Jarrett Stidham and the Worst Conference Championship Quarterbacks

[ASFN Admin]

When was the last time you thought about Jarrett Stidham? If you’re a Broncos fan, you may have occasionally given thought to your backup quarterback situation. You may have celebrated in October when Stidham came in for the final drive and kneeldown as Denver romped over Dallas 44-24. Maybe you’ll remember him lookingimpressive against the 49ers and Cardinals deep reserves in preseason. For the rest of us, what, maybe the end of 2023 as part of the Russell Wilson benching saga? Replacing the benched Derek Carr at the end of 2022? Stidham has always, at best, been the supporting player in someone else’s drama. And now, with Bo Nix’s broken ankle, Stidham suddenly becomes the most important player in the NFL. So, no pressure there, Jarrett. This isn’t the first time a team has reached a conference championship without the guy who took them most of the way there. Both Nick Foles and Jeff Hostetler famously won Super Bowls as backups forced into action. Roger Staubach missed most of 1972 with injuries before coming off the bench to win the Divisional Round and starting the NFC Championship Game. But we’ve never had a quarterback with 0 pass attempts that season getting ready to start the second-most important game of the season. It’s been over two years since Stidham’s last pass in a game that counted! We’re in uncharted waters here. Stidham has been getting lots of support and drawing plenty of interest – what better story could there be than a benchwarmer-turned-Super Bowl hero? Sean Payton has made it a point to say that all bets aren’t off, and that other backups have had success when forced into action – citing not just Foles and Hostetler, but his own success with Teddy Bridgewater in New Orleans. While there may not be anyone who exactly matches Stidham’s situation, he’s not the first lower-tier quarterback to find himself a game away from the Super Bowl. Let’s look at the worst quarterbacks in the DVOA era to suddenly find themselves here. To be clear, we’re not just looking for great quarterbacks having a bad year, like the shambling corpse of 2015 Peyton Manning, or career backups who actually put together an out-of-nowhere good season, like 2017 Case Keenum. We want quarterbacks with both weak careers and seasons, and still keeping their teams going on the second-biggest stage of them all. Sometimes, they even end up winning, so there’s hope for the Broncos yet.

2017 Nick Foles, Philadelphia Eagles​

2017 Passing DVOA: -28.5% Weighted Career DVOA: -9.1% Might as well start with the best-case scenario for Stidham. Foles isn’t quite in Stidham’s boat. He had a Pro Bowl half-season in 2010 with 27 touchdowns to just two interceptions. By 2017, however, it was clear that was a fluke and Foles was well-entrenched as a bench warmer behind MVP candidate Carson Wentz (…it was a different time). It’s hard to remember now just how bad Foles was finishing out the regular season when Wentz tore his ACL: 57-for-101 with only 5.3 yards per attempt, as most of his positive play came against a Giants team that had already packed up for the year. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Eagles going one-and-done in the postseason – Foles caught fire once more. The only quarterbacks with more passing DYAR in a single postseason than Foles in 2017 are 1989 Joe Montana, 2017 Tom Brady and 2012 Joe Flacco. Foles was mostly an efficient passenger in the Divisional Round win against Atlanta, but absolutely torched both the Falcons in the CCG and the Patriots in the Super Bowl, bringing home a Lombardi, an MVP, and the ability to never pay for a sandwich in Philadelphia again. Did he ever live up to those heights again? No, of course not! Does it matter for his legacy? Not one bit.

2009 (and 2010) Mark Sanchez, New York Jets​

2009/2010 Passing DVOA: -26.5% and -4.3% Weighted Career DVOA: -19.3% Before Sanchez was known for the buttfumble – or for drunken fighting in alleyways in the early hours of the morning – he was the toast of New York, the first rookie quarterback to start Week 1 for the Jets since 1960. You could be forgiven in September for thinking Sanchez was going to be the future, leading the Jets to their fourth ever 3-0 start and winning Rookie of the Week in each of the first three weeks. But while he was able to scrape together some fourth-quarter heroics, his lack of accuracy and decision making led him to tumble down to 28th in the DVOA rankings. He did set a Jets postseason record with 197 passing DYAR (remember, there’s no Namath in our dataset just yet). That record would last until the next season, where he had 210 playoff DYAR. Both times the Jets got to the AFC Championship Game, both times Sanchez played well, both times the Jets lost – and that was about it for Sanchez, as trying to lean more and more on his arm stopped working. He’s on this list for his smoke-and-mirrors rookie season more than anything else, but the Sanchize went from hero to the butt of jokes real fast.

2006 Rex Grossman, Chicago Bears​

2006 Passing DVOA: -9.8% Weighted Career DVOA: -14.6% Sexy Rexy. The man who won the “They are who we THOUGHT they were” game – his -286 DYAR against Arizona that week is still the record for worst QB game in a win in our database. And that was this season, getting the Bears to 6-0 and keeping them marching towards the NFC Championship! The first Bear to start all 16 games in over a decade, Grossman’s “roller coaster” season was one where you never could be sure which quarterback you would see next. He had five games with at least three interceptions, which is the 21st-century record. And then he had another six games where he’d throw for 200 yards and multiple touchdowns and look in complete control of everything. It was exciting, it was maddening, it was too much – by the end of the year, fans were calling for him to be benched for Brian Griese, with fans doubting he could put together three games in a row and lead a very good defense to a title. And it turns out they were right! Grossman had a -21.6% DVOA in the playoffs, throwing three interceptions and fumbling three more times. And, as was his tendency, they came in bunches, with four of those six turnovers happening in the Super Bowl against Indianapolis. That does mean he had a couple passable days earlier in the postseason, most notably throwing for 282 yards in an overtime win against Seattle. But you live by the variance, you die by the variance, and the quarterback who turned the ball over 18 times in the last seven weeks of the regular season killed them again in the championship.

