It doesn’t happen often, or ever really. The last time a team kept four quarterbacks on a roster was in 2024 with Cleveland. This year? Five teams did it simultaneously on the same cutdown day.

Keeping four quarterbacks on a roster is an interesting decision. It limits you in other areas of the roster, keeping your depth there by a thread. Each team has its reasoning, though, and looking at some of the rooms, it makes sense. But why is keeping four rare? Well, for the position of quarterback, there is only one on the field at a time. The hope for many teams is they’ll only have to roll with one the entire season, so when looking at a roster with four. That’s three roster spots not getting used in other areas.

Injuries can pile up, and depth can start being tested, so you can see why teams typically steer away from keeping more quarterbacks on the roster. Now this is just the initial 53-man roster, so things could change, but it’s still an interesting coincidence. Below, we’ll break down each team’s situation and why they decided to keep four, and try to answer why five teams made this decision.

Pittsburgh Steelers

Every team is different, but looking at the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback room, the reasoning makes sense. The team kept Aaron Rodgers, Mason Rudolph, Will Howard, and Drew Allar on its roster. This move was expected for weeks, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise for Steelers fans.

Rodgers is the starter, and Rudolph is the main backup if he goes down. Pittsburgh kept Howard and Allar for developmental reasons, as both looked promising throughout the preseason. The Steelers couldn’t waive one of them, hoping they could retain them on the practice squad, but no doubt one of them would’ve been picked up, so Pittsburgh kept all four.

With the four quarterbacks, the Steelers have three running backs and three tight ends. If either of those positions faces injuries, then the decision to keep four quarterbacks will bite them. But as of now, in August, the reasoning for keeping four makes sense.

Philadelphia Eagles

When your general manager is Howie Roseman, you don’t typically question the things he does. He’s always looking ahead and deciding which players can hold value down the line. With the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback room, that’s the hope. Value down the line.

Philadelphia kept Jalen Hurts, Andy Dalton, Tanner McKee and Cole Payton on its roster. Hurts is the clear starter, and the backup role is between McKee and Dalton. Whether it’s smart or not, Roseman hopes that either McKee or Payton will draw interest from an NFL team at some point during the season. Both are young, with McKee entering his fourth year and Payton being a rookie.

The reasoning for keeping Dalton is just to have a floor in the quarterback room. If Hurts were to go down, the team needs someone who can run an NFL offense effectively, and Dalton can enter his 16th year in the league. So, it’s a similar situation to the Steelers. The clear starter, a veteran backup, and two young promising options.

Atlanta Falcons

The Atlanta Falcons quarterback situation isn’t pretty. Honestly, the team probably didn’t want to keep four quarterbacks, but the room was underwhelming at the top, so they decided to anyway. It’s still unclear who will be the Week 1 starter between Tua Tagovailoa and Michael Penix Jr., with Tagovailoa disappointing in the preseason and Penix coming off his ACL tear.

As with the other rooms, the decision to keep Cooper Rush boils down to having a veteran in the room who can run an offense. With the two quarterbacks mentioned above having injury histories, their health isn’t guaranteed, so keeping Rush is just a fail-safe in case everything goes wrong health-wise for the Falcons.

Lastly, there is Jack Strand. The undrafted rookie free agent who’s been lighting it up in the preseason. He’s 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds, packing an NFL size and looks the part of an NFL quarterback throughout the preseason. He was the signal-caller at Minnesota State in college, and his tape from the preseason is fun to watch. The Falcons couldn’t risk letting him get on waivers because a team was likely interested. To compensate for the quarterbacks, the Falcons have two running backs on the roster.

Minnesota Vikings

“Nine” clearly didn’t have it in him. The Minnesota Vikings kept four quarterbacks on the roster in Kyler Murray, JJ McCarthy, Carson Wentz and Max Brosmer. We know the starter will be Murray, which was announced weeks ago, but the decision to keep four just speaks to how the Vikings feel about McCarthy.

No one will say it, but if they were fully confident in McCarthy being the backup, they wouldn’t feel the need to keep Wentz on the roster. The Vikings can’t cut him because he’d be too much of a financial casualty. Clearly, no one wanted to trade for him, which just makes this whole situation awkward.

The more confusing move is keeping Brosmer around. Yes, he could be off the roster by opening day, but what value does he bring to this team during the regular season? You could say that about the other young quarterbacks mentioned above, but they’ve shown more promise throughout this process and in the NFL overall.

Cleveland Browns

If the Falcons weren’t on this list, the Cleveland Browns would have the messiest quarterback room in the league. Cleveland kept Deshaun Watson, Shedeur Sanders, Dillon Gabriel and Taylen Green on its roster. Gabriel was placed on short-term injured reserve, meaning he’ll miss the first four games of the season, giving Cleveland some flexibility within its roster.

Still, this whole room is a mess. The decision to spend three draft picks on quarterbacks in the past two drafts isn’t good team building in the slightest. The Browns likely will spend another in the 2027 draft on a quarterback. Green is a raw quarterback who needs a ton of development before he takes a step on an NFL field as a starter. It makes sense to keep him around as a developmental piece.

Looking at Sanders and Watson, they should both be viewed as starters. Watson will start the season, but Sanders no doubt will take over at some point. Gabriel may have saved his job with a dominating performance in his last outing in the preseason. The reasoning to keep all four makes sense, but it’s just a mess of a room. The process to get here for the Browns is just laughable. But then again, it is the Browns, so.

Why now?

Why are teams deciding to keep four quarterbacks? It speaks to how the league is valuing the position as a whole. Yes, only one quarterback can be on the field at a time, but if that quarterback goes down, who is going to come in?

That’s why we’re seeing teams keep an Allar, a Strand, or a Wentz. If the starter goes down, there has to be somebody to come in. Whether it’s a young, promising quarterback or the savvy veteran that’s seen it all, quarterbacks are the most valuable position on a team.

We’re starting tos ee more and more teams keep three of them on a roster. Now, some teams have a better process for why they have four, like the Eagles or the Steelers. But some are genuinely forced to have four due to a lack of talent at the position, like Cleveland or Atlanta. Every team is in a different situation, but if one thing is clear, the NFL knows what position drives its team.