Athletes - Marc Wilson

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	Athletes - Marc Wilson

Marc Wilson (born 1957 in Seattle, Washington) was an American football quarterback who played in the National Football League for the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders and New England Patriots.

Wilson made his greatest mark playing his college football for Brigham Young University, where he was one of the first of LaVell Edwards' great quarterbacks. In the system Edwards put in place, the quarterback was given a chance to pass nearly every play, and almost always had five wide receivers to work with. Adopted after Stanford University won two consecutive Rose Bowls with a passing offense, the BYU system placed a quarterback in the top eight of the Heisman Trophy voting every year from 1979 to 1991.

Marc first got a chance to start in the fifth game of the 1977 season, replacing All-American Gifford Nielsen, who had gone down after four contests with an injury. During that 1977 season, his sophomore year, he threw for seven touchdown passes in one game against Colorado State University, his first start. After that, he started most of BYU's games over the next two-and-a-half seasons, racking up a 22-4 record, though he did yield a few starts to budding star Jim McMahon. In 1979, he threw 250 completions for 3,720 yards and 29 touchdown passes, becoming the school's first consensus All-American. Highlights of his 1979 season included leading the team to an undefeated regular season and a victory in the Holiday Bowl (complete with a game MVP trophy). He finished fourth in the nation in passing efficiency, third in the Heisman voting, and was named the Senior Bowl MVP. Wilson's success paved the way for McMahon, Steve Young, Robbie Bosco, Ty Detmer, and other BYU quarterbacks, all of whom had similar performances in Edwards' system.

In the 1980 NFL Draft, Wilson was selected by the Oakland Raiders. Though the team played in and won the Super Bowl in both the 1980 and 1983 seasons, Wilson was too young to start for the first game, and injured for the second, so backup Jim Plunkett led the Raiders to victory both times. He never ranked among the top quarterbacks in the NFL, and bowed out after two unproductive seasons with the New England Patriots, the latter being an embarrassing 1-15 year that counted among the worst team seasons in NFL history, a far cry from his days at BYU, when going undefeated was not uncommon at all.

Trivia

Marc is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Brigham Young University Football Hall of Fame.
During his time at BYU, he broke 9 NCAA records during his career and tied two others.
In 1979, he won the Sammy Baugh
Trophy as College Passer of the Year.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Marc Wilson ]

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