Allen Lessels

Joe Fagnano has been running walkthroughs in his living room this season, and his wife has been reading him the plays. On Thursday night he starts at quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. He is 25 and he is a rookie. He will be only the second undrafted rookie quarterback to start a game in franchise history. Start in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the town that hosts the Little League World Series every August. He sat behind an all-state quarterback for his first two high school seasons, so almost nobody recruited him. When his senior year ended, the scholarship offers were VMI, St. Francis and Maine. He took Maine. He said it was the culture of the team. He arrived in Orono in 2019 on a partial scholarship. After an intrasquad scrimmage that August, head coach Nick Charlton told him he had earned a full ride for what he had done in camp. His teammates mobbed him. Fagnano called it a surreal moment and said it showed that hard work pays off. In October the starter went down with a foot injury. Fagnano was 18 years old. In his first college start he threw for 445 yards and five touchdowns at Liberty, an FBS program, in a 59-44 shootout. Seven college seasons followed. Maine through 2022, then UConn, where a shoulder injury ended his first season two games in. In 2025 he threw for 3,448 yards with 28 touchdowns and one interception. One. No team drafted him in 2026. The Ravens brought him in on a rookie tryout. On the day of final cuts he and his wife Lydia sat outside a Krispy Kreme to pass the time until the phone rang. It rang. He made the 53 man roster after completing 56 of 75 preseason passes with three touchdowns. Joe and Lydia are high school sweethearts from Williamsport. He proposed in May of last year and they married in July. Until he signed in Baltimore, Lydia was Bills Mafia. Which matters, because on Sunday in Buffalo, Lamar Jackson hurt his thumb on the first snap of the game and Tyler Huntley went down as well, and the third quarterback on the depth chart jogged onto the field against the team his wife spent her life rooting for. He hurt his own right ankle late in that same game. He practiced Tuesday in a heavy brace and said the ankle felt good. Jesse Minter was asked about him this week. "He's cool, calm, collected," the Ravens head coach said. Minter said he does not really get rattled. So on Thursday night, against Jacksonville, a 25 year old nobody drafted will take the first snap of his first NFL start. And in a living room somewhere in Baltimore, he has already walked through every one of those plays, with Lydia holding the sheet, getting her signals down. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap