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Seth Walder
When Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow went down because of a turf toe injury in the middle of the Cincinnati’s 31-27 win over the Jaguars on Sunday, it hurt the Bengals’ chances in that game and going forward. But it could have been a lot worse — they could have a QB2 much worse than Jake Browning.
In the world of backup quarterbacks, the Bengals are in pretty good shape. Having a capable No. 2 option is the type of thing that doesn’t matter much until it matters a lot. And NFL teams don’t know when that moment will strike. We’ve already seen one second-stringer called into duty this season; the 49ers started Mac Jones in Week 2 with Brock Purdy injured (left shoulder and toe).
Now, starting quarterbacks such as Burrow, J.J. McCarthy (Vikings), Jayden Daniels (Commanders) and Justin Fields (Jets) are all either out or questionable to play in Week 3. So we decided to rank the 12 best backups in the NFL. It’s a tricky exercise, because many of these players have limited (or no) NFL track record. But let’s look at the list.
No one would have blinked had Cousins been traded this past offseason and become a Week 1 starter somewhere. Maybe having Cousins as QB1 wouldn’t have a team feeling great about its starting quarterback situation, but he’s one of the best 32 signal-callers in the league. Having him as a backup is a luxury.
Cousins is coming off a disappointing 2024 season in which he was benched late in the year for current starter Michael Penix Jr. Cousins recorded a 47.0 QBR before his benching, which ranked 23rd in the league. He had issues with turnovers in 2024, throwing a league-high 16 interceptions and committing an NFL-high 13 fumbles. But there were positives — Cousins ranked No. 7 in completion percentage over expectation (plus-2%), per NFL Next Gen Stats. And he’s only two years removed from having the seventh-best QBR in the NFL before being sidelined by a season-ending Achilles injury.
At age 37, Cousins offers arguably the highest floor of any backup QB. And since he’s another year separated from the Achilles injury and considering the fluky nature of turnovers, there’s a chance he could still be a solid NFL quarterback.
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I’m not putting Browning here because he led the Bengals to victory Sunday after being thrust into the game for the injured Burrow, who is expected to be sidelined at least three months. I had Browning third in this exercise
The unvarnished upside of young, highly drafted rookies means someone like Dart deserves to be on a list like this. He might possess a lower floor than many other backups, but he also critically has a higher upside.
At this time a year ago, I put Drake Maye at No. 1 and Penix at No. 5. I feel pretty good about those rankings; if anything, I probably wasn’t high enough on Penix.
Mariota, who we might see Sunday because of Daniels’ knee injury, is only 31 years old despite being in the NFL for a decade. Though he hasn’t played a lot recently (three games played and zero starts in each of the past two seasons), we have a decent sample size from him. And he has been very solid when having to serve as a fill-in.
Mariota has a 66.2 QBR since 2020, the first full season after he was benched for Ryan Tannehill in Tennessee. In 2022 with the Falcons — the one season in that span when he was mostly a starter — his QBR was 58.0. And ESPN’s Football Power Index, which has predictive ratings for all starting and backup quarterbacks, considers Mariota the third-best backup behind Cousins and Browning.
0:43
Schefter: Jayden Daniels’ knee sprain could sideline him
Adam Schefter reports on Jayden Daniels’ sprained knee that leaves his status for Week 3 questionable.
McKee is an interesting case. Unlike many QBs on this list, he doesn’t have a solid track record of regular-season play. He was also a sixth-round pick in 2023. But signals from training camp and the preseason over the past couple of years have seemed awfully positive, and the Eagles happily dealing Kenny Pickett in the offseason (well ahead of training camp) was a vote of confidence. Plus, McKee has been strong when he has played. He has a 65.5 career QBR on 47 dropbacks over two games, including one start — a 20-13 win against the Giants in Week 18 last season.
I’ll confess that this ranking is based more on vibes than most of the others. But vibes can also serve as a viable data point.
Brissett played well as the Browns’ starter during the first 11 weeks of the 2022 season while Deshaun Watson was serving a suspension. He finished the season eighth in QBR (62.0), and his performance looked even better when Watson struggled to run the Cleveland offense.
Thanks to that, Brissett became a relatively hot commodity in the bridge/backup quarterback market the following offseason and signed a one-year, $8 million free agent deal with the Commanders. A year later, he went to the Patriots on a similar deal, serving as New England’s starting quarterback before giving way to Maye. The results weren’t great — a 41.5 QBR and a minus-1% CPOE, but he wasn’t given much to work with there. The Patriots finished 31st in pass block win rate en route to a 4-13 season that resulted in the firing of coach Jerod Mayo after one year.
