A Former Vikings QB Has Found a New Home with the USFL in 2023
In the past year, we’ve seen the re-emergence of the USFL on the American football scene. The league, originally beginning back in 1983, saw a comeback in 2022 after a 36-year hiatus since the conclusion of their 1986 season.
During that 2022 season, a former Vikings QB was one of the main stars of the league as Kyle Sloter led the New Orleans Breakers to the playoffs where they lost in the Divisional round to the Birmingham Stallions. Along the way, Sloter passed for 1798 yards, 9 TDs, and 11 INTs while completing 57.7% of his passes, and he earned a spot with the Jacksonville Jaguars heading into training camp.
Now, though, Sloter is ironically the backup QB for those Stallions that he lost to last season in the playoffs. He is sitting behind Alex McGough.
However, this piece isn’t about Sloter. Rather, another former Vikings QB has found a new home with the USFL in 2023, and in an even bigger strike of irony, this quarterback is also leading Sloter’s former team, the Breakers.
This former Vikings QB is McLeod Bethel-Thompson, a 34-year-old quarterback who, over the first four games of the USFL season, has completed 65.7% of his passes for 1115 yards, 6 TDs, and 2 INTs. The Breakers have gone 4-0 in these games, and they are the lone team standing with an undefeated record to this point in the year.
Bethel-Thompson had a stint with the Vikings that overlapped the 2012 and 2013 seasons. In 2012, he completed 18/36 passes during the preseason for 242 yards, a touchdown, and 2 INTs. Still, he was able to make the 53-man roster for the Vikings that year as their QB3, spending the year behind Christian Ponder and Joe Webb.
However despite playing better in 2013, completing 33/52 passes for 320 yards, 2 TDs, and an INT over three preseason games, Bethel-Thompson saw his time in Minnesota come to an end during October of that year in favor of free agent-signee Josh Freeman.
Since leaving the Vikings, Bethel-Thompson has had NFL stints with the San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins, and Philadelphia Eagles. However, he is yet to appear in a regular season game at the NFL level.
Then, in 2017, he joined the CFL where he played for the Toronto Argonauts through 2022 before joining the Breakers in 2023. In 74 games with Toronto, he completed 66.8% of his passes for 13,261 yards, 70 TDs, and 49 INTs.
With NFL headlines beginning to slow down, the Bethel-Thompson story with the Breakers is certainly one to follow through the rest of this spring. New Orleans’ next game is scheduled for Sunday, May 14th at 3 PM EST against the 1-3 Memphis Showboats.
Josh Frey is a Class of 2020 graduate of The College of Idaho and managing editor of PurplePTSD.com. When he’s not writing about the NFL, Josh enjoys running, gaming, or rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers and Bucks. Check out his Twitter account: @Freyed_Chicken.
