With one weekend of NFL playoff football under our belts, the true competitors for the 50th Lombardi Trophy are coming into greater focus. Separating the contenders from the pretenders should be no more difficult than it was during Wild Card weekend: Just look at the quarterbacks.
No one really should have been surprised by Wild Card weekend’s outcomes, as playoff veteran quarterbacks (who entered with a collective 37 postseason starts) knocked off first-time playoff starters by a decisive 4-0 margin. Sure there were bad penalties and missed field goals, but ultimately playoff experience triumphed in the first round.
Of the eight teams remaining, every single quarterback has playoff experience. Four have Super Bowl experience (with one who was a backup), including a total of 15 Super Bowl starts, nine Super Bowl wins, and five Super Bowl MVPs.
These playoffs are stacked with defensive stalwarts. (Even Pittsburgh, the perceived “weakest” defense still remaining, was 11th in the league in scoring defense; Green Bay is actually 12th.) Advancing past juggernauts like Seattle, Kansas City and Denver (not to mention the rest) is going to come down to which quarterbacks can handle the pressure when its at its highest. And that may come down to playoff experience. Here’s a rundown of who brings the best experience to the party.
No. 8 – Carson Palmer (0-2)
Arizona’s Carson Palmer has turned his 12th NFL season into a rebirth, passing for 35 touchdowns and over 4,600 yards en route to a No. 2 seed and the best year of his career. The likely NFL MVP runner-up had a phenomenal regular season, but his playoff resume is wildly incomplete compared to the other seven quarterbacks he’s up against this year.
Palmer has appeared in just two postseason games, the first of which was more than a decade ago and the second of which was a full five years ago. He’s a combined 0-2 in the playoffs as a starter. Both of those starts came as a member of the Bengals and the latter was at least part of the reason he was eventually traded to Oakland.
Bengals fans will certainly remember his first ever playoff start in 2005, which ended about as poorly as anyone could have hoped. On his first pass attempt (a 66-yard completion), Palmer was hit as he thew and suffered a tear of both his ACL and MCL. Jon Kitna went on to lose to the Steelers.
Battling that injury over the next several years, Palmer finally returned to the playoffs in 2009, but struggled in a Wild Card loss to the Jets. With a 50.0 completion percentage, one touchdown, one interception and one fumble, the Bengals lost at home and sent them on a downward spiral that would see them finish 4-12 the next season.
Palmer has some serious playoff demons to exorcise, and he’ll have to do so first against a quarterback who’s had his own playoff struggles, but also some big success, in Aaron Rodgers.
No. 7 – Cam Newton (1-2)
There’s little doubt that Cam Newton will walk away with the league’s Most Valuable Player trophy at the end of the season, but pundits everywhere are wondering if this will also be the year that he picks up some playoff hardware as well.
Like Carson Palmer, Newton is bringing years worth of experience into this year’s playoffs. But unlike Palmer, Newton has recent history, and a win, on his side. This will mark his third consecutive trip to the postseason and he’s hoping to improve on last year’s effort that saw him pick up a Wild Card win over Arizona before bowing out to the eventual NFC champs, Seattle.
Compared to his eye-popping regular season stats, Newton’s playoff numbers have been marginal. He’s passed for more than 250 yards and rushed for more than 50 yards just once, both in a 2013 Wild Card loss to San Francisco. His completion percentage has been higher in the postseason, passing at 61.3 percent clip, but he’s also been more prone to more interceptions. In the playoffs, Newton has been picked off nearly twice as much per passing attempt than he has during his regular season career.
He’s also been prone to cough up the ball in the playoffs, fumbling three times and losing two of them last year.
There’s no denying that Newton has been the best player in the league this year, leading Carolina to a 15-1 regular season and a top seed. But he’ll face the reigning and back-to-back NFC champion Seahawks who are out to prove that their mobile quarterback is the best the business.
No. 6 – Alex Smith (2-2)
With a very convincing 30-0 win over the Houston Texans in the Wild Card round, Kansas City’s Alex Smith improved his career playoff record to an even .500 in four starts.
