Winning football games—especially once the NFL postseason rolls around, the stakes are raised, and it often comes down to whether or not a team’s quarterback is ready to rise to the occasion.
Unfortunately, we have seen quite a few instances over the years of QBs—even extremely talented ones, who put up good… even great numbers… in the regular season—crumble under the pressure of playoff football.
Let’s take a look back at the 10 WORST postseason quarterbacks in NFL history!
Which quarterbacks are well-known to falter in the NFL postseason?
Tony Romo
For a decade, Tony Romo was the face of the Dallas Cowboys, well, as much as the face of the Cowboys as any player can be… considering Jerry Jones isn’t one to give up the spotlight easily…
In any case, for a while, it felt like he might finally bring America’s Team back to glory.
He emerged from anonymity out of Eastern Illinois to notch four Pro Bowl selections, put up gaudy stats, and had the arm and mobility to make highlight-reel plays.
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The guy made it look easy… at least in the regular season. But come playoff time? The Romo coaster went off the rails. I mean, sometimes quite literally—like when he ran off to Mexico! But that’s a story for another time…
Six trips to the NFL postseason, and he managed just two wins.
As if that resume wasn’t bad enough, he also has the stinky cherry on top, which came in his first playoff appearance during his breakout season—the one that really set the tone for the rest of his career.
Of course, we are talking about —that botched snap against Seattle in the 2006 Wild Card game—the one that is forever seared into Cowboys fans’ memories.
Throughout his career, Romo had moments where he kept Dallas in games, but he could never find the strength to get them over the hump—and with such a low nadir and high expectations, it only feels right to start this list with him.
Chad Pennington
While some bitter Jets fans might not admit it, there were a lot of good things about Chad Pennington as a football player… Let’s call a spade a spade— Pennington had the heart of a warrior.
The only problem was that he didn’t quite have the arm strength to match it.
He was all heart, akin to a Rudy gone pro, twice earning NFL Comeback Player of the Year after grueling injuries to put up some really solid regular season numbers during his career… and to win a lot of games. But when the calendar flipped to January, his underdog charm ran out and his production bottomed out.
Six playoff games, only two wins. Eight touchdowns, eight interceptions. And let’s not forget the way he’d fade as the stakes got higher—like in 2006 against the Patriots when his Jets were thoroughly dismantled, or in 2008 with the Dolphins, his final NFL postseason appearance when he surrendered four interceptions, and they got embarrassed by Baltimore. Pennington was gritty, sure, but playoff success always seemed to evade him.
Rex Grossman
Oh, Rex Grossman. The quarterback who somehow rode the Bears’ defense all the way to the Super Bowl in 2006 while doing everything in his power to derail them along the way.
The defense that year was special… if they’d had even a halfway decent signal caller the Lombardi Trophy would’ve landed in the Windy City for sure.
But Grossman saw to it that Bears fan’s misery continued!
Grossman’s playoff stats read like a horror story for Chicago fans. Five interceptions in four games, a passer rating that could barely find its way out of the ’60s, and a knack for crumbling in big moments.
His NFL postseason lowlight reel peaked in Super Bowl XLI against the Colts, where he fumbled a snap, threw two killer interceptions, and looked entirely out of his league.
Chicago’s defense and special teams dragged him to that Super Bowl. Grossman just happened to be along for the ride, and when it came down to it—he ruined it for the rest of his teammates.
Andy Dalton
“The Red Rifle” was a gunslinger during the regular season with all those offensive weapons on the early 2010s Bengals, but come playoff time, Andy Dalton might as well have been firing blanks… A truth that the heartbroken Bengals fans know all too well.
Four playoff appearances, four playoff losses. Just one touchdown against six interceptions… you could set your watch to it like clockwork.
And if there’s one game that encapsulates Dalton’s NFL postseason struggles, it’s that infamous 2011 Wild Card loss to the Texans. Three picks. A 13-9 final score that felt more like a funeral procession than a playoff game.
For a guy who led Cincinnati to five straight playoff berths, Dalton’s inability to win in January became the cruel punchline of his career.
The real shame of it is that those Bengals teams had talent, but Dalton’s postseason failures held them back every single time… And now, with the twilight of his career hanging on by a thread as a backup with the Panthers, it looks extremely unlikely that he’ll ever get a chance to change the narrative around his career.
Randall Cunningham
Randall Cunningham was a human highlight reel—a quarterback ahead of his time with the kind of athleticism that made defensive coordinators lose sleep. But when it came to playoff football? Cunningham looked far more mortal—not too dissimilar to what we’ve seen play out with Lamar Jackson in recent years…
Nine NFL playoff starts, but just three wins. Cunningham’s career postseason numbers—12 touchdowns, nine interceptions—don’t tell the full story of his struggles. He just looked like a different player out there… the decision-making stalled out, blunders added up, and, well, so did the disappointments.
The most painful moment ironically came in one of his better performances—and his last playoff game—the one no Vikings fan every wants to talk about… The 1998 NFC Championship game against the Falcons.
The Vikings were 15-1, a juggernaut. But Cunningham and the offense froze at the worst time, and Minnesota lost in overtime. For all his talent, Cunningham never found a way to conquer the postseason stage.
Brian Sipe
Brian Sipe played just one postseason game, unsurprisingly, for the Cleveland Browns, but it was so terrible we had no choice but to include him on this list.
