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The Official Web Site of the WVU Varsity Club |
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Profile: Jeff Hostetler
A backup quarterback who doesn’t throw a regular season pass for the first five years of his professional career, takes over for the injured starting quarterback late in the year, and leads his team to a Super Bowl title is something straight out of Hollywood. But that’s what Hostetler did on Jan. 27, 1991, when the New York Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills 20-19. “However frustrated he was, he hung in there,” remarked Giants general manager George Young, Hostetler’s strongest advocate as he waited to take over for starter Phil Simms. Making the circumstances even more dramatic was the extensive security presence at Tampa Stadium and the heightened patriotism triggered by the beginning stages of Operation Desert Storm. Hostetler became the care taker of New York’s NFL title hopes when Simms broke his foot at the end of the regular season. Coach Bill Parcells had constructed a dominant defense led by all-pro linebacker Lawrence Taylor and a punishing running game orchestrated by 35-year-old Otis Anderson. All Hostetler had to do was not screw things up. In the NFC divisional playoff game against the Chicago Bears, Parcells had Hostetler throw just 17 passes in a 31-3 victory. A week later against the two-time defending Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers, Parcells once again took the air out of the football and relied on a defense that eventually knocked all-pro quarterback Joe Montana out of the game. New York kicker Matt Bahr made five field goals to help the Giants to a narrow 15-13 victory over the 49ers. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Bills were marching right through the AFC. The Bills put up 44 points against Miami in the divisional playoff game and embarrassed the Los Angeles Raiders 51-3 in the AFC Championship game. If New York was to have any chance against the Bills’ high-powered offense, it was going to have to keep the football out of Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly’s hands and Hostetler was going to have to keep from making critical mistakes. Ten years later in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Hostetler reflected on the magnitude of the situation he was facing, “In the tunnel, getting ready to be introduced, running out, all of the fans with their flags, Whitney Houston, the formation flying over top,” he said. “It’s all still as vivid as can be.” Buffalo had a 10-3 lead early in the second quarter when Hostetler made what turned out to be the game saving play. Backed up to their own goal line, the Giants opted for a play action pass to try and catch the Bills off guard. Buffalo’s all-pro defensive tackle Bruce Smith broke free of the line and had a clear shot at Hostetler’s blind side. The former Virginia Tech All-American hit Hostetler with such force that the football nearly came out of his grasp as he was falling to the turf. Instinctively, Hostetler clutched the ball with both hands before he hit the ground. A Buffalo safety was far better than a touchdown. “I got flattened,” he said. “I can remember sitting there by myself and looking up above one of the end zones and there was a helicopter hovering with its guns out. Right there in the game. I saw that thing and thought, “Man, can you believe we’ve got something like this going on, and we’re playing a football game?’” Smith’s jolt of reality and the sight of starter Phil Simms flipping a football in the air on the sidelines helped give Hostetler a new resolve. He engineered a touchdown drive late in the second quarter to get the Giants back into the game. Hostetler found wide receiver Stephen Baker in the corner of the end zone for a 14-yard touchdown that closed Buffalo’s lead to 12-10. Then in the third quarter the Giants got the football and held it for a Super Bowl-record nine minutes and 29 seconds. Anderson scored on a short touchdown run to give the Giants the lead. Buffalo answered with a Thurman Thomas TD run before Hostetler calmly engineered a final New York drive that resulted in a 21-yard Bahr field goal. Scott Norwood’s 47-yard attempt to win the game for Buffalo sailed just wide of the goal post to give the Giants a 20-19 victory. “Buffalo has a great defense and they do things to rattle you,” said New York running back Dave Meggett. “And they wanted to rattle Jeff. But he kept control and did what he had to do, especially on third downs. He did a very good job to keep the drives going.” “He looks frail but he’s very tough,” added Giants tight end Mark Bavaro. “He’s very strong and very resilient.” Anderson was the game’s MVP, but it was Hostetler who kept the offense together. He finished the game completing 20-of-32 passes for 222 yards and a touchdown. Not only was he an immediate star in New York City, but he also became the Giants starting quarterback the following season when Ray Handey took over for Parcells in 1991 The Giants slipped to 8-8 that season and Hostetler spent one more year in New York in 1992 before signing a lucrative free agent contract to quarterback the Oakland Raiders in 1993.