After losing to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship Game following the 2011 season, Smith may always wonder “what could have been” in 2012 when a head injury and a competitive situation between he and Colin Kaepernick kept him on the sidelines as a backup throughout a run to the Super Bowl.
Following a subsequent trade to the Chiefs, Smith has led Kansas City to the playoffs in two of the past three years. He dropped a one-point shootout loss to the Colts in 2013-14 and (along with the defense) decimated the Texans just last week.
Smith’s numbers have been very impressive in the postseason, completing passes at a 61.03 percent rate and tossing 10 touchdowns to just one interception. His 107.0 passer rating in the playoffs is actually tops among all remaining playoff quarterbacks (albeit with a much smaller sample size than most). He’s been a “game manager” when asked, and has slung the ball around the yard when asked.
Kansas City will put an 11-game winning streak on the line and face its biggest test of the season against New England and one of the greatest playoff quarterbacks of all time in Tom Brady. Which Alex Smith head coach Andy Reid has to invoke will certainly be fun to watch.
No. 5 – Peyton Manning (11-13)
One of only three quarterbacks with a losing record still remaining in the playoffs, Denver’s Peyton Manning has been defined throughout his career mostly by playoff disappointment. Save for a lone Super Bowl win, thirteen of Manning’s previous fourteen playoff trips heading into this year have ended in a loss.
Perhaps the most damning statistic on Manning’s playoff resume are his nine one-and-done appearances. Two of those have come with Denver at Sports Authority Field, one of the greatest home-field advantages in football.
Manning has fallen in nail-biters like the double-overtime loss to the Ravens and a one point loss to the Jets. but he’s also been the victim of some blowout losses, including a 41-0 loss to the Jets, a 20-3 loss to the Patriots and the 43-8 Super Bowl stinker against the Seahawks.
The most mind-boggling stat among Manning’s playoff credentials is that he has led just one fourth-quarter, game-winning drive in 14 years. The career leader with 55 game-winning drives earned his only one of the postseason in the 2006-07 AFC Championship against New England, the season Manning’s Colts went on to beat Rex Grossman and the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl.
Even more than Carson Palmer, Manning is the quarterback with the most playoff demons haunting him. What he does in this, his 15th try at football’s ultimate prize, could swing him into the category of two-time QBs with a winning record, or cement him as one of the biggest playoff disappointments in NFL history. He starts that campaign against a depleted Steelers team, which might be the best case scenario for the aging legend.
No. 4 – Aaron Rodgers (7-5)
This time last week, Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers appeared to be a quarterback heading down the same path as Peyton Manning. Yes, he’s won it all, but half of his playoff starts to that point had led to one-and-done results.
With a road win over the Washington Redskins, Rodgers swung the pendulum back to the positive and (for the time being) catapulted him above Manning in these rankings. A loss would have put him at 6-6 with his fourth early exit in seven trips. For the time being, Rodgers has kept the wolves at bay.
It wasn’t so long ago that we thought Rodgers might follow the path of Tom Brady and other all-time greats. In his second trip to the playoffs as a starter, Rodgers won it all, including a Super Bowl MVP. But since that time he is 3-4. He’s put up good numbers, mostly, but hasn’t found a way to come out on top.
His 100.3 career playoff passer rating is second on this list only to Alex Smith, and Rodgers has done it over three times as many games. His 25 touchdowns are second only to Brady and Peyton Manning, both of whom have played more than twice as many games as Rodgers. His 64.78 percent completion percentage is the best of the bunch.
At 32 years old, Rodgers now has a long way to go to be mentioned in the same breath as Brady or Bradshaw or Montana, but he’s not so far off from being in that next echelon of two- and three-time winners. He continues that pursuit next against Carson Palmer and the Cardinals.
No. 3 – Russell Wilson (7-2)
Were it not for a play call that will go down as one of the most-questioned in NFL history, Russell Wilson might be our No. 2 quarterback on this list. Since a Divisional round loss to the Falcons in 2012-13, all Wilson did in the playoffs was “win, win, win – no matter what,” until Pete Carroll didn’t put the ball in Marshawn Lynch‘s hands.
