It’s hard to believe that the 2026 NFL season is already a third of the way through the regular season. Kickoff day seems like just a few weeks ago. Remember when Drew Lock had to fill in for Sam Darnold just a few plays into the game?
Well, I do, and it got me thinking. What other backup quarterbacks have we seen this season, and how do they stack up? That’s the question we’re trying to answer today with these tier rankings.
For a little maintenance before we get into tier ranking, here are some of the rules to use today. A backup quarterback must have played at least half of the football this season (anything shorter is either too small or too skewed a sample size to rank, depending on when the guy entered the game), so apologies to JJ McCarthy, Fernando Mendoza and the like, but we haven’t seen enough of you to qualify for these rankings.
Additionally, the order is from top to bottom, meaning the first player mentioned in a particular tier is the worst in it, and the last person in it should be considered the best in the tier.
The Worst
Cooper Rush
Remember when Cooper Rush gave the Dallas Cowboys competent quarterback play in 2022 and 2024? That seems like a bygone era for him at this point. This year has been nothing short of a disaster for the veteran backup.
To be fair to him, he was named the starter midway through the first week of practice for the Atlanta Falcons in Week 1 when the named starter, Tua Tagovailoa, was injured. In a way, he can be forgiven for that outing. However, he had a full week of practice in Week 2 and did even worse against a beaten and demoralized Carolina Panthers defense, resulting in Rush being benched in that game for someone we’ll cover later in the tier list.
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