The NFL consists of 53-man rosters. But, fair or not, the credit for a Super Bowl-winning team always seems to go to the superstars – especially the quarterbacks.
Then again, it’s hard to keep track of all 53 names on one specific team. How many people can really fire off the names of all these backups?
Despite the lack of recognition, though, being a backup isn’t a half-bad job. You make good money to simply watch from the sidelines. And if you’re in the right place at the right time, you can get yourself a Super Bowl ring without having to contribute much of anything.
Here are 10 active NFL players you probably didn’t know own a Super Bowl ring.
Tyrod Taylor
The veteran journeyman quarterback has been around for a decade now. He was the Buffalo Bills’ starter for three years, even earning a Pro Bowl nod in 2015.
Then he went on to have brief stints with the Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Chargers, Houston Texans And New York Giants. Taylor is just one of those guys that’s good enough to be a short-term starting solution for any QB-needy team.
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It’s also easy to overlook the fact that the guy has more Super Bowl rings than Matt Ryan, Derek Carr, Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Kyler Murray combined.
That’s right. Taylor is a Super Bowl champion, having won a ring with the Baltimore Ravens in the 2012 season. He backed up Joe Flacco and made several appearances in garbage time, completing 17 of 29 pass attempts for 179 yards.
Taylor didn’t play at all during the Ravens’ unlikely run to Super Bowl 47, as Flacco had one of the best playoff runs ever, en route to winning Big Game MVP honors.
In the end, Taylor got to hold a clipboard and take home a priceless championship ring anyway. Kinda makes you feel less sad about all the times he’s lost his starting job due to injury over his career.
Jimmy Garoppolo
“Jimmy G” has been widely criticized as a QB who “can’t win the big one.” Well, joke’s on you, haters! The man owns not one, but two Super Bowl championship rings!
It feels like a lifetime ago, but this man was once a New England Patriot. Bill Belichick saw Garoppolo as the successor to Tom Brady. Of course, the GOAT refused to give into father time and kept playing well into his 40s.
Garoppolo won a Super Bowl 49 ring in his rookie season, having watched Malcolm Butler intercept Russell Wilson at the goal line to seal the deal. Sure, Jimmy didn’t have to do a whole lot in his rookie year, but he did play a much bigger role in the next Super Bowl championship season.
Garoppolo started the Patriots’ first two games in 2016, as Brady was serving a four-game suspension for his alleged involvement in Deflategate.
The Patriots won both of those games and ran through the league with a 14-and-2 record. They then bulldozed through the AFC and pulled off the historic comeback against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl 51, winning in overtime.
Two rings as a backup? That’s more than Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes have! …Even if he didn’t have to do much to earn them.
Rasul Douglas
The West Virginia product wasn’t exactly a household name until 2021. The Green Bay Packers were hit hard by injuries in the secondary and plucked him off the Arizona Cardinals’ practice squad in October.
Before joining the Bills, Douglas played for the Packers. He was on the Texans’, Cardinals’ and Las Vegas Raiders’ practice squads without actually playing a game for them.
So anyway, here’s your trivia question: Who did Douglas win a Super Bowl ring with?
Unless you’re a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles, you probably don’t know the answer. We ain’t blaming you.
Yes, Douglas was on the 2017 Eagles’ Super Bowl 52 championship team. He made five starts in the regular season and saw very limited action over the Eagles’ three playoff games.
Needless to say, it was wise of the Cheeseheads to pick up a veteran with championship experience like Douglas for their defense. He turned out to be one of the top mid-season additions in recent memory, recording a career-high five interceptions in just 12 games.
Michael Schofield
The former Denver Broncos’ offensive tackle has bounced around from team to team since entering the league in 2014.
Schofield, the husband of American ice hockey star Kendall Coyne Schofield, signed on for a second stint with the Los Angeles Chargers in 2021. You’d probably have to be a diehard Broncos fan, though, to recall that this guy won a Super Bowl 50 ring with Denver back in the 2015 season.
The Broncos offense was in shambles for large portions of the season as injuries caught up to Peyton Manning. Schofield and the Denver o-line were a weak link throughout the entire season.
But Manning, Schofield and the rest of the Broncos got that Super Bowl ring thanks largely to Von Miller and the No Fly Zone-led defense that annihilated Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady and Cam Newton in the postseason.
Schofield is that guy whose name just keeps popping up. “Oh yeah, him…he’s on team X now.”
He hasn’t been a star by any means, but who cares? The man is a Super Bowl champion, and that cannot be taken away from him!
Chance Warmack
As an NFLer, the veteran guard hasn’t reached the same level of dominance that we saw at Alabama, where Warmack won three national championships.
Nonetheless, Warmack remains a notable name because of his incredible run with the Crimson Tide. He was drafted 10th overall by the Tennessee Titans in 2013, but of course, Warmack never really lived up to expectations in the Music City.
While Titans supporters– and general NFL fans for that matter – remember Warmack as a bust…we’re here to inform you that the guy still claimed football’s ultimate prize!
That’s right. Warmack was a backup on the aforementioned 2017 Philadelphia Eagles. He only made three starts that year and saw very few snaps in the postseason, but hey, a ring’s a ring.
Warmack was never going to win a starting job on that deep o-line led by Jason Kelce, Brandon Brooks and Lane Johnson. But hey, being a draft bust ain’t so bad if you pick up a ring along the way!
Mychal Kendricks
The former California standout has crafted a solid career as a linebacker. After playing six years with the Eagles, Kendricks had a solid two-year stint in Seattle before joining Washington in 2020.
