One of the fan favorites on any football team historically has been the backup quarterback.

Whenever unhappiness arises with the starting signal-caller, calls for him to be benched and for the understudy to take center stage have been happening since I started watching the NFL regularly in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Jets fans wanted Richard Todd to be replaced by Matt Robinson and later by Pat Ryan, and though it sounds silly now, there were plenty of Giants fans who preferred them to go with Scott Brunner over Phil Simms after making an unexpected playoff run in 1981 while Simms was injured.

The Giants even won Super Bowl XXV with another backup QB, Jeff Hostetler, ably filling in for an injured Simms.