![]() ![]() Hostetler gave his teams an effective one-two punch of mobility and efficiency. The Bills nearly staged a comeback of their own, but you know how that story ends. He led the Giants back from an early 12-3 deficit, then orchestrated a long field-goal drive to give the Giants a 20-19 lead in the fourth quarter, all the while running a game plan designed to keep the clock ticking and the final score low. ![]() Hostetler capped his 1990 relief performance with one of the greatest management efforts in Super Bowl history. But he returned to lead a pair of field-goal drives for a 15-13 Giants comeback victory. He took some nasty hits in the fourth quarter of the NFC title game against the 49ers, briefly leaving the game. He threw a pair of touchdowns in a 31-3 drubbing of the Bears to start the playoffs. Hostetler led December wins against the Cardinals and Patriots to guide the team to a 13-3 finish. Then Phil Simms broke his foot late in the 1990 season, with the Giants in the heat of the Super Bowl chase. He was frustrated, unable to find a better opportunity in the era before free agency, even willing to consider a position switch just to get onto the field as something besides the field-goal holder. He was a third-round pick buried on the Giants bench, relegated to mop-up duty for six long years. Jeff Hostetler was an NFL nobody when his big moment arrived. You trail by four with three minutes left and no timeouts. It's the fourth quarter of a road playoff game. But there are a few traditional favorites on the countdown as well, because conventional wisdom is still wisdom, especially when we reach back in history. Some who are known for losing the big game get their images rehabilitated. Some quarterbacks with clutch reputations were left off the list (sorry, Doug Flutie). Reputation and tradition also play a role in the rankings. Team of Destiny-type streaks: Quarterbacks who led a half-dozen comebacks in a season to get their teams to the Super Bowl take precedence over quarterbacks who played for 20 years and won a big game now and then.Playoff performance: wins, touchdowns, comebacks and so forth.Fourth-quarter comebacks and game-winning drives, as found at Pro Football Reference.The quarterbacks on this countdown were evaluated based on the following measures of "clutchness": But as this countdown continues, the all-time greats will gradually take over for the pesky gunslinger types. There will be some overlap between the groups, of course. First, there's a group of very good quarterbacks who were at their best at crunch time: in the fourth quarter, in the playoffs, off the bench in a crisis and so on.Īfter that, we will visit with some legends, ranked not on their overall excellence but on that elusive "clutch" capability. You are about to meet two types of quarterbacks on this countdown. But not all clutch quarterbacks are truly great. Like the office in Washington D.C.All truly great quarterbacks are clutch. ![]()
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