Steve mcnair biography nfl quarterback statistics

Bio

High School

• Three-sport star at Mount Olive.

• Led Mount Olive to state championship as a 16-year-old junior.

• All-State quarterback, safety who chose Alcorn tate over numerous Division I-A offers and Major League baseball.

College

• Finished third in the Heisman voting after putting up more than 6,000 yards of total offense and 53 touchdowns in a single season (1994).

• Set all-tiome NCAA record for total offense with 16,283 yards.

• Won Walter Payton Trophy as the top player in Division I-AA (1994).

Professional

• Third overall pick in the NFL draft by the Houston Oiler (1995).

• Three-time Pro Bowler and co-NFL MVP with Peyton Manning (2003).

• NFL Man of the Year (2005).

• 31,034 passing yards and 174 touchdowns over 13-year NFL career.

Did You Know?

• Steve “Air II” McNair was nicknamed after his older brother Fred, who was the original Air McNair.

Additional Picture(s)

On the football field, Steve McNair was the unflappable quarterback often willing his team to victory. Behind the scenes, the introspective NFL star enjoyed fishing and watching TV shows such as The Price Is Right and The Andy Griffith Show. Friends and fans treasured McNair for his amiable personality, making his 2009 death at age 36 all the more puzzling and heartbreaking.

The new sports documentary Untold: The Murder of Air McNair, now streaming on Netflix, examines McNair’s rise to gridiron stardom and the days leading up to July 4, 2009, when police found the retired NFL star and his mistress dead inside a Nashville condominium. The case was eventually ruled a murder-suicide, though many questions about the shootings still linger. Namely, how could such a tragedy strike the charitable and family-focused McNair?

The former league MVP remains a beloved figure 15 years after his death, but McNair grappled with his prominent status more than many realized.

McNair was a college superstar

McNair’s discipline and determination to make it as a football player started with his mother, Lucille, and oldest brother, Fred.

Lucille, who raised Steve in Mount Olive, Mississippi, described him as “quiet, intelligent, and studious,” as well as a good listener—though not immune to occasional misbehavior. “The kids loved to play football, but they knew that work came first. And when they forgot that, they were punished, but I always let them go back out to play football afterward,” Lucille told The New York Times in 1994. “I wanted my kids to be raised to be respectful, and around here, that’s the only way you are raised.”

Steve aspired to be like Fred, who was four years older than him. Fred was a football star at Mount Olive High School and later Alcorn State University, a small historically Black institution in Mississippi. Tired of everyone’s praise of Fred as the best