Last month, NBC sportscaster Maria Taylor made history as the first Black woman to host the Super Bowl pregame show and hand out the Lombardi trophy after the game. Taylor shared the celebration stage with Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald, a fellow alum of both the University of Georgia, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in broadcast news and an MBA, and Centennial High School.
“I still almost can’t put it into words, but I knew going into it that it was about history or breaking down another barrier and being present enough in the moment to do the job well, but also to absorb that fact,” Taylor tells Variety.
When less than 20% of sports broadcasters are women, it was monumental to see Taylor in that featured role on a global stage, but she was focused on the women who came before her, like Lesley Visser, Pam Oliver and Robin Roberts.
“Lesley Visser texted me before the ceremony, and said, ‘Girl, you’re going to do great. I’m excited that it’s going to be you up there,’” Taylor says. “I’ve just had so much support from the women that I grew up idolizing. So, hearing from them means a lot to me.”
After all, it was their perseverance that cleared Taylor’s path. “I don’t know everything, but I know that it wasn’t easy,” she says of the trials those reporters pushed through. “Because they did that, I have a way to move forward, and I’m just trying to make it so the next person’s way is even easier than mine was.”
Then there’s the coincidence of sharing the moment with Macdonald. “I call those ‘God winks,’” she says.
“When there’s something you couldn’t have imagined as the cherry on top of whatever is going on, because it tells you you’re on the right path. Like the guy I went to high school standing up there on stage with me, we just looked at each other like, ‘Can you believe we’re here right now?’ I wouldn’t have wanted to share the stage with anyone else, to be honest.”
In all, February was a big month for the NBC Sports star. A few days before the Super Bowl, Taylor celebrated the launch of the Peacock docuseries “Field Generals: History of the Black Quarterback,” her first project as an executive producer.
The four-episode series, which is now streaming, assembles an array of quarterbacks — from early pioneers like Randall Cunningham, James “Shack” Harris, Doug Williams, Warren Moon, Chuck Ealey and Rodney Peete to modern-era players like Donovan McNabb, Cam Newton, Lamar Jackson, Tyrod Taylor and Michael Vick.
The series covers the athletes’ trials — from being passed over in the NFL draft and, instead, playing in the Canadian league to being asked to play another position because “Black players don’t have the intellectual capacity to play quarterback,” as well as racist attacks from fans — and their triumphs — like winning the Super Bowl and getting enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Beyond that, “Field Generals” puts their on-field heroics in context with the larger sociopolitical events of their time and proves that, despite the discrimination they faced, these Black men’s extraordinary talent changed professional football forever.
“I tell them all the time: three people could watch it, and we’ve done our job,” she says. “I’m trying to create an encyclopedia of knowledge about the men who are the forefathers of the football that we see now that don’t always get the credit that they deserve for changing the game in the way that they did.”
It wasn’t by design that the docuseries would dovetail with Taylor’s own history-making moment, but the parallels are indisputable: Taylor is just as much of a pioneer as those she’s spotlighting. Full disclosure, I was a student at UGA at the same time, so I’ve witnessed Taylor’s career from her start on the Georgia Bulldogs sidelines to prominent positions as host and reporter at SEC Network and ESPN before NBC struck gold by hiring her just in time for the Olympic Games in 2021.
Speaking of the Olympics — immediately after the Super Bowl, Taylor hopped on a red-eye flight from California to New York to pick up her son, Roman, and her mother, on the way to Milan, Italy, where she’d host NBC’s “Olympic Late Night” show barely 48 hours later.
It’s 8:30 pm in Milan when Taylor logs on to Zoom with me, following shoots with Summer Olympics legend, gymnast Simone Biles, and newly minted Olympic gold medalist, bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor. After our chat, around midnight her time, she’ll go back to the studio to host the next episode.
“From the Super Bowl to being at the Winter Olympics to the documentary showing up in the same month, all the stars are aligning at the same time,” Taylor says. “I don’t know why, but it means something.”
Read on as Taylor explains how she recruited this special group of “Field Generals,” the future of the docuseries and what she realized about her own journey along the way.
Where did the idea for “Field Generals” come from?
