Defense: All black
Kicker: White
Punter: White

2002:
Offense: 7 blacks, 3 whites (Fontenot, Turley, and TE David Sloan) and 1 Polynesian (RT Spencer Folau)
Defense: All black
Kicker: White
Punter: White

2003:
Offense: 9 blacks (Only whites Fontenot and TE Ernie Conwell)
Defense: All black
Kicker: White
Punter: White

2004
Offense: 10 blacks (only white Conwell)
Defense: 10 blacks (1 white DT Brian Young)
Kicker: White
Punter: White

2005:
Offense: This is weird since PFR counted FB Mike Karney as the starter and not another RB after McAllister got injured. This is even though the other running backs, who were black, got way more carries than him. If they only didn't do that, the only white starter would have been Conwell again.
Defense: 9 blacks (Only whites Brian Young and LB Colby Bockwoldt
Kicker: White
Punter: White

This is honestly embarrassing how many blacks were starters. I couldn't believe it until I was crunching the data.

Weird that Whites started to shrink in offense and started to pop up on defense as if they were afraid that fans won't take it well. Still the Raiders got them beat.

I will do the Nick Saban Dolphins when I have time.

 

[Dehbashi]

OK for our Nick Saban Dolphins and how caste they are. Let's take a look.

2005:
Offense: 9 blacks (Only whites are QB Gus Frerotte and C Seth McKinney)
Defense: 10 blacks (Only white MLB Zach Thomas)
Kicker: White
Punter: White

2006:
Offense: 9 blacks (2 whites QB Joey Harrington and TE Justin Peelle)
Defense: Same as 2005
Kicker: White
Punter: White

So not much better for Saban. Could be worse than I think. I didn't check with the Saints with this but one thing with the 2006 Dolphins had Harrington starting 11 games, his backups started 5 games, Cleo Lemon and Daunte Culpepper, both black. Actually I think Culpepper stated the opener since that would have been the free agency war between him and Drew Brees (Which we all know how that turned out)

So I need to see if certain games during those if things got better or worse for whites

 

[Dehbashi]

Like I thought, Culpepper started the first 4 games. I will take a quick look if things changed during those games and put up the games that did do so.

Week 1: All black offense, 10 black defense
Week 2: 10 blacks offense and defense
Week 3: Same as week 1
Week 4: Same as Week 1

Now the game with Cleo Lemon had 10 black offense and 9 black defense (Zach Thomas and NT Jeff Zgonina)

Interesting that if they started with only one TE it was all black offense but with 2 TEs Peelle came in to have it one white.

As for the defense it stays only one white until near the end.

So Saban has the disgrace of running an all black offense.

No wonder why the Dolphins sucked quickly.

 

[Dehbashi]

2005 Dolphins does seem to change much except a game here and there and with Rosenfels as the back up QB so no black quarterback. So I will ignore it.

2000 Saints had Keith Poole, a white WR, start 4 games.

2001 Saints had Cam Cleeland as a White TE start a few games.

2002 Saints does not have a change in racial makeup during the season.

2003 Saints has Walter Rasby as a black TE starting quite a bit of games but it does not say which so I can't tell if he replaced Conwell for some of the games.

2004 is consistent throughout the year.

2005 had the most changes with a non black quarterback starting 3 games, TE Zachary Hilton start 6, and Steve Gleason start one game as SS.
Gleason played with Conwell and Karney so that is 9 Black offense and 8 black defense in their game against the Rams.
But with Bouman, except for Karney he only had Zachary Hilton help him one game and black TE Lamont Hill for the other 2.

But it doesn't look like they had a all black offense during the Haslett/Aaron Brooks years.

 

[Dehbashi]

I want to look at the Buddy Ryan coached teams. I feel that would be caste as hell.

 

[Dehbashi]

Time for the Eagles from 1986 to 1990 under Buddy Ryan. While the caste system started long before that, I always felt when it came to caste these teams were it. Let's see if I was correct. I will make sure to add to add the roster combinations during the season as best as I can.

1986:
Players who started the most games
Offense:
7 blacks (Only whites are QB Ron Jaworski, TE John Spagnola, LT Tom Jelesky, and C Matt Darwin.)
Defense:
9 blacks (Only whites are MLB Mike Reichenbach and FS Terry Hoage)
Kicker :White
Punter: White

I guess PFR doesn't have full roster of games going into the 80s. I wanted to see how black the Eagles could go. While Reichenbach would prevent the defense from going black, I don't know how black the offense went that years except for Jaws being replaced by Randall Cunningham. Oh well. I can still have fun getting an idea of how caste of caste these teams can be.