Last year’s last-minute Super Bowl loss to the Patriots put to an end a five-game playoff winning streak that included a 43-8 Super Bowl trouncing of the most-prolific offense in NFL history. Wilson hopes he’s started a new streak with a 10-9 win over Minnesota this past week, but if not for a late missed field goal, he’d be looking at the first one-and-done of his NFL career.
Save for a real stinker against the Packers in the 2013-14 NFC Championship Game, in which he threw four interceptions but still won, Wilson has been solid or above in all of his playoff games. His 63.3 passer rating this past weekend was just the second-lowest of his playoff career, and it came with sub-zero temperatures. In six of his playoff starts, he’s had a passer rating above 90, five above 100.
He’s also averaging 5.75 yards per rush in the playoffs on 48 attempts, a better average than Cam Newton. Wilson has had some ball security issues, fumbling six times in nine games, but that’s been the only real knock on him in the playoffs.
Wilson has a tough task ahead of him, having to travel to face the 15-1 Panthers. Carolina has its heart set on proving that Newton is new king of “mobile” quarterbacks, but don’t expect the cool and collected – and most importantly, clutch – Wilson to give up his throne without a fight.
No. 2 – Ben Roethlisberger (11-5)
One of the most accomplished quarterbacks in this ranking has perhaps the toughest road to another title, but that doesn’t mean Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger won’t go down without a fight. Already a two-time Super Bowl champion, including one that required three wins away from home before the big game, Roethlisberger has just about seen it all.
He’s made long, tough runs to win it all, and he’s been bounced early by guys who didn’t last another two years in the league. He’s passed for 123 yards in a Super Bowl win, and 334 in a Wild Card loss. And despite his 19 interceptions to 22 touchdowns in the playoffs, Roethlisberger is one of only two quarterbacks on this list with two Super Bowl rings.
At 33 years old, Roethlisberger seems closer in age at times to the 39-year-old Peyton Manning, and at others more like the 27-year-old Russell Wilson. But no matter what, Roethlisberger will always battle when the game is on the line. That was no more evident than this past Saturday when he was knocked out of the game late in the third quarter, then returned in the fourth to lead a game-winning field goal drive in the pouring rain in Cincinnati.
An injured Roethlisberger must travel to Denver this week, the site of one of his biggest playoff disappointments, and face an angry defense looking for redemption after a Week 15 loss that saw the Steelers come back from a 17-point deficit. Denver’s defense was the best in the league, but if there’s one quarterback they shouldn’t count out it’s Big Ben, injured and all.
No. 1 – Tom Brady (21-8)
As painful as it is for folks in Denver to admit, there’s no denying that Tom Brady is the gold standard of playoff quarterbacks, certainly in the current era and perhaps of all time. With six Super Bowl appearances, four Super Bowl wins and three Super Bowl MVPs, no one playing right now even comes close to matching Brady’s playoff pedigree.
Only twice in 12 trips to the postseason has Brady left without winning a game. Terry Bradshaw had three one-and-dones in his career; Joe Montana had four.
Half of the time Brady has made it to the playoffs, he’s made it all the way to the big game. Only Bradshaw (four in nine) can boast a better percentage.
Brady owns the career record for completions, yards and touchdowns and would pass both Bradshaw and Montana for the most career wins with a victory this year.
This year’s Patriots have struggled of late, but secured the AFC’s second seed despite having 14 players on injured reserve and having been without their top two receivers for a big stretch of the season. The scary thing for the rest of the AFC is that they are starting to get healthy and should have key players like linebacker Dont’a Hightower and wide receiver Julian Edelman back in the lineup against the Chiefs in the Divisional round.
The biggest threat to Brady’s fifth ring is his patchwork offensive line and the ferocious front sevens that await them, the first being Kansas City. After that could be Denver, with Seattle and Carolina lurking on the NFC side. This could very well be the toughest run of Brady’s career; but given his pedigree, would anyone doubt he could do it?