Cal Football and the NFL
During the 2020-2021 NFL Playoffs, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Los Angeles Rams as
the only two current Cal starting quarterbacks in the NFL (Jared Goff and Aaron Rodgers) faced off against each other. Goff and Rodgers are two of
five Cal quarterbacks to start in the
Super Bowl (a record). The other three were
Craig Morton, Vince Ferragamo, and
Joe Kapp.
Those five Cal quarterbacks combined for six Super Bowl appearances (2 for Morton and 1 each for the others). While the five Super Bowl starting quarterbacks is
a record for a university, the six combined appearances are not a record.
That record belongs to the University
of Michigan (10), which is the university that Tom Brady attended. After Rodgers defeated Goff, he
played Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers the following week in the 2021 NFC Championship Game.
Brady won the game and then made his tenth Super Bowl appearance. He's the only University of Michigan quarterback to appear in the Super Bowl; by himself,
he lifted the University of Michigan to the first-place ranking!
Former NFL player Ron Rivera also played at Cal, but he played linebacker instead of quarterback. He won a Super Bowl ring as a member of the famous
'85 Chicago Bears defense. Rivera is now the
coach of the Washington Commanders, who won the NFC East and made the playoffs in 2020 with a 7-9 record. It was the second time that Rivera coached an
NFL playoff team with a losing record: the
'14 Carolina Panthers were the other.
Between 1982 and playoff expansion in 2021, there were three NFL playoff teams with losing records and Rivera coached the majority (2) of them. The one time Rivera was not the coach,
another Cal alum (Marshawn Lynch) had this earth-shattering run for the '10 Seattle
Seahawks (7-9). The run is considered by some football analysts to be the greatest run of all-time.
Lynch later played for the Raiders, who defeated the New York Jets in 2020 with this miraculous
touchdown reception by Henry Ruggs III. That was the third last-minute, non-overtime play to be called
"The Miracle at (or in) the Meadowlands" by the media. The
other two plays were by Cal alums/Eagles players against
the Giants (who share the same home stadium with the Jets): this fumble return touchdown by
Herm Edward in 1978 and this punt return touchdown by Desean Jackson in 2010.