NFL ప్లేఆఫ్స్ QB ర్యాంకింగ్స్: మీరు ఎవరిని ఎక్కువగా విశ్వసిస్తారు?

It gets to this time of the NFL season and the math stops making sense. There are only eight teams and seven games left. The season is nearly over.

So as we rank the quarterbacks for the final stretch, it is as difficult as ever. It’s an impressive field with signal-callers playing at an extremely high level. 

For this week’s rankings, I’ll focus on the following: Who do I trust most? 

Oh, Sam. What are we going to do with you? Darnold has yet to shake his reputation for struggling in big games. He’s reliably unreliable — and hard to trust.

So far this year, the Seahawks have had an answer for that. They avoid him as best they can. They set him up for success with a great defense and rushing attack. They only ask him to put the offense on his back when they absolutely must.

But if his team doesn’t seem to really trust him, why should we?

It had been hard to trust Stroud at any point in the past two years — let alone the playoffs. He’s a streaky pocket quarterback whose career has been defined by its ups and downs, which were on full display in his uneven performance against the Steelers. Don’t get me wrong: Stroud actually has three playoff wins. But from my vantage, that’s largely because of the way DeMeco Ryans runs the Texans defense. Stroud can be a really good QB. But this is a playoff field that features better ones.

To his credit, Nix has debunked the major criticism surrounding him. You can’t call him a pocket quarterback because he can move. You can’t call him a game-manager because he can be as aggressive as any of the league’s most confident throwers. You can’t call him a bad decision-maker, because his interception percentage is 2.0%. 

Can you call him a playmaker? 

Yes. You have to. He had 25 passing touchdowns and five rushing touchdowns in 2025. He came in third in the NFL in big-time throws (29), behind Matthew Stafford and Dak Prescott. 

The only uncertainty surrounding Nix is that he’s never won a playoff game, getting bounced one-and-done last year in a 31-7 blowout against the Bills. He and the Broncos will jump into the deep end again in the divisional round against — who else? — the Bills.

Purdy helped the 49ers upset the Eagles, but Philly helped him out a whole lot with its own self-destructive behaviors. 

He threw two touchdowns and two interceptions and finished with a .2% CPOE (essentially indicating he completed exactly as many throws as were expected of him). That’s a real achievement for an offense that lost George Kittle in the middle of the game, and didn’t have receiver Ricky Pearsall at all. Purdy continued displaying what has impressed me most about him all year — a resilience in the wake of unusual injury luck (which is startlingly usual for the 49ers). And he did that despite 35 mph winds in Philly. 

Purdy also has an absurd five playoff wins — just one fewer than Matthew Stafford. This past Sunday, he delivered a late game-winning drive against one of the league’s best defenses. His traits aren’t comparable to Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. But Purdy’s résumé? That’s impressive. The question remains how much of it is a credit to him versus his coach.

If you only watched Williams’ second-half film from much of this season, you’d think he was the best QB in NFL.

If you only watched Williams’ first-half film, you’d have no idea how he was still a starting QB, let alone a centerpiece of a playoff team.

But he is both of those guys. He is yin and yang. He is oil and water.

I would trust Williams a whole lot more if he could simply build a lead and hold it. But it would be crazy to wholly distrust a quarterback who has helped post this stat: The Bears have seven comeback wins in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter/OT this season. That is the most in a single season all time (regular season plus playoffs), per FOX Sports Research.

We saw a team like this last year: the Chiefs. They 1) made a deep run, 2) got clobbered in the Super Bowl and 3) missed the playoffs this year. I’m not saying I can predict that for the Bears. I’m just saying comeback kids are hot until they’re not. Right now, Caleb is hot.

In his first NFL start back in 2024, he stepped into one of his first throws — and airmailed the ball into the hands of a defender. It was nerves, clearly. During his 2025 debut, Maye might have also had some jitters, with an interception and a 20-13 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. So it made sense that he didn’t come out firing in his postseason debut this past weekend, particularly given that the Chargers’ defense is designed to force teams to check down and stay patient. That helps explain the following splits:

First half vs. Chargers: 6/15, 95 yards, one INT, 2 sacks (11 yards), 34 passer rating
Second half: 11/14, 173 passing yards, 1 TD, 3 sacks, 1 fumble, 142.0 passer rating

It was far from perfect. But Maye improved as the game went on — and against one of the most respected defenses in the NFL (so much so that defensive coordinator Jesse Minter might get a head coaching job). But it’s not like it’ll get easier this week for the MVP finalist. The Chargers might be a top-10 defense in points allowed per game (20), but the Texans are top two (17.4).

Stafford is an incredible QB and in the midst of the best season of his career, but his playoff résumé isn’t exactly sterling.

He has four one-and-done playoff appearances, including one with the Rams in 2023 when they saw the Lions in the wild-card round. The Eagles bounced Stafford in the postseason last year in the divisional round. He’s only made it to one conference championship game, which, of course, he won on the way to a Super Bowl victory.

Stafford is trustworthy because he’s Stafford — the elder statesman of the divisional round and the only QB still going with Super Bowl experience. But there are legit questions surrounding the first-team All-Pro — and his team, which looked more vulnerable than we anticipated this past weekend against the Panthers.

If there’s one throw that makes me trust Allen, it’s that throw he missed to Khalil Shakir in the back of the end zone two weeks ago against the Philadelphia Eagles. That lost the game for Buffalo. And it was so obviously Allen’s fault — and at a moment that so obviously would’ve won it.

So, why am I bringing up a lowlight?

Because I was downright astonished. It didn’t compute that Allen could make such a big mistake in a game’s biggest moment. Now, maybe that’s on me. But look at his body of work throughout his season. This past Sunday, he and the Bills scored a touchdown with less than one minute left on the clock and — shortly after — beat the Jacksonville Jaguars. 

In Week 1, Allen and the Bills overcame a 15-point deficit to edge the Ravens, 41-40. In Week 14, Buffalo overcame a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter against the Bengals. In Week 15, the Bills came back to beat the Patriots after trailing 21-0 at halftime.

“As long as there is time on the clock, we always got a chance. Tonight, it was no different,” Shakir told me after their win over New England. “The guy we have leading our team is unbelievable. We just keep going, keep throwing punches, keep throwing bows. And then the score speaks for itself.”

So, again, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when Allen missed Shakir. And I’d bet the Bills couldn’t either. That’s how much they trust him. He’s the best football player on the planet. It has gotten to the point where you expect him never to make big mistakes.

Before joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna. 

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