I’ve always been interested in the “first and only” stories, because I find myself in those spaces. And one of the ones that stands out to me, because of what it’s done for football, is the Black quarterback. In a lot of ways, they’ve transcended some of the rules and parameters that were put around the position to turn it into what we know and love about football now: You have to be fast, multi-dimensional and able to run and to throw. All of these things were not considered a good thing when they first came out, but it was innate to the type of quarterback that they wanted to be. Had they not persevered and had we not had a Doug Williams or a Randall Cunningham and all these guys that came along the way, then we don’t have Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes.
So, when I set out to tell the story, I wanted to show that sports are a microcosm of society at large, and the stories that we tell on the field actually add up to what we’re seeing in real life. How do we do that? The best way is through the player’s voice. I wanted to do very in-depth sit-downs, but I didn’t want to be on camera. I just want you to hear their story. I want them to say it out loud from their viewpoint, the way that they lived it. This is their life. What can we learn and take away from it?
Whose story did you explore first?
The first two people that I sat down with were Doug Williams and Shack Harris at Grambling State in Louisiana. It was important go to a place that’s important to them. [Coach] Eddie Robinson is who they do it for; he means everything to them. So, let’s go to the birthplace of the dream. It was important to pull footage from there and make sure we’re also telling the history of HBCUs and what they meant.
Sitting down with Doug and hearing him say, “The Grand Duke of the KKK lived around the corner and I walked past his house,” to being the first Black quarterback to win the Super Bowl and “throwing snot” in the tunnel with Eddie Robinson, is what that journey is all about. In spite of everything that could have been thrown at him and everything that could have possibly held him down, here we are.
We filmed Shack at Grambling, but we also went back to his house after we had shot everything and showed him video of [all the other quarterbacks] thanking him for what he did. He’s never heard anyone say that, because sometimes when you’re the first, you don’t get the accolades. He didn’t get the same opportunities. He didn’t get a second chance. Michael Vick could have a second chance because Shack didn’t get one.
How did you manage to produce this docuseries and conduct most of the interviews with your busy schedule?
It’s funny because I went through IVF during this process — I have a whole son now – but when we did the first interviews, it was the first time I was telling people that I was pregnant. Like, that’s what I vividly remember — all these bathroom breaks because I had to pee every five seconds. It took longer to create this project, which has my heart written all over it, than it did to have my whole child and get him to two years old. That’s how hard it is to create and be a producer.
I’ve learned so much from this process, but I’ve also seen how rewarding it is. When I saw Warren at the Super Bowl, he said, “Honestly, just thank you for taking the time to listen to me…” He broke down in the interview, like he shed tears talking about when he got the phone call for the Hall of Fame. These men have been hurt in ways that I can definitely understand — I didn’t live it, but I understand where they’re coming from — so to hear them speak life and truth into that story with so many years of wisdom and time removed, but still see it on their face and feel it in their voice, is something that everyone needs to hear.
Warren Moon is the first and only Black quarterback in the NFL Hall of Fame. What was it like to listen as he reflected on his experience in the league?
I did the interview the day before the Hall of Fame Game. We always broadcast it on NBC, so he’s always there and brings out his gold jacket; it’s a great celebratory time for him. We spent two and a half hours going through his story, and he, for the first time, opened up about the fact that he had to be in therapy during the football season because he was receiving death threats and his family was hearing things when they were sitting in the stands.
He didn’t realize how much bottled-up anxiety and depression were sitting with him from his time playing in Washington [Moon played for the team now known as the Commanders], when he was called every name under the book. Also being denied the opportunity to be drafted as a quarterback and having to go to Canada and losing those years of his career; he was dealing with all that in real time.
It was his first time saying, “I was a strong Black man that was trying to be everything, and I was breaking down inside.” To hear a man like Warren Moon say things like that, I’m like, “This is what it’s for.” It’s for the person who’s like, “Oh my god, I’m dealing with and holding on to all these things, and I don’t know what to do. But if Warren Moon, the Hall of Famer, had time to go to therapy, then I do, too.” People can see themselves in their stories.
That interview was a revelation in a lot of ways. It was one of my favorites, because he ended up being the one that did break through. A lot of times, we see just the end result — the gold jacket. We don’t know the tears he’s cried. We don’t know the blood that has come out of that man’s body. We don’t know how many times he was toppled over and then he had to keep getting up and persevering to make it to the top.
How did you settle on the term “Field Generals” for the title?