His performance in the 14 – 12 loss to the Raiders was that bad…
Which is a shame—he was actually a solid signal caller in his day, he even won league MVP honors in 1980 throwing 30 touchdown passes and becoming just the third quarterback to eclipse 4,000 passing yards in a season.
But during the NFL postseason that year, he absolutely melted down, going 13 for 40 with three interceptions, with the final one getting snagged in the end zone, with Cleveland a field goal away from taking the lead in the closing minutes.
It is hard to do much worse than that in a single game!
T.J. Yates
Okay… take this one with a grain of salt—because in T.J. Yates’s defense, he wasn’t even supposed to be out there for the Houston Texans! The team just ran into some really bad luck in 2011.
The squad was coming off an AFC South championship and heading into the playoffs with the best running back in the game at the time, Arian Foster, and an 11-5 record, but disaster struck.
Both their starter and backup, Matt Schaub and Matt Leinart, respectively, suffered season-ending injuries. The crazy part is that their first and second-string quarterbacks weren’t exactly exciting options, either…
So, by the time it got down to old Yates, it was truly dire straits.
Yates wasn’t just thrown into the fire—he was fed to the lions… well… not literally Lions—they actually squared off with another jungle cat, the Bengals, but you get the point!
I don’t know if anyone actually expected him to be able to guide this team, which, right or wrong, had championship aspirations, to the promised land… For a second, he gave the fans hope as he managed to stay out of Foster’s way enough to secure a win in the Wild Card round.
Their star running back bulldozed the Bengals’ defense for 153 rushing yards and two touchdowns. Yates, meanwhile, threw for a pedestrian 159 yards with no touchdowns. Still, a win was a win, and the Texans advanced.
Then… came the Divisional Round matchup against the Baltimore Ravens, and everything unraveled.
Foster balled out again, going for 132 yards and a score on 27 carries.
But Yates looked every bit the inexperienced rookie, throwing three back-breaking interceptions while again failing to throw a touchdown pass. Baltimore’s defense ate him up, forcing bad throws and capitalizing on his mistakes.
And Houston’s championship dreams died that day in a crushing 20-13 loss—that would’ve been extremely winnable with even an average quarterback!
Jeff Garcia
Jeff Garcia was the ultimate underdog story. Undrafted out of San Jose State, he clawed his way to NFL relevance after a successful stint in the CFL. By the time he landed in the NFL, he had already proven he could win, but his knack for grinding out regular-season victories didn’t always translate to postseason glory.
In six starts, he was only 2-4 with seven touchdowns and seven interceptions to go along with a passer rating of 73.8. A far departure from the standard he worked so hard to establish on his regular season resume…
Which is what made it all the more frustrating… He was basically the Kirk Cousins before Kirk Cousins. The kind of quarterback that could excite you just enough to break your heart when it mattered most.
Neil O’Donnell
Steelers fans will never forget Neil O’Donnell—but not in the way you’d hope for a quarterback who led their team to a Super Bowl. Instead, his legacy in Pittsburgh is defined by one of the most infamous performances in postseason history: Super Bowl XXX.
Let’s set the stage. It was 1995, and O’Donnell had quietly put together a solid season, guiding the Steelers to a 10-6 record and their first Super Bowl appearance in over a decade.
The problem was O’Donnell was really no more than a journeyman… and when the NFL postseason arrived, he struggled to deliver.
In seven starts, O’Donnell went 3-4 with nine touchdowns and eight interceptions—with the aforementioned meltdown in Super Bowl XXX as the absolute low point. O’Donnell threw two crucial interceptions when his team still had a chance to win.
Both passes landed directly in the hands of Dallas cornerback Larry Brown, who wasn’t even covering a receiver on either play. Brown went on to win Super Bowl MVP, thanks entirely to O’Donnell’s mind-boggling mistakes. Those turnovers weren’t just costly—they were catastrophic, turning a close game into a 27-17 Cowboys victory… and landed O’Donnell on our list of worst postseason quarterbacks of all-time.
Kirk Cousins
If there’s one thing Kirk Cousins is known for, it’s putting up big numbers in the regular season—and even bigger question marks in the postseason. Cousins is the king of 1 p.m. kickoffs, where he can carve up defenses and rack up stats. But when the lights get brighter and the games matter more, his performances tend to wilt faster than a bouquet in the desert.
Cousins has made six playoff starts in his career, and while he’s managed one memorable win—a thrilling overtime victory against the Saints in the 2019 Wild Card round—his overall playoff résumé is… uninspiring. He’s 2-4 in those games, with just five touchdowns against four interceptions.
The issue with Cousins in the NFL postseason isn’t just the numbers—it’s the way he plays in big moments. Take the now infamous check down in the final seconds of the 2022 Wild Card game against the New York Giants.
The play perfectly encapsulated his postseason struggles—timid decisions, playing it safe, and coming up short when the stakes are highest.
For all his talent and gaudy stats, Cousins remains one of the most polarizing quarterbacks in the NFL. Fans and analysts alike are left asking the same question year after year: can he ever rise to the occasion when it matters most? So far, the answer has been a frustrating “no.”
And based on what we saw from him during his first season in Atlanta coming off that Achilles injury, unfortunately, it seems likely that he’s cemented himself as the poster child for playoff underachievement.