2000 Trent Dilfer, Baltimore Ravens​

2000 Passing DVOA: -22.2% Weighted Career DVOA: -16.6% Perhaps no one in the history of football has ever been handed the keys to a sportscar and asked please, please, please not to break anything so much as Trent Dilfer was in 2000. The 2000 Ravens defense was legendary – we only have it as the fifth best ever including the postseason, and that’s low enough to be controversial, that’s how good they were. They had a top-10 rushing game, too, so if they had a half-decent quarterback, they’d be in the running for best team of all time. Well, they didn’t. Starting quarterback Tony Banks was so bad (-15.7% DVOA) that he got benched midseason for Dilfer, who was even worse – the two finished 32nd and 35th in passing DVOA that year. Dilfer took more sacks and threw more interceptions than Banks did, but he at least stretched the field a little more so Baltimore said screw it and ran with it. Dilfer was a little better in the playoffs, by which we mean he rose to a -15.6% DVOA while completing fewer than half his passes. He completed single-digit passes in each of Baltimore’s first three playoff games, managing to up to that to a whopping 12 in the Super Bowl. He and 2015 Peyton Manning are the only quarterbacks to win a Super Bowl despite having a negative postseason passing DVOA. So all the 2025 Broncos need to do for Stidham is carry him with one of the best defensive performances of all time. Well, at least the brief is clear.

1999 Shaun King, Tampa Bay Buccaneers​

1999 Passing DVOA: 1.5% Weighted Career DVOA: -8.4% A second-round rookie in 1999, King was a third-string quarterback who only got into the action when Trent Dilfer broke his collarbone and Eric Zeier suffered a rib injury. You can see that his DVOA numbers aren’t quite as bad as the others we’re talking about today – he actually had a positive mark as a rookie and his career numbers aren’t that bad. But a third-stringer who found himself back on the bench in two seasons is worthy of an entry in any list of unlikely conference championship quarterbacks. While King did a good job avoiding back-breaking mistakes, he had only two games all season where here as above 5.6 yards per attempt. He was a dinker and dunker to match the all-time greats in the failed completion category. King will probably be most remembered for being on the other end of the controversial Bert Emanuel no-catch in the 1999 NFC Championship Game – the play that made them add the rule that lets the ball touch the ground on a catch if it doesn’t move. Had that been ruled a catch, maybe the Bucs upset the 1999 Rams, and the Greatest Show on Turf never gets a ring. Instead, King got one more year as a starter, was sent back to the third string, and eventually watched Brad Johnson lead essentially the same team to a championship a couple years later.

1982 David Woodley, Miami Dolphins​

1982 Passing DVOA: -6.2% Weighted Career DVOA: -8.0% If you remember WoodStrock, were you really there? The Dolphins shuffled between Woodley and Don Strock throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. By 1982, Woodley was the primary guy, and to tell you how well that went, it was 1983 where the Dolphins drafted Dan Marino in the first round. Woodley had his fun moments, for sure – he’s one of the few players to throw, rush and catch a touchdown pass in the same year. Strong arm, running around in the pocket, notable accuracy issues – he wasn’t as bad as early-career Josh Allen, but that’s the archetype you should be thinking of if you never saw him play. Don Shula valued his mobility and the different challenge he gave to defenses, but he never really evolved into a reliable passer, and couldn’t play from under center in an era where quarterbacks still had to do that. His -6.2% DVOA in 1982 was his career high-water mark, and he still had a negative passing DVOA in the postseason despite getting to the Super Bowl. Inconsistency, again, was the name of the game – Woodley had his postseason moments, throwing for nearly 250 yards against the Patriots and rolling over the Chargers. But he was 9-for-21 for 87 yards and three picks in Miami’s win over the Jets on a mudpit in the AFC Championship Game, and completed just four passes in the Super Bowl before being benched. The Killer Bs on defense covered up for his shortcomings, but a bad quarterback must first do no harm in the postseason, and Woodley couldn’t keep that up forever.

1979 Vince Ferragamo, Los Angeles Rams​

1979 Passing DVOA: -31.7% Weighted Career DVOA: -3.2% Some people might claim that 2015 Peyton Manning is the worst quarterback to play in a championship game, if we’re looking at just individual seasons. Manning was terrible, but he has more football knowledge in his pinky finger than Ferragamo had when the Rams finally punched through to the Super Bowl after the 1979 season. Pat Haden was the Rams’ quarterback, but he broke his finger in Week 10, leaving the mostly untested Ferragamo as their option the rest of the way. Even for 1979, a 48% completion percentage and 37% success rate was terrible, and Ferragamo was actually benched a couple times during his five games as a starter; it was the ground game that punched them through. He was…let’s say, fortunate in the playoffs. He only completed nine passes against Dallas, but three of them went for touchdowns in the divisional round. The Rams beat the Buccaneers in the NFC Championship Game 9-0, with no touchdowns scored by either team – that kind of sounds like the sort of game Denver would have to win to get to the Super Bowl, yeah? Ferragamo and the Rams lost to the Steelers in the Super Bowl, and Ferragamo shuffled between starting for the Rams, sitting on the bench, and playing in the CFL for the rest of his career.

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