Testaverde Scores!

Close your eyes for a second and go back to 1996.

The Ravens are brand new. The wounds from Cleveland are still fresh — for them and for us, because Lord knows Baltimore understood what it meant to lose a team in the middle of the night. Memorial Stadium is creaking back to life on 33rd Street, the uniforms still smell like the box they came in, and there’s a strong-armed Italian kid from Long Island under center wearing purple and black with odd looking numbers.

Vinny. Testaverde.

The first starting quarterback in franchise history. And on September 1, 1996, against the Raiders, with 64,000-plus packed into Memorial Stadium and John Unitas himself on hand for the festivities, it was Vinny who tucked the ball and rumbled nine yards up the middle for the first touchdown this team ever scored. Not a handoff. Not a screen pass. The quarterback himself, all 6-foot-5, 235 pounds of him, delivering the first six points in Ravens history in a 19-14 win. Football was back in Baltimore, and Vinny carried it across the goal line personally.

Happy Birthday Vinny Testaverde
Vinny scored the first touchdown (9 yard rush) in #Ravens history#RavensFlock pic.twitter.com/IHdLQ9iruw

— Old Time Football (@Ol_TimeFootball) November 13, 2024

The Season Nobody Saw Coming

Here’s the thing about that 1996 team — they were 4-12, and if you only look at the record you miss the story entirely. Because Vinny Testaverde, the guy who’d spent six years in Tampa as a punchline, the guy who led the league in interceptions twice as a Buccaneer, put together the best season of his life in a Ravens uniform.

The numbers, straight from Pro Football Reference: 4,177 passing yards. 33 touchdown passes. Both career highs. Both franchise records that stood for over two decades — the touchdown mark survived until a fella named Lamar Jackson threw 36 in his MVP season of 2019, and it took an MVP to do it. Vinny completed 59.2 percent of his throws, posted an 88.7 passer rating, and earned the first Pro Bowl nod of his career — the first Pro Bowl selection in Ravens history, period.

He was slinging it to Michael Jackson, Derrick Alexander and a rookie return man named Jermaine Lewis, running Ted Marchibroda‘s three-wide sets with the freedom to change the play at the line whenever he saw fit. And when he saw fit, good things happened. The signature afternoon came against the Rams at Memorial Stadium: 31-of-51, 429 yards, three touchdowns, capped by a 22-yard game-winner to Michael Jackson in overtime for a 37-31 win. Thirty years later, that 429 still sits among the biggest single-game passing days this franchise has ever seen.

The defense was a sieve that season — that’s how you go 4-12 with an offense like that — but Vinny gave a city starving for football something to cheer about every single Sunday. The team the town and the starting quarterback were all on a “honeymoon”. The record didn’t matter that much. Not yet.

The Ending, Because There’s Always an Ending

The 1997 season wasn’t as kind. Vinny threw 18 touchdowns against 15 picks, got dinged up, and watched young Eric Zeier win over the crowd in relief. The Ravens brought in Jim Harbaugh, and on June 2, 1998, they released Testaverde. He wasn’t thrilled with how it went down, and honestly, you can’t blame him. All he did after leaving was go 12-1 as a starter for the Jets in 1998 and take them to the AFC Championship Game. That one stung a bit. Remember?

But time heals. Vinny has called his two years in Baltimore some of the best of his career, and he’s talked over the years about that first training camp in Westminster — guys flying around full speed during a walk-through because they were that jacked up to play for a city that wanted them that badly. He still has the helmet with the original Ravens logo.

Where’s Vinny Been?

He finally hung ’em up after the 2007 season — 21 years, seven teams, and 46,233 passing yards later, sixth-most in NFL history at the time he walked away, with 275 touchdown passes and a TD thrown in 21 consecutive seasons, a record built on pure stubborn longevity.

Vinny settled down in Tampa with his wife Mitzi and their three kids, and unlike a lot of former signal-callers who chase the spotlight into a broadcast booth, he took a different route. He became an investor — got in on some restaurant deals with big companies, the kind of moves that let a man stay retired and like it. His words, more or less: he’s pretty much stayed retired, and it’s suited him just fine. These days you’re more likely to find him worrying about his golf swing than a two-minute drill.

But you can’t take the football out of the man. For years, Vinny poured himself into his son’s career. Vincent Jr. — born, if you can believe it, during that first Ravens training camp in the summer of ’96 — slung it at SUNY Albany, caught on with the Buccaneers as an undrafted free agent in 2019, and even took some snaps for the XFL’s Tampa Bay Vipers. Dad was there every step of the way, preaching the gospel he learned over two decades in the league: trust your ability, trust what you see, don’t hesitate. Vinny’s also spent time coaching quarterbacks at a school down in Tampa, passing the torch one drop-back at a time.

And the man gives back. He’s been active with the Children’s Cancer Center of Tampa for years — quietly, without fanfare, the way he did most things.

The honors keep rolling in, too. College Football Hall of Fame, class of 2013. And just last September, the University of Miami announced a $1.81 million gift that’ll put a life-sized statue of Vinny — alongside fellow Heisman winner Gino Torretta — outside the Schwartz Center on campus. Bronze immortality for The U’s favorite sons.

Not bad for the guy who delivered the first Ravens touchdown but run out of town two seasons later.

The franchise has come a long way since that September afternoon at Memorial Stadium — two Lombardi Trophies, an MVP quarterback, a stadium Vinny never got to call home. But every story has a first chapter, and the Ravens’ starts with No. 12 keeping it himself from nine yards out.

Wherever the Ravens go from here, that piece of history belongs to Vinny forever.

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