Longtime commenter Jason Winter has chimed in with today’s guest post. Jason is a part-time video game journalist and full-time sports fan. You can read more of him at his blog: https://jasonwinter.wordpress.com/, and follow him on twitter at @winterinformal.

As always, we thank Jason for contributing.

A couple months ago, Ryan Lindley had a historically bad postseason game. If he’d thrown just seven more passes in the regular season, he would have made history in another way, too.

Lindley threw 93 passes last season, while recording precisely zero rushes. There was nary a scramble, quarterback sneak, or even a kneeldown on his record for the 2014 season. At 6’3”, 229 lbs., he hardly seems the scrambling type, but he was also only 25 and was, shall we say, far from the best passer in the league. You’d think he might have resorted to using his legs at least once.

Lindley’s 93 passes gives him the second-most passes in a season for a player who recorded zero rushes. The record-holder is a somewhat better-known name: the recently deceased Earl Morrall, who recorded 99 pass attempts with the Colts in 1969 without a carry. On the one hand, Morrall was 10 years older than Lindley, though he was a fairly effective and semi-regular runner throughout his career, averaging 3.7 yards on 235 rushes in 255 career games. Lindley has thus far totaled seven yards on four carries, all coming in 2012.

Here’s a list of every quarterback who threw at least 25 passes in a season while rushing zero times:

There probably aren’t any surprising names on that list; it’s mostly a who’s who of less-than-mobile backup QBs, the types you’d expect to get few enough attempts in any given season to make this list. After all, if Lindley had thrown another seven passes, to get to 100 and pass Morrall, he might have also recorded a rushing attempt. If he’d thrown 107 more (Cardinals fans are having heart palpitations at the thought), it’s a near-certainty.

Age isn’t quite as much of a factor, though, it seems. Nearly half (25 of the 51) of the QBs on the list were in their age 27 or younger seasons. The oldest entry on the list is our man Morrall again, who had 26 pass attempts with nary a carry in his final season, aged 42. The immortal Johnny Unitas is the second-oldest entrant, with 76 passes in his age-40 season in 1973.

Of another note is former Cardinals quarterback John Navarre, who appears on the list twice for his two seasons in the league (2004-05). Those were his only two seasons in the NFL and Navarre is, in fact, the career leader in pass attempts without a rush, with 64, a fair distance ahead of Mike Busch ^[1]Oddly, another Mike Busch was a replacement player in baseball and was actually the first player from the 1994 strike to be promoted to a Major League team., a replacement player for the Giants in 1987, with 47. The active leader, with all of nine pass attempts, is Logan Thomas, Lindley’s teammate in Arizona. Is the grass in Glendale especially sticky?

For his career, Lindley has 264 pass attempts versus four rushes, a ratio of 66:1. Only two other quarterbacks with 200 or more career attempts have even a 50:1 ratio. ^[2]If you ignore the 200-pass attempt qualification, the #4 quarterback on the list, Joe Gasparella, had a cup of coffee with the Cardinals in 1951. #5 is Max Hall, who played his entire two-year career … Continue reading There’s the mostly anonymous John McCormick, who played for Minnesota and Denver in the 1960s and threw the ball 555 times, while carrying it just 10 times, a 55.5:1 ratio.

The other quarterback on the list is slightly better-known: Joe Namath.

Namath passed 3,762 times and ran just 71 times, a ratio of almost exactly 53:1. Given his balky knees, his lack of running should come as little surprise. Among quarterbacks with at least 1,500 career pass attempts, the only other players with at least a 30:1 ratio are Frank Tripucka ^[3]According to this article, the Broncos were “phasing out” Tripucka in 1963 for… John McCormick. (1,745 passes versus 43 rushes, a 40.6:1 ratio), Ken Stabler (3,793 to 118, 32.1:1), and Jim Hart (5,076 to 159, 31.9:1 – hey, what team did he mostly play for?). In case you’re wondering, Earl Morrall’s ratio was a nondescript 11.4:1, despite his two non-rushing seasons.

Ryan Lindley might be the active title-holder, but I think it’s safe to anoint Broadway Joe as the most immobile quarterback of all time. They could make his legs look good, but they just didn’t work very well.

At least he never played for the Cardinals.