[ad_1]
When Doug Williams—the first Black quarterback to win a Super Bowl—saw the Kansas City Chiefs win the AFC Championship game two weeks ago, he grew emotional. “Tears didn’t come down my eyes,” Williams tells TIME. “But they were in my eyes.” Williams, who led Washington to a 42-10 Super Bowl victory over Denver in 1988, knew that for the first khbrknews in NFL history, two Black quarterbacks would be starting in the title game. Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs superstar and just the third Black quarterback in history to win the Super Bowl, after Williams and Russell Wilson in 2014, would be back for his third Super Bowl appearance in four years (his Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in 2020). Earlier on that championship Sunday, Jan. 29, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts—who’s in his third year in the NFL—propelled the Eagles past San Francisco to secure his first Super Bowl trip.
Williams, now a senior advisor to the president of the Washington Commanders, was the Super Bowl XXII MVP: he finished with 340 passing yards and four touchdown passes. The presence of two Black starting quarterbacks in the Super Bowl for the first khbrknews reminded him of past injustices faced by Black quarterbacks and gave him hope for a more equitable future. “We have been denied over the years,” says Williams from Phoenix, where he’s in town for Sunday’s big game at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. “I don’t care what anybody says, there’s one word that’s key to this whole thing, and it’s opportunity.”
That opportunity to set up behind center, to become the face of a franchise and perhaps the entire NFL, once eluded Black players. Coaches at all levels slotted Black quarterback prospects into other positions, like wide receiver or defensive back. “I think about all the rich history in this game, and to be part of such an historic event, historic moment,…
[ad_2]