Hostetler fired a career-high 23 touchdown passes two years later in 1996 in what turned out to be his final season in Oakland. A desire to be closer to his family in Morgantown, W.Va., led Hostetler to sign a free agent deal with the Washington Redskins to back up starter Gus Frerotte. Hostetler appeared in eight games that year when Frerotte was injured. He completed 79-of-144 passes for 899 yards as a backup. The following preseason, Hostetler injured his right knee and then re-injured it in mid September. He was also unhappy about being demoted to third string and decided to pack up and head back to Morgantown. The dispute ended with Hostetler going on injured reserve and eventually being released. Several teams showed interest in the quarterback right up until his 40th birthday, but no situation was enticing enough to lure him out of retirement. Also, a desire to see his son Tyler completely recover from an ATV accident kept him from pursuing any other offers. His final NFL passing figures showed 16,430 yards and 85 touchdowns and a quarterback rating of 80.5 that ranks among the best in NFL history. Hostetler was done with the game he first began playing at age seven in the small community of Hollsopple, located not too far from Johnstown in the farm country of central Pennsylvania. After his senior season at Conemaugh Township, he fulfilled his boyhood dream by earning a football scholarship to Penn State. Jeff was the third member of his family to play at Penn State and he expected to have a memorable four-year career in State College. The quarterback won the starting job in 1980 and he played in three games before being replaced by Todd Blackledge after a loss to Nebraska. “We reached the point, after the Nebraska game, where we had to make a decision,” said Penn State coach Joe Paterno in a Sports Illustrated interview. “That didn’t mean that Jeff wasn’t a good quarterback. It’s just that we had to decide.” Hostetler remained on the bench for the rest of the season and when he didn’t get an opportunity to play in the Fiesta Bowl, he made up his mind to transfer. “When he played against us in ’79 I thought he was the best quarterback Penn State had,” former Pitt coach Foge Fazio said in a 1983 interview. “Blackledge was redshirted that year.” West Virginia University eventually won out for his services. After a year interning behind Oliver Luck, Hostetler took over the Mountaineer offense in 1982. “We had some good players, but Jeff was what we really needed,” said West Virginia coach Don Nehlen. His first assignment as a Mountaineer came against No. 9-rated Oklahoma in Norman. "Hoss" coolly threw for 321 yards and four touchdowns to lead West Virginia to a stunning upset. It was easily one of the finest first-game performances in school history. He followed that up a week later with a 19-of-37, 285-yard, and one-touchdown performance to defeat Maryland 19-18. Jeff Hostetler was an overnight star in West Virginia. He was also playing quarterback at a very unique time in Eastern football. Just 80 miles North in Pittsburgh was Pitt’s senior quarterback Dan Marino. To the East was his former rival Todd Blackledge at Penn State, and up in Boston there was BC quarterback Doug Flutie. Boomer Esiason was also quarterbacking the Maryland Terrapins just three hours East from Morgantown. In head-to-head play against the four, Hostetler performed very well. He beat Flutie and Esiason both times he faced them, and out-passed Marino and Blackledge in tough losses. His brief, 22-game, two-year West Virginia career saw him complete 310-of-601 passes for 4,261 yards and 26 touchdowns. Hostetler’s completion percentage of 51.5 was far lower than his professional completion percentage mainly because the Mountaineer offense required him to throw many more long passes. He averaged 13.7 yards per completion and 7.1 yards per attempt. Hostetler also didn’t have the benefit of a strong rushing attack Nehlen later developed at WVU. He is tied with Chad Johnston for second in career 200-yard passing games with 10 and also ranks among the school’s top 10 in season completions (4th), total offense (5th), season touchdown passes (6th), career total offense (7th), career passing yards (8th), career completions (9th) and career touchdown passes (10th). More importantly West Virginia managed an 18-6 record during his two years as a starter, advancing to the Gator and Hall of Fame bowls. Hostetler married Nehlen’s daughter Vicki and the couple and their family continue to live in Morgantown. Hostetler was inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 1998. |
There
couldn’t have been a better script written to describe Jeff
Hostetler’s courageous performance in Super Bowl XXV in Tampa, Fla.
His
two most productive NFL seasons came with the Raiders in 1993 and
1994 when he passed for more than 3,000 yards both years. In 1994 he
completed 263-of-455 passes for 3,334 yards and 20 touchdowns to
earn a spot on the AFC pro bowl roster. |
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