The NFL Is Running Out of Quarterbacks

LONDON — Four weeks into the NFL season, a seventh-round rookie nicknamed "The Greek Rifle" is starting games in London. That sentence should tell you everything about where the 2026 season has gone. Athan Kaliakmanis — the 223rd pick of the draft, a Rutgers transfer who began September holding a clipboard — jogged onto the field at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday in the first quarter, because the Washington Commanders had run out of quarterbacks. Again.

He is not an outlier. He is the trend. After Sunday's games, three NFL teams have drilled down to their third-string quarterback, and seven quarterbacks who weren't in their teams' Week 1 lineups have started games this season, according to USA Today's Nate Davis in his Week 4 takeaways column. The 2026 season isn't a quarterback competition anymore. It's a quarterback survival test — and the teams still standing are the ones learning to win with whoever's left.

Washington is the crisis in miniature. Jayden Daniels dislocated his left, non-throwing elbow on the final play of the first half of a Week 2 loss at Dallas — the second dislocation of the same elbow in ten months. Marcus Mariota, the veteran backup, steadied the ship with a 33-31 upset of the defending-champion Seahawks in Week 3, throwing for 183 yards and three touchdowns. Then, on the second drive in London, the pocket collapsed and Laiatu Latu and Adetomiwa Adebawore buried him on a third-down sack. Mariota stayed down a beat too long. The diagnosis: an MCL injury to his right knee — the same knee he sprained in the preseason. He was ruled out for the second half, and the season, suddenly, belonged to the rookie.

Kaliakmanis did what rookies thrown into the fire do — flashed and flailed in equal measure. He finished 15-of-33 for 186 yards with a touchdown and an interception, uncorked completions of 48 and 47 yards, and had an 87-yard touchdown called back by penalty. His scoring throw found Treylon Burks. Afterward, via ESPN's John Keim, the kid was honest about it: "I've got to be better." The Colts won 30-13 behind two Jonathan Taylor rushing touchdowns, and Washington fell to 1-3 with its top two quarterbacks in the training room and tight end Colson Yankoff as the emergency quarterback. That's how thin the room is. Our full account of Washington's London nightmare is here.

If Washington is the nightmare, Chicago is the fever dream. The Bears lost Caleb Williams to a Grade 2 hamstring strain, lost Tyson Bagent to a concussion — and turned to 38-year-old Case Keenum, making his first start since December 2023. All Keenum did was go 24-of-34 for 247 yards with two passing touchdowns and a rushing score in a 27-7 Monday night demolition of the Eagles, becoming just the second quarterback ever, alongside Ryan Fitzpatrick, to win starts for seven different franchises. A week later, Bagent returned to beat the Jets 23-12 behind 146 rushing yards and two touchdowns from Kyle Monangai. The Bears are 3-1 — 2-0 without their franchise quarterback — and Williams, per Ian Rapoport's reporting, is still weeks away. Some teams lose their quarterback and collapse. Chicago lost two of them and got better.

Atlanta lived the disaster version. With Michael Penix Jr. still working back from a partially torn ACL suffered last November and Tua Tagovailoa sidelined by an oblique injury days before the opener, third-stringer Cooper Rush started the first two weeks — and it went as badly as it could go. Rush posted the league's worst QBR in both weeks (3.0 and 6.2), threw four interceptions against one touchdown, and got benched in the third quarter of a 34-3 home humiliation by Carolina for undrafted rookie Jack Strand, who threw a pick-six on his very first career pass. The Falcons scored 16 points in two games. Then Penix came back. On Thursday night at Lambeau Field, he threw for 256 yards in a 35-14 rout of the Packers, and a crisis became a comeback — at least until Monday night's visit from the Saints decides what this team really is.

Tampa Bay got no such rescue. Baker Mayfield dislocated the thumb on his throwing hand late in a Week 3 loss to Minnesota — his hand struck linebacker Blake Cashman's on a fourth-down heave that Andrew Van Ginkel intercepted — and the minimum three-week absence ends a 57-game consecutive-start streak, the first missed game of his Buccaneers career. In his place: Jalon Daniels, an undrafted rookie out of Kansas who signed for a $25,000 bonus. Daniels went 19-of-27 for 148 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions in a 17-14 home loss to the Packers, and he'll start again Thursday night at Dallas. The Bucs are 0-4, and their season is coming apart at the exact position they could least afford to lose.

The carnage stretches beyond the third-string club. The Giants lost Jaxson Dart for the season — meniscus, MCL and PCL damage from a knee hit in Week 3 — and turned to Jameis Winston. "The season's not over but it is for him," head coach John Harbaugh said, via Reuters. The defending-champion Seahawks lost Sam Darnold to a glute injury on the fifth snap of the opener and rode Drew Lock for two weeks. The Vikings lost Kyler Murray to a concussion in Week 1 and won anyway behind Carson Wentz — they're 4-0. Jalen Hurts briefly left a Monday night game for a concussion check. Lamar Jackson landed on the Week 4 injury report with a back issue. This is four weeks. Four.

And then there's the winless class. Five teams are 0-4 — the Chargers, Titans, Dolphins, Texans and Buccaneers — and as Davis noted in the same USA Today column, only the 1992 Chargers have ever reached the playoffs after such a start. Small mercy for two of them: Tennessee hosts Houston next week, so somebody's getting a win.

Four weeks in, the 2026 season has a defining image, and it's not a trophy. It's a third-stringer jogging onto the field in a foreign country. It's a 38-year-old winning for his seventh franchise. It's an undrafted kid from Kansas starting on Thursday night. The teams that survive this won't be the ones with the best quarterbacks. They'll be the ones who still have one. And right now, across the NFL, that's no sure thing for anybody.