John Elway and Dan Marino were still starting quarterbacks, Tom Brady was a little-known college player at Michigan and at least six starting quarterbacks for potential 2025 playoffs teams weren't even alive the last time the NFL had a postseason like this.
With Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs officially eliminated from playoff contention, the upcoming playoffs will be the first since the 1998 season that don't feature at least one of Mahomes, Brady or Peyton Manning at quarterback.
Those three prolific passers have defined the past quarter-century of NFL football, especially when it comes to the postseason. Since Manning made his playoff debut in his second season in 1999, at least one of those quarterbacks has been on center stage almost every January.
In the past 26 seasons, that trio combined for 42 playoff berths, 96 postseason starts, 66 playoff wins and 12 Super Bowl titles, with Brady winning seven, Mahomes three and Manning two.
At least one of the three made it to the conference championship weekend in 20 of the 26 postseasons — including either Brady or Mahomes in the last 15 — with 18 Super Bowls featuring at least one, including when Brady beat Mahomes in Super Bowl 55 following the 2020 season.
Brady and Mahomes stand on top of the leaderboard when it comes to several postseason quarterback stats, including wins (Brady 35, Mahomes 17) and TD passes (Brady 88, Mahomes 46).
The absence of Mahomes and the Chiefs could open the door for someone like Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson to make their first Super Bowl trip or even give an opportunity to a newer generation that features six quarterbacks whose teams are currently in playoff position and weren't born during the 1998 playoffs: Drake Maye, C.J. Stroud, Trevor Lawrence, Bo Nix, Caleb Williams and Brock Purdy.
Carolina's Bryce Young could be a seventh if the Panthers surpass Tampa Bay in the NFC South race.
The quarterbacks from that 1998 postseason featured five future Hall of Famers in Elway, Marino, Steve Young, Troy Aikman and Brett Favre; other longtime quarterbacks like Vinny Testaverde, Mark Brunell and Randall Cunningham; as well as Chris Chandler, Jake Plummer, Doug Flutie and Scott Zolak.
Elway finished that postseason run by winning his second straight Super Bowl for Denver over Chandler and the Atlanta Falcons. He retired after that game, with Marino, Young and Aikman following in the next two years.
Comeback kids
New England seemed ready to clinch the AFC East after racing out to a 21-0 lead over Buffalo on Sunday. The Patriots had won 72 straight games in the regular season and playoffs when leading by at least 21 points, with the last loss coming in 2011 against Buffalo.
Well, it happened again, as Josh Allen led the Bills back for a 35-31 win and their first comeback from 21 points down since that Week 3 game 14 years ago.
Buffalo improved to 6-149 in its history after trailing by at least 21 points, with the most famous rally coming in the 1992 wild-card round when the Bills overcame a 35-3 deficit to beat Houston 41-38 in overtime.
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But big comebacks have been prevalent this season, with Week 15 marking the second time this season that six teams overcame double-digit deficits to win in the same week; it also happened in Week 5. There have been only five other weeks in NFL history with at least six double-digit comebacks, with the last before this year coming in Week 13 of the 2013 season.
The other comeback winners this week featured Atlanta rallying from 14 points down on Thursday night to beat Tampa Bay, while the Chargers, Rams, Saints and Seahawks overcame 10-point deficits on Sunday.
There have been 30 double-digit comebacks in all this season, far short of the record of 50 set in 2022.
Shutout stats
Cincinnati and Las Vegas combined to give the NFL a rare double-shutout week.
The Bengals lost 24-0 to Baltimore and the Raiders fell 31-0 to Philadelphia, marking the first time since Week 7 of the 2019 season that two teams were shut out on the same weekend.
There have been only seven shutouts all season, with the Raiders the victim of two of them, having also lost 31-0 in Week 7 at Kansas City. Those two bleak performances put Las Vegas in some rare company.
The Raiders are the 13th team in the Super Bowl era to get shut out by at least 31 points in the same season, with the only other team to do it in the last 27 seasons being the 2021 Texans.
Las Vegas finished with 75 yards of offense on Sunday — the fewest in a game the past two seasons and second fewest in franchise history — after being held to 95 against the Chiefs. The last team to be held to fewer than 100 yards of offense twice in a season was Seattle in 1992. The Seahawks scored 140 points that season for the fewest ever in a season of at least 16 games.
The Bengals had a rarity of their own in their loss as they failed to score a point despite having the ball for 39:19. That's the highest time of possession since at least 1991 for a team when getting shut out, besting the 36:56 for the Raiders in a 52-0 loss to the Rams in 2014.
Inside the Numbers dives into NFL statistics, streaks and trends each week. For more Inside the Numbers, head here.
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