 

[Dehbashi]

1987:
Offense: 6 blacks (Whites are Spagnola, Darwin who shifted from C to LT, LG Adam Schreiber, C Gerry Feehery, and RT Joe Conwell.
Defense: Racial makeup is same as 86
Special Teams is the same.

1988:
Offense: 7 blacks (Only whites are Darwin, LG David Alexander, C Dave Rimington, and RT Ron Heller)
Defense: 10 blacks (Reichenbach only white starter
Kicker: Mexican
Punter: White

1989:
Offense: 6 blacks (Whites are Darwin, Alexander, Heller, LG Mike Schad, and RG Ron Solt)
Defense: All black
Special Teams the same as last year

1990:
Offense: Same as 1989 in racial makeup
Defense: 10 blacks (Only white is DT and one of the most famous caste clowns Mike Golic
Kicker: White
Punter: White

I need to make comparisons of that Era but I guess I was wrong. Defense was definitely quite a bit coal black but the o-line became completely white during that time. I guess Buddy realized to make Cunningham decent Sumos weren't going to cut it. Not bad on his part since the Eagles were usually in the top half of offenses including 3rd in 1990. Still caste but not full blown like Black Jack Del Rio and Nick Saban. Speaking of cheap shot Del Rio, I am going to have to take a look at his Blacksonville Jaguars since we know he loved his black quarterbacks slow ass Leftwich and David Gerrard.

 

[Dehbashi]

I really, really wanted to take a look at Black Jack Del Rio's days in Jacksonville. People thought that the love for black quarterbacks with the Bills in the last few years were bad. They had nothing on Black Jack. From Leftwich to Garrard to Quinn Gray to Cleo Lemon, he was so in love with them that I swear that white QB like Luke McCown had to be forced on him by ownership since he literally snapped up Ebony Jenkum Manuel and put him as the #2 QB behind Carr and probably wanted him to be the starter.

This one is going to be a doozy. I just know it.

 

[Dehbashi]

So let's take it to the beginning.

2003: 5 blacks, 2 polys (Guards Vince Manuwai and Chris Naeole), and 4 whites ( FB Marc Edward's, TE Kyle Brady, LT Mike Pearson, and C Brad Meester)
Defense: All black
Kicker: White
Punter: White

Man oh man is this a start. Black Jack already has the all black look on defense and benched Mark Burnell with a black quarterback in his first year. I'm impressed. And in Week 8, 9, 11, and 12, dropping whites to 3 starters is equally as impressive. JJ Stokes also started the first 2 games and was gone from the Jags by mid-season. So the team started plurality white and changed to majority non-white by the end of the year. Good ol Black Jack adding his flair. I can't wait to see if the Blackifying con for the rest of his tenure at Jacksonville.

 

[Don Wassall]

We used to have the detailed racial makeup of each team starting in 2004 but they were lost when CF was hacked and corrupted two different times over the years.

 

[Dehbashi]

We used to have the detailed racial makeup of each team starting in 2004 but they were lost when CF was hacked and corrupted two different times over the years.

Oh cool. For that long? I know you guys have done it in the forums for recent years but I didn't know since the beginning of your creation. I only came across your site around the last Super Bowl for the first time so I wouldn't know this. I hope what I am doing can help in different ways.

 

[Don Wassall]

Oh cool. For that long? I know you guys have done it in the forums for recent years but I didn't know since the beginning of your creation. I only came across your site around the last Super Bowl for the first time so I wouldn't know this. I hope what I am doing can help in different ways.

It's helpful, appreciate your research and the time involved.

 

[Freethinker]

I remember those Jacksonville teams under Black Jack. Always a black quarterback and an all black defense. The only Whites were on the offensive line and outliers like Matt Jones.

Jones of course was criminally misused and jerked around by the sadistic Del NegRio until he was run out of the league. His crime was being an uber athletic White man at a Caste position. The excuse the NFL used was drinking a beer on a golf course while being in the treatment program for a cocaine charge. Blacks in the NFL do things far worse and get many chances at redemption. If you’re White, 1 strike and you’re out.