The guys call themselves that. That’s the name that they gathered around and rallied behind and believed in, so I was like, “That has to be in the title.” Because in a lot of ways, it’s like they went to battle for us to see ourselves on the field of play, to be seen as an intelligent athlete that can command a huddle, that can play both ways, that it is just as smart to be able to run, move and make a play and diagnose the defense at the same time.
Every single one played their role in the battle of winning a Super Bowl, of becoming a Hall of Famer, of being selected to the Pro Bowl, of having a second chance and being redeemed because of it. Each and every one of them fought some battle for us to be here, where we are right now, where these guys don’t even have to think twice about bringing their whole selves to the quarterback position. And that is a blessing. And it is a blessing that I got to honor them in this way. To have them show up on screen as a full human being, a full person, and not just a line on a Wikipedia page.
Tell me about exploring some of those parallels between the pioneers and the modern-era quarterbacks. How did you figure out where the series should end?
What we wanted to get to was, “Who was the guy that got to be fully himself?” I really felt like Michael Vick had gathered up all the cachet of our first three “tentpoles” — Doug, Shack and Randall — who were great, but disrespected by the media. But Michael Vick came on the scene, and he was in Atlanta, and he was revered. He had his own shoe! Everything that could be given to him was — because he was elite and innately talented. Then, obviously he made a mistake. But he was granted a second chance in ways that we don’t normally see, especially for a young Black kid from the South. That’s the story that we wanted to delve into.
Not only that, but there was also the Donovan McNabb angle that we wanted to work in; there was a brotherhood connection between Black quarterbacks where [McNabb] was like, “Come on over here [to the Philadelphia Eagles]. I promise you this Andy Reid guy, he’ll figure some stuff out,” and there was rebirth in that. There was something very strong and powerful about him being able to be himself, to make mistakes and finding someone else that looked like him to find a little bit of solace in and a safe haven in Donovan. All those things felt like we have overcome. From the very beginning, I didn’t want to dwell on “It’s hard.” I want to focus on the overcoming and the spirit of how, in spite of everything, here we are.
The docuseries gets into the details of what you have to overcome, because that’s what people overlook.
See the grit, see the grind and see the shine. That’s where I wanted us to end. I asked Lamar, “So, what would you do if they were like, ‘No, you can’t play quarterback?’” And he was like, “I would still play quarterback.” For him to be like, “I cannot fathom [not playing quarterback],” that’s good, perfect, great. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to be.
Was there an interview that moved you in a way that you weren’t expecting?
Shout out to Doug Williams. Getting to see him recognized to the fullest extent that he deserves is important to me, because he was a guy that stood up against all odds. He could have just been like, “Fine, I’ll take less [money] than what I deserve.” He did not. He walked away, and I think about the courage that is required for that.
When I was interviewing him, I was thinking about the decision that I made in my career [to leave ESPN]. I [told him], “You don’t know how much it means to me that, like, the other side of your story is the Super Bowl.” Oh, my God, I could cry now because, like, I feel like the other side of my story is the Super Bowl. I identify with that so much because I feel the same way. But you can’t force people to assign the correct value to you; you have to assign it to yourself and choose yourself.
Not until I sat down with him did I realize, like, “You and Doug Williams made the same decision, and you’re going to be just fine.” I needed to hear these stories at the time. So as much as anyone else is going to learn from this, there are not enough words [to explain] how much doing this project saved me, and kept me going, and gave me courage and perseverance. Being around these men and seeing what the other side can look like has mattered every step of my way. So, I hope that someone else out there is able to see their journey and feel the same way.
What do you see as the future for the series? A Part 2? A second season? The story told via other mediums?
We could have had 20-hour episodes for every single guy. We could do a follow-up podcast with things that had to end on the cutting room floor. We didn’t get to talk much about the guys who went to Canada, or sit a little bit more with Doug’s story, and when he lost his wife and was still having to raise his kid, because the show has to keep moving.
But I would love to continue it through the generations, because there’s so many stories that we still ultimately didn’t get to tell. I would love to dig deeper and finish up with Vick and continue going down the line — to a point where we can completely tell, say, Lamar’s story, or whoever would come next.
And “Field Generals” doesn’t have to stop with quarterbacks. You can be a field general in any sport, like the women that have broken down barriers. It can go into so many different directions.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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