The most famous drive in NFL history did not win the game. John Elway took Denver 98 yards in Cleveland in January 1987, and the touchdown at the end of it only tied the score - the Broncos still needed overtime. Everybody remembers the march and almost nobody remembers what was left to do after it. A game-winning drive is the purest test the sport has: one possession, a clock that only runs one way, and no next series to fix a mistake. The defense knows what is coming and still has to stop it. Here are the ten greatest final drives ever played, ranked on what they needed, how far they had to go, how little time they had, what was riding on them and what they decided - along with the down that nearly ended each one.
How We Ranked Them
Five questions, asked of every drive.
What did it need? A touchdown is harder than a field goal, because a drive that has to reach the end zone has no safe place to stop. A drive that only tied the game loses ground to one that won it.
How much field, and how much clock? Yards to go and time left, read together. Ninety yards with three minutes is a different problem from fifty yards with ninety seconds and no timeouts.
What were the stakes? A Super Bowl outranks a conference championship, which outranks a divisional game.
How hard was it? The opponent, the weather, the road crowd, and the down that should have killed it.
What did it decide? A title, a dynasty, a perfect season.
One more rule keeps this list apart from the greatest comebacks in NFL history. A comeback is about the size of a hole dug over a half. A game-winning drive is one possession against a deficit of one score at most, and not one game below appears on that list.
1. Eli Manning, Super Bowl XLII - Giants 17, Patriots 14
Own 17. 2:39 left. Down 14-10. Needed a touchdown.
New England arrived 18-0, favored by 12.5 points, and had just retaken the lead on a Randy Moss touchdown. A field goal was worthless. The Giants needed 83 yards and the end zone against a team 2:39 from perfection.
The drive should have died three times. On fourth-and-1 from his own 37, Brandon Jacobs got two yards. Two snaps later Asante Samuel had a game-sealing interception in his hands and dropped it. On the next play, third-and-5 with 1:15 left, Manning escaped the grasp of Patriots pass rushers in a collapsing pocket and threw deep to David Tyree, who pinned the ball to the crown of his helmet with one hand while Rodney Harrison tried to rip it loose. Thirty-two yards.
Tyree had caught four passes all regular season. It was the last catch of his NFL career.
Steve Smith converted a third-and-11, and Plaxico Burress caught a 13-yard touchdown with 35 seconds left. It sits first because it needed the end zone, had the least margin, and took away something that cannot be won back - the full story of that upset is in the biggest Super Bowl upsets in NFL history.
2. Joe Montana, Super Bowl XXIII - 49ers 20, Bengals 16
Own 8. 3:10 left. Down 16-13. A field goal would have tied it.
An illegal block on the kickoff return pushed San Francisco back from its 15 to its 8. In the huddle, in a story told ever since, Montana pointed into the crowd and asked whether that was John Candy.
Then he went 8 of 9 for 97 yards. The only real danger came when an illegal-man-downfield penalty wiped out a completion and left second-and-20 at the Cincinnati 45. Montana hit Jerry Rice for 27. Two plays later John Taylor caught a 10-yard touchdown on a post with 34 seconds left - his only catch of the game.
Eleven plays, 92 yards. Rice was MVP with 11 catches for 215 yards, and it was Bill Walsh's last game as an NFL head coach. The tying field goal was available the whole way down, which is the only reason this sits second - and the reason Montana's place among the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history starts with this possession.
3. John Elway, 1986 AFC Championship - Broncos 23, Browns 20 (OT)
Own 2. 5:32 left. Down 20-13. Needed a touchdown just to tie.
The Drive. Cleveland had gone ahead on a 48-yard Bernie Kosar touchdown pass, Denver muffed the kickoff, and Elway started at his own 2-yard line, on the road.
Fifteen plays, 98 yards, five minutes and two seconds. The play that kept it alive came with 1:47 left, after a sack had left third-and-18 at the Cleveland 48: Elway found Mark Jackson for 20. Jackson also caught the 5-yard touchdown, with 39 seconds left.
