James Francis Crocicchia (born February 19, 1964) is a former professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

. He was a replacement player with the

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...

in 1987. In 1988, Crocicchia played for the New York Knights of the

Arena Football League The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...

College career

Crocicchia played for the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

, leading the Quakers to three straight

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

championships in 1984-86.

Professional career

New York Giants

After going unselected in the

1987 NFL Draft The 1987 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 28–29, 1987, at the Marriot Marq ...

, Crocicchia was signed by the

during the

1987 NFL strike The National Football League Players Association, or NFLPA, is a labor union representing National Football League (NFL) players. The NFLPA, which has headquarters in Washington, D.C., is led by president J. C. Tretter and executive director DeM ...

. He started for New York in

Giants Stadium Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands or The Swamp) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and it primarily hosted sp ...

on Monday night, October 5, 1987 against the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

, making him the first ex-Penn quarterback to play in an NFL game since

Pard Pearce Walter Irving "Pard" Pearce (October 23, 1896 – May 24, 1974) was a professional American football player who played quarterback for six seasons for the Decatur Staleys, the Chicago Staleys, the Chicago Bears, the Kenosha Maroons, and the Provi ...

in the 1920s. However, Crocicchia was not effective, completing only six of fifteen passes for 89 yards and a touchdown; he was replaced with Mike Busch in the second half. The 49ers won, 41-21, and Crocicchia was cut the next day.

New York Knights

In 1988, Crocicchia played for the New York Knights of the

. As the Knights starting quarterback, Crocicchia went 111-for-238 for 1,601 yards, with 26 touchdowns and nine interceptions. (Crocicchia's favourite receiver, with 40 receptions, was Edwin Lovelady, who had played with him on the Giants.) The Knights went just 2-10 under Crocicchia, however, and when the Knights folded at the end of the season, it spelled the end of the quarterback's professional career as well.

References

External links

Pro-Football reference
1964 births Living people Players of American football from Waterbury, Connecticut American football quarterbacks Penn Quakers football players New York Giants players New York Knights (arena football) players {{quarterback-1960s-stub