Former New York Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler says in a new book that he started and won Super Bowl XXV against the Buffalo Bills with a torn ACL in his left knee.
Hostetler, who became the first backup quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl, was injured on a controversial low hit to the knee from former teammate Jim Burt early in the fourth quarter of the 1991 NFC Championship Game against the San Francisco 49ers.
The two-time defending champion 49ers were attempting to pull off a three-peat in that 1990 season, but Hostetler led a comeback after getting hurt. The Giants then beat the Buffalo Bills the following week 20-19 in the Super Bowl.
From the book "The Franchise: New York Giants -- A Curated History of Big Blue" by ESPN's Giants reporter Jordan Raanan, Hostetler said his injury was deemed a hyperextended knee at the time.
From an excerpt:
Hostetler spent the whole week leading up to the Super Bowl tending to his left leg. It wasn't great, but there was no way he was going to miss the biggest game of his life. All these years later, Hostetler said he had suffered a torn ACL. He actually played the end of the NFC Championship Game, the Super Bowl, and the rest of his NFL career with no intact ACL in his knee!
"I'm one of the very few that had enough other things going on structure-wise that I was able to continue to function," Hostetler said.
To this day, he maintains it has never been fixed. He's had MRIs since, and doctors will look at the knee and mention the ACL is gone. It's something he already knows, but it's also nothing one can really tell without doing a thorough evaluation.
Hostetler went 20-of-32 passing with a touchdown in the Super Bowl that ended on a Scott Norwood missed field goal that famously sailed wide right. The player affectionately known as "Hoss" also earned relentless praise from teammates for holding onto the football with a cobra grip despite being sacked in the end zone for a safety and being hit directly on the wrist by Bills star pass rusher Bruce Smith.
Hostetler went on to play seven more professional seasons with the Giants, Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders and Washington Redskins.
But it was that 1990 season where Hostetler really wrote his legacy. He became the Giants' starter when Phil Simms broke his foot in Week 15 of that season.
Things were going smoothly for Hostetler and the Giants until late in that NFC Championship Game in San Francisco.
Hostetler can still remember hearing the pop. The pain was excruciating -- so bad that he couldn't hear the medical team as they attended to him on the field. He describes it as if someone had pressed the mute button. It hurt even more because Hostetler had waited so long for this opportunity to play and start. This was his opportunity of a lifetime. And this was the NFC Championship Game. How could it all get take away just like that? Could this really be how the opportunity he had waited all these years for was going to play out?
That is when Hostetler believes some sort of minor miracle took place. "I came from a real strong Christian family and a mom that was constantly praying for us. And I'm out there on the field and I'm going to tell you this because this is the truth and what happened. I'm out there in all kinds of pain and then, all of a sudden, I just felt a little bit of tingling across me, and it's just like all the pain kind of just disappeared," Hostetler said. "And they helped me up, and I'm thinking, Well, I think, I don't know, maybe I can [play]."
Hostetler walked slowly over to the sideline. Little by little, his knee felt a tinge better while third-string quarterback Matt Cavanaugh nervously commanded the huddle. It wasn't going to work with Cavanaugh against that great 49ers team. Parcells and the Giants needed Hostetler. New York trailed 13-9 and knew what was necessary if it had any chance to win the game. "Can you go?" Parcells asked. "Can you go?"
"I knew I could go," Hostetler said. "I felt like I could have enough stability there to go do it and was able to get back in and lead a drive down to make a couple throws on the run."
Hostetler led two scoring drive in the final 10 minutes after hurting his knee.