It ranks third for one reason: it tied the game. Cleveland punted on the first possession of overtime, Elway moved Denver 60 yards, and Rich Karlis kicked a 33-yard field goal to finish it.
4. Bart Starr, 1967 NFL Championship - Packers 21, Cowboys 17
Own 32. 4:50 left. Down 17-14. A field goal would have tied it.
The Ice Bowl. The temperature at kickoff was about fifteen below zero, and Dallas had taken the lead in the fourth quarter on a 50-yard halfback-option pass from Dan Reeves to Lance Rentzel.
Green Bay went 68 yards in 12 plays. Twice at the goal line Donny Anderson slipped on the ice and was stopped inside the 1. That left third down, the Packers' last timeout, and a choice: kick the tying field goal, or run a play that would end the season if it failed, with no clock left for anything else.
Starr called a wedge play and did not tell his teammates he planned to keep the ball. Jerry Kramer and Ken Bowman double-teamed Jethro Pugh, and Starr went in with 13 seconds left. It is the only drive here that turned down a tying kick on its final snap, and the game sits among the greatest NFL playoff games of all time.
5. Johnny Unitas, 1958 NFL Championship - Colts 23, Giants 17 (OT)
Own 14. About two minutes left. Down 17-14. Then 80 more yards in overtime.
The only entry ranked on two drives, because it needed both. Baltimore took over at its own 14 with a little over two minutes left, and Unitas threw three straight completions to Raymond Berry for 62 yards. Steve Myhra's 20-yard field goal tied it with seven seconds left.
Nobody had played sudden death for a title before. In overtime the Colts went 80 yards in 13 plays, and Alan Ameche scored from a yard out on third down. Berry finished with 12 catches for 178 yards. The first drive is the reason the game went on. The second is the reason it is still called the greatest game ever played.
6. Joe Montana, 1981 NFC Championship - 49ers 28, Cowboys 27
Own 11. 4:54 left. Down 27-21. Needed a touchdown.
Before the Catch there was a drive, and the surprise is how much of it happened on the ground. San Francisco handed off to Lenvil Elliott four times for 31 yards and ran Freddie Solomon on a 14-yard reverse. A team needing a touchdown with under five minutes left ran the ball five times and got away with it.
On third down from the Dallas 6, with 58 seconds left, Montana rolled right and threw high to the back of the end zone, and Dwight Clark caught it at his fingertips with Everson Walls on him. Eighty-nine yards. Two weeks later the 49ers won Super Bowl XVI, the first of five titles in one of the greatest NFL dynasties of all time.
7. Tom Brady, Super Bowl XXXVI - Patriots 20, Rams 17
Own 17. 1:21 left. Tied 17-17. No timeouts.
Ricky Proehl's touchdown tied the game, and on the broadcast John Madden said New England should run out the clock and take its chances in overtime. The Patriots were 14-point underdogs with a second-year quarterback.
Brady threw three short completions to J.R. Redmond for 24 yards, then found Troy Brown for 23 and Jermaine Wiggins for 6, and spiked it at the Rams' 30 with seven seconds left. Adam Vinatieri kicked a 48-yard field goal as time expired, and for the first time a Super Bowl was won on its final play.
It ranks seventh because it needed only a field goal and only 53 yards. It ranks at all because nobody watching expected a team with no timeouts to try, and because it was the first of six titles.
8. Ben Roethlisberger, Super Bowl XLIII - Steelers 27, Cardinals 23
Own 12 after a penalty. 2:30 left. Down 23-20.
Pittsburgh led 20-7 entering the fourth quarter and then watched Arizona score 16 straight points, the last of them on a 64-yard Larry Fitzgerald touchdown. A holding penalty on the first snap of the reply turned first-and-10 at the 22 into first-and-20 at the 12.
From there Roethlisberger went 88 yards, and Santonio Holmes caught four passes for 73 of them, the biggest a 40-yarder to the Arizona 6. On first down Roethlisberger tried Holmes in one corner of the end zone and missed. On second down he went to the other corner, and Holmes caught it with both feet down and three defenders closing in. Thirty-five seconds left, and Holmes was MVP.
