Date(s) April 26–27, 1983 Most selections (19) New England Patriots | TV coverage (US) ESPN | |
Location New York Sheraton Hotel
in New York City, NY First selection John Elway, QB
Baltimore Colts Mr. Irrelevant John Tuggle, RB
New York Giants | ||
The 1983 NFL Draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. It is officially known as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting. The draft was held April 26–27, 1983, at the New York Sheraton Hotel in New York City, New York. No teams elected to claim any players in the supplemental draft that year.
This year's draft is frequently referred to as the draft with the quarterback class of 1983, because six quarterbacks were taken in the first round, an unusually high number. Of these quarterbacks, four played in the Super Bowl, four were selected to play in the Pro Bowl, and three have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The next highest number of quarterbacks taken in the first round is the five taken in the 1999 NFL draft. All six quarterbacks were drafted by American Football Conference (AFC) teams, with every member of the five-team AFC East (the Colts, Dolphins, Bills, Jets and Patriots) selecting a quarterback. In eleven of the sixteen years following this draft, the AFC was represented in the Super Bowl by a team led by one of these quarterbacks: the Denver Broncos by John Elway (five times), the Buffalo Bills by Jim Kelly (four times), the Miami Dolphins by Dan Marino (once), or the New England Patriots by Tony Eason (once).
They met with little success in the Super Bowl, however, compiling a 2–9 record among them, with an 0–9 record for their first 14 years in the league. The only two wins were by Elway in his final two seasons, during Super Bowls XXXII and XXXIII in 1998 and 1999. Three of the most lopsided Super Bowl losses in history came at the hands of quarterbacks from the Class of '83: Elway, a 55–10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XXIV; Eason, a 46–10 loss to the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XX; and Kelly, a 52–17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XXVII. Marino, who had a successful overall career, would only reach the Super Bowl one time, a 38–16 loss to San Francisco in Super Bowl XIX, following the end of Marino's second season. Two of them, Todd Blackledge and Ken O'Brien, never reached the Super Bowl. Kelly and the Bills would appear in the Super Bowl for four consecutive years, from 1990 to 1993, and would lose all four.
Of the six first round quarterbacks drafted, two did not sign with the teams that selected them for the 1983 season. First overall pick Elway, who had made his antipathy towards the Colts known long before the draft, was also a promising baseball player in the New York Yankees organization. With Yankees owner George Steinbrenner aggressively pursuing a commitment from Elway to play baseball full-time, Elway and his agent, Marvin Demoff, successfully leveraged the threat of Elway abandoning football altogether to compel the Colts to trade Elway to the Broncos a few days after the draft.
The other holdout, Jim Kelly, missed the entire 1983 season and instead signed with the Houston Gamblers of the United States Football League, where he led the springtime circuit in passing in both 1984 and 1985. Kelly was set to play for the New Jersey Generals, owned by Donald Trump, when the USFL planned to switch to a fall season in 1986, but when the USFL won only $1 (trebeled to $3) from its antitrust lawsuit vs. the NFL on July 29, 1986, Kelly finally signed with the Bills three weeks later.
A total of six players drafted in the first round have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame (seven total have been inducted to date). Each round of this draft also contained at least one player who was later selected to play in the Pro Bowl. Bleacher Report named the 1983 draft class as the "greatest of all time".