Jeff Hostetler led the New York Giants to a Super Bowl win to complete the 1990 National Football League season.
No, that’s not right.
More accurately, Hostetler followed the Giants to the title that year.
From a quarterback position it was Phil Simms’ team, but he was hurt on a Saturday afternoon in December, and second on the New York Giants depth chart was their 1984 third round draft choice, Jeff Hostetler. He began his college career at Penn State, but transferred to West Virginia before being drafted. Despite being saddled with a long time backup quarterback, Giants Head Coach Bill Parcells was able to bend this team into World Champions (they used to call it that). When Super Bowl winning quarterbacks are ranked, it would be hard to argue that Hostetler wasn’t the worst quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl as the starter. His talent would never be favorably judged against other signal callers that actually did key their team’s success on their way to winning a ring.
The quarterback almost always dictates the success of an offense. A team with Russell Wilson or Patrick Mahomes directing their attack is always in the hunt, just as previous championship teams directed by John Elway and Joe Montana resulted in Super Bowl wins.
Hostetler was the most unlikely man to raise a Super Bowl trophy with him in charge of the winning offense.
Lawrence Taylor was the physical trump card that allowed the master coaching of Parcell’s to result in that Super Bowl Championship. The last two games New York won to take the title were against a pair of far better teams. The San Francisco 49ers were at home looking for a three-peat after winning Super Bowls XXIII and XXIV the prior two seasons. Favored by more than a touchdown, the 49ers had the ball late only needing to run out the clock to cement a 15-14 win.
Roger Craig lost the handoff from Joe Montana and the Giants got the ball back. Moments later, New York Giants kicker Matt Bahr connected on a 42-yard field goal. Hostetler gets pushed to the Super Bowl and a battle against the Buffalo Bills, who had downed the Oakland Raiders in the AFC Championship Game, 51-3.
The Giants defense did all it could to slow the Jim Kelly led Bills offense, but the game came down to a 47-yard field goal, that Scott Norwood booted so wide it wouldn’t have been good from 37-yards. The miss was a hit for the Giants and the man who was on the team when New York won Super Bowl XXV, Jeff Hostetler.
Super Bowl rings are mostly reserved for quarterbacks that would show up on a list with the likes of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Troy Aikman and Brett Favre. The three times a quarterback not in the top tier won a Super Bowl was, like the Giants of 1990, anchored by the teams’ defensive prowess. Just as Lawrence Taylor was critical to the Giants success, Ray Lewis was the reason the Baltimore Ravens won two Super Bowls.
In 2000, Trent Dilfer took over for an ineffective Tony Banks midway through the regular season, and directed an offense geared not to nullify the greatness of their defense. Lewis was key when his defense won the Ravens Super Bowl XXXV, downing the New York Giants, 34-7. Lewis did it again a dozen seasons later, anchoring a dynamic Ravens team led by a subpar quarterback by Super Bowl standards, Joe Flacco. The Lewis led defense resulted in a Super Bowl win, 34-31, while overcoming both the San Francisco 49ers and a mid-game power failure during Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans.
One formula for winning a Super Bowl is to have a defense more special than any before; a more statistically reliable way to win it all is to start with a top notch quarterback running the offense. A little less than a third of the NFL teams have a quarterback on their roster they are confident can lead them to a Super Bowl title.
The majority of NFL teams are still in search of that guy. The Los Angeles Rams demonstrated one way to pair a good defense with a top tier quarterback when they shipped their future in draft choices and their starting quarterback to the Detroit Lions for Matthew Stafford. The new Rams quarterback had toiled with losing Detroit squads while gaining acclaim as a talented quarterback.
It was a two way trade, the Rams got their top notch quarterback and Stafford was allowed to display his skillset with a lot better supporting cast. The result was a Super Bowl win, something the Rams were unable to achieve in a prior trip to the Super Bowl with Jared Goff directing their offense. Now the Lions are needing to draft wisely with the picks gained from shipping Stafford west.
While George Allen had success with the Washington Redskins trading draft picks for veteran talent, most front offices ascribe to the theory that the best way to build a winner is through the draft. Today, more than ever, a team needs to cash in when they have a franchise quarterback still playing during his rookie contract years.
When a star bursts on the scene like Russell Wilson did with the Seahawks in 2012, the time to excel is when the team has enough salary cap space because their star quarterback is not yet making the big bucks.
Two recent examples illuminate this point.
In his second season, Wilson led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl title, and in his third year the Seahawks returned to the game only to fall late victim to one of the six Super Bowls won by the New England Patriots with Brady behind center. In Patrick Mahomes’ second season and first full year as the starter in Kansas City, he guided the Chiefs to the AFC Championship Game and a narrow overtime loss to Brady and the Patriots. The following season, in his second as full time starter, Mahomes won the Chiefs their first Super Bowl in 50 years. The following year, he had them back in the Super Bowl, and again Brady won, this time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Last season, Mahomes once again had the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, but lost to the Cincinnati Bengals and their second-year pro quarterback, Joe Burrow.
Wilson never returned to the Super Bowl with Seattle once he got his pay day, and Mahomes is just now entering the phase to where the Chiefs salary cap is greatly spent on their franchise quarterback.
In this year’s draft, only one quarterback was chosen in the first round, the Pittsbugh Steelers took Kenny Pickett with the 20th selection. It has been 26 years since no quarterback was chosen in the first round. That year, 1996, the first QB selected was Tony Banks. He was a second round choice by the St. Louis Rams. Seems the scouts knew what they were doing, as the bleak college quarterback class that year produced no signal caller that achieved any significant success.
It was also considered a weak quarterback class in 2000, another year when only one was chosen in the first round. That was Chad Pennington, who was the New York Jets first round pick and 18th overall selection. While Pennington achieved some success in New York, it was a sixth round pick that year that separated himself from the projected slim pickens of 2000. With a sixth round choice and the 199th overall selection, the New Patriots took Michigan Quarterback, Tom Brady.
Is there a diamond in the rough this year? Will a late round QB burst on the scene and prove the experts wrong like Brady did 22 years ago?
Not likely, but that is why they play the games. And while this year’s quarterback crop is considered sparse, many teams will be positioning themselves to cash a franchise quarterback next year when the draft class at the position is expected to be robust.