The 32-year-old Brissett is a few seasons removed from the success he had in Cleveland, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant.
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In 2024, the Raiders signed Minshew to a two-year, $25 million deal with $15 million guaranteed to be a bridge starting quarterback. The partnership lasted only one season, and this offseason Minshew signed with the Chiefs on a non-guaranteed one-year, $1.2 million deal — showing that quarterback evaluation is hardly a perfect science. Minshew struggled in Las Vegas, achieving the rare quadruple of throwing picks at a high rate, taking sacks at a high rate, fumbling at a high rate and throwing very short (78% of attempts under 10 yards, most among qualifying QBs).
But he is reasonably accurate (even accounting for depth of target) and had quite a bit of success in 2023 with the Colts (60.5 QBR, 13th) after Anthony Richardson Sr. was injured. He played well in a run-heavy offense; he saw a lot of play-action and faced heavier boxes.
I’m giving Shough the same benefit of the doubt that Dart earned. But it’s lighter for two reasons: He was drafted a little later than Dart (No. 40 vs. No. 25) and he couldn’t beat out Spencer Rattler in the preseason.
Richardson probably has the lowest floor of any quarterback on this list, given his extreme accuracy issues highlighted by a wildly low career minus-10% completion percentage over expectation. But Richardson’s NFL sample is a small 15 games, and he still offers a level of upside that other backup quarterbacks do not possess. He is fourth in EPA per designed rush among quarterbacks with at least 300 dropbacks since 2023.
Plus, variance can be a backup quarterback’s friend, and Richardson has plenty of that. Since 2023, no QB has thrown a higher percentage of their passes 20-plus yards downfield (18%) and the only player with a higher interception rate is Jameis Winston.
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At this time last season, Dalton was the starting bridge quarterback to a benched Bryce Young. And had Dalton not suffered a sprained thumb in a car crash, he might have retained the job and now be serving a bridge role ahead of a youthful quarterback not named Young. Dalton recorded a 1-4 record in five starts last season but also had a 52.0 QBR. In his post-Bengals career (from 2020 on), Dalton has recorded a 48.0 QBR.
We’ll probably see Wentz starting this week, as McCarthy is expected to be out for 2-4 weeks because of an ankle injury. According to ESPN’s Bill Barnwell, this would make Wentz the only quarterback in NFL history to start a game in six consecutive seasons with six different teams.
That’s part of Wentz’s odd career. The 2016 No. 2 pick has gone from being a franchise quarterback in Philadelphia — where he was a prime MVP contender in 2017 before being injured and having to watch the Eagles win a Super Bowl without him — to a cast-off who was unable to become a long-term starter in Indianapolis or Washington. He has started one game apiece the past two seasons as a backup with the Rams and Chiefs, respectively.
Wentz’s peak came in 2017, but that season turned out to be an outlier driven by exceptional results on late downs (he ranked only 12th in QBR on early downs). From that point on, his numbers dipped — a 55.3 QBR, minus-2% completion percentage over expectation and only 5.8 yards per dropback. His one-game cameos the past two seasons have been dramatically different. He posted a 90.2 QBR for the Rams in a Week 18 win over the 49ers in 2023 but could muster only a 19.1 QBR in a lopsided shutout loss to the Broncos in last season’s finale.
Wentz has had the benefit of playing for great offensive coaches over the past two seasons, and he gets that perk again with Kevin O’Connell. But he’ll have to perform in games that actually matter this time.
1:44
Schefter: McCarthy not expected to play against Bengals
Adam Schefter says J.J. McCarthy is not expected to play against the Bengals due to an ankle injury and will likely be replaced by Carson Wentz.
Winston might be the Giants’ No. 3, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be one of the 12 best backups in the league. Winston has never recorded a QBR under 50 in a season in which he started at least five games. Even though the Browns went 2-5 in his starts in 2024, he posted a 52.2 QBR — which would have been higher than quarterbacks such as Geno Smith, Russell Wilson, C.J. Stroud and Aaron Rodgers had he qualified.
Winston notoriously struggles with interceptions — he has thrown 111 in 105 career games and 87 starts — but is willing to take chances. Sometimes when you’re down to your backup QB, risk can be a good thing.
Honorable mentions: Tyrod Taylor (New York Jets), Jimmy Garoppolo (Los Angeles Rams)
