Foxboro Forum

JT O’Sullivan has played 4 games this season for San Francisco while completing 62% of his passes for almost 1000 yards and all this with a QB rating of 90.  JT O’Sullivan has been pretty much an unknown to most football fans except NFL Europe fans.

O’Sullivan played quarterback at UC Davis where he set a number of passing records including 96 career TD passes and 10,750 career passing yards.  He also holds the 3rd highest QB rank at a division II school - 169.3.

Completely off topic but I didn’t realize until I was reading up on JT O’Sullivan that NCAA passer ratings are different from NFL passer ratings - the NCAA version can range from -731.6 to 1261.6.  A perfect passer rating for NCAA is achieved if every pass thrown is a 99 yard touchdown and the lowest is achieved by throwing every pass for a 99 yard loss.

But anyway - back to JT O’Sullivan - after finishing his college career at UC Davis he was drafted by the New Orleans Saints as a backup in 2002.  While a member of the Saints he began playing in the NFL Europe and has been regarded as one of the leagues best players of the years.  In the six years since being drafter by the Saints he has been a member of 9 teams - including the New England Patriots (2006 off season).  Up until this year he had played in a total of 5 games and thrown 1 TD and 2 interceptions.  O’Sullivan played the majority of these games for the Detroit Lions while Mike Martz was the offensive coordinator.  Not long after Martz was signed on as the 49ers offensive coordinator the niners signed JT O’Sullivan to a 1 year contract.

So far this year the relationship has worked out.  Mike Martz has always been known as an offensive coordinator who emphasized the pass and JT O’Sullivan has been able to build on that.  While in college and Europe O’Sullivan was known as a QB with great arm strength and accuracy.  Now that he’s able to get consistent playing time with a coordinator who can help build on his abilities he’s shown he might have something to offer the NFL.