Kendricks, who won the 2011 Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year award, never quite developed into a Pro Bowl-level player. But as far as journeyman defensive players go, he’s been pretty pretty pretty good! (Larry David GIF!)
Did you happen to know that, prior to all the insider trading stuff that landed him a day in jail and three years of probation, Kendricks was also on the Eagles’ Super Bowl 52 championship team? Kendricks started in all three of Philly’s playoff games, recording 16 tackles and one pass defense.
Kendricks and the Eagles’ defense didn’t exactly stifle Tom Brady in the big game. But Derek Barnett’s late strip-sack on the GOAT was the lone play the defense needed to make to essentially ice the game. Kendricks, in his final season with the Eagles, became a Super Bowl champion.
A perfect end to his tenure in the City of Brotherly Love!
Cameron Erving
Like the aforementioned Chance Warmack, Erving was a superstar in college and a highly-touted prospect entering his draft year.
Also like Chance Warmack, Erving was a first-round pick who never lived up to expectations…but won a Super Bowl anyway.
The Florida State sensation played a key role in the Seminoles’ 2014 National Championship-winning season. He earned First-team All-American honors in 2013 as well as First-team All-ACC nods in 2013 and 2014.
The Cleveland Browns drafted Erving 19th overall in 2015, pairing him with future Hall of Famer Joe Thomas. Just like that, the hapless Browns seemingly had a dynamic 1-2 punch at offensive tackle to build around. But it simply didn’t pan out as hoped…
The Browns traded Erving to the Kansas City Chiefs ahead of the 2019 season. He started just four games that year but saw the number increase to 13 in Patrick Mahomes’ 2018 MVP season.
Erving made eight starts for KC in 2019, though he was rarely used in the postseason. Nonetheless, the Chiefs won Super Bowl 54 over the 49ers, by a score of 31-20.
And with that, Erving was now a Super Bowl champion!
He played for the Dallas Cowboys in 2020 and earned a two-year contract from the Carolina Panthers in 2021. Even if he never grows into a star, Erving can at least be at peace now knowing he’s a Super Bowl champion forever.
Braxton Berrios
The little-known Berrios turned some heads late in the 2021 season for the New York Jets. Gang Green started featuring the crafty wideout more in their offense over the final weeks, and this included a two-touchdown outing against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
With elite speed, explosiveness and creative route-running skills, Berrios flashed his potential as a special gadget weapon.
But uhh…what if we told you folks that Berrios is a Super Bowl champion? It’s another fun trivia question: Can you guess which team he won it with?
Yes, the Jets’ arch-rivals, the New England Patriots. You see, the Pats drafted Berrios with the 210th selection – a compensatory pick by the way – in 2018. But Berrios was put on the IR before Week 1 and never made it to the field.
Although Berrios didn’t play all season, he was on the roster and thus eligible for a championship ring. The Patriots would waive him ahead of the 2019 season, and the Jets quickly scooped him up.
If you’re Berrios? On one hand, it sucked that he never got the opportunity to contribute on the field during New England’s run to their sixth Super Bowl championship – the last of the Tom Brady era. But hey, a ring is a ring. And at least he found a starting opportunity with the Jets afterwards.
Blaine Gabbert
Most NFL fans are going to remember Blaine Gabbert as a big-time draft bust for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Duval County desperately needed a QB, so they made a play for the Missouri product and took him 10th overall in 2011.
The next pick, by the way, was JJ Watt to the AFC South rival Houston Texans. Big yikes!
After three awful seasons in Jacksonville that saw him go 5-and-22 as a starter, Gabbert embarked on a career as a journeyman backup. He made three starts for the San Francisco 49ers over three seasons before making stops in Arizona, Tennessee and Tampa Bay.
The well-traveled road paid off in 2020, of course, when Gabbert got to watch Tom Brady lead the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl 55 championship over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Because the explosive Tampa offense was often creaming teams during Brady’s two years there, Gabbert got to see a good amount of garbage time, too.
He sure picked the right time to join Tampa…
Trevor Siemian
Following Peyton Manning’s 2016 retirement and Brock Osweiler’s move to Houston, the defending champion Broncos named Siemian their starter for 2016, as they looked to defend their title.
So yeah, every Bronco fan knows who Siemian is. He actually played well for large portions of the season, winning eight of 14 starts. But Siemian regressed in 2017, and Denver played a game of musical chairs at quarterback with him, the Brock-ness Monster and Paxton Lynch.
Siemian was inactive for Super Bowl 50 against the Carolina Panthers, but he got to take home a championship ring anyway. Not bad for a rookie who was drafted in the seventh round….as a compensatory selection no less!
Siemian was an afterthought from 2018 to 2020 until finally getting his place back in the spotlight in 2021. Jameis Winston tore his ACL in the Saints’ Week 8 home game against Tom Brady’s Buccaneers, forcing Siemian to take over.
Well, Siemian pieced together an incredible performance and led New Orleans to a stunning 36-27 victory over the defending champs. With Winston out for the season, Siemian would make four starts, before Taysom Hill finished the year as the main starter.
At this rate, it’s clear that the journeyman is never going to be a long-term starter. But like the aforementioned Tyrod Taylor, he’s serviceable enough as a backup. And who cares how he fares the rest of the way? Siemian already has himself a championship ring – which is why you play the game! Am I right?
What other active NFL players surprisingly have a Super Bowl ring?