9. Matthew Stafford, Super Bowl LVI - Rams 23, Bengals 20
Own 21. 6:13 left. Down 20-16. Needed a touchdown.
The longest clock on this list, and the drive used almost all of it. On fourth-and-1 at his own 30, Los Angeles gave the ball to Cooper Kupp on a jet sweep for seven yards. Near the goal line three straight snaps were wiped out by flags before Stafford found Kupp from a yard out with 1:25 left. Fifteen plays, 79 yards.
Then Aaron Donald pressured Joe Burrow into an incompletion on fourth-and-1 to finish it. Six minutes is a lot of time, which is why this sits ninth - and also the point, because a drive that leaves the other team 85 seconds controls how the game ends.
10. Roger Staubach, 1975 NFC Divisional - Cowboys 17, Vikings 14
Own 15. 1:51 left. Down 14-10. Needed a touchdown.
The drive that named a play. Minnesota had gone 12-2, the best record in the NFC. On fourth-and-16 Staubach found Drew Pearson for 25 yards. Then, from midfield, he threw deep for Pearson again, Nate Wright fell, and Pearson caught it for a 50-yard touchdown with 24 seconds left.
The Vikings argued Pearson had pushed off. No flag was thrown, and an official was struck by a bottle thrown from the stands. Afterward Staubach said: "I guess it's a Hail Mary pass. You throw it up and pray he catches it." It ranks tenth because it came in the divisional round, but no drive here changed the language of the sport more.
Honorable Mentions
Super Bowl XLVI, Giants over Patriots - down 17-15, Manning opened an 88-yard drive from his own 12 with a 38-yard sideline throw to Mario Manningham, who got both feet down between two defenders. New England let Ahmad Bradshaw score with 57 seconds left to get the ball back. It did not help.
2021 AFC Divisional, Chiefs over Bills - Buffalo went ahead 36-33 with 13 seconds left. Patrick Mahomes needed two completions, to Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, to set up Harrison Butker's tying 49-yard field goal as time expired, then won on an overtime touchdown Buffalo never got to answer. The league changed its playoff overtime rule that spring.
Super Bowl LVIII, Chiefs over 49ers - the second Super Bowl to reach overtime and the first under that new rule. San Francisco kicked a field goal on the first possession. Kansas City converted a fourth-and-1 at its own 34, went 75 yards, and won on a 3-yard pass to Mecole Hardman with three seconds left.
What the Great Drives Have in Common
The first thing is a down that should have ended it. Elway's third-and-18. Manning's fourth-and-1, then his third-and-5. Staubach's fourth-and-16. Stafford's fourth-and-1 at his own 30. A great final drive is not ten good plays in a row. It is one play that refuses to fail, surrounded by ordinary ones.
The second is that the hero is rarely the star. John Taylor's touchdown was his only catch of Super Bowl XXIII. David Tyree had four catches all regular season. A running back, J.R. Redmond, caught three passes on the drive that won Super Bowl XXXVI. Defenses spend two weeks planning for the best player on the field, and the final drive keeps finding somebody else - which is why these games make such good material for Roll Call, where you name everyone who touched the ball in a playoff game.
The third is the clock, which cuts both ways. Most of the drives here left the other team between 13 and 85 seconds, and the defense still had to get a stop. The Patriots got 35 seconds after Burress scored, and Brady was sacked once and threw three incompletions. Only Vinatieri's kick and the overtime finishes in 1958 and 1987 left the losing team no answer at all. That is the craft of the two-minute drill: pick the right man, one snap at a time, with the clock running - the same call Two-Minute Drill asks you to make in twenty seconds.
Related Reading
- The Greatest Comebacks in NFL History, Ranked
- The Greatest Quarterbacks in NFL History, Ranked
- The Greatest NFL Playoff Games of All Time
- The Greatest Super Bowls of All Time: The 10 Best Games Ranked
Every drive above came down to picking the right man, play after play, with the clock running. Build the best path down the board in 20 seconds in our daily Two-Minute Drill, or see how many names you can recall before time runs out in Play Clock.