Every NFL player dreams of winning the Super Bowl. But in the ultimate team game, sometimes a great player never has the good fortune of enjoying that type of team success.
We are counting down the 5 best players to never win a Super Bowl along with some honorable mentions at the position they played.
And remember to check out our favorite NFL betting sites before you go placing your Super Bowl bets!
5 TE Tony Gonzalez
Honorable Mention (Tight Ends): Antonio Gates, Kellen Winslow, Jason Witten
An elite tight end has turned into a bit of a cheat code for modern NFL offenses with Rob Gronkowski and Travis Kelce winning 6 Super Bowls in the last decade. If Kelce doesn’t get a 3rd ring, then George Kittle will win his 1st for the 49ers as another great tight end.
But the gold standard for longevity and greatness at the position is still Tony Gonzalez. Over 17 seasons (1997-2013), he racked up 1,325 catches (3rd in NFL history), 15,127 receiving yards (6th in NFL history), and 111 touchdown catches (8th in NFL history).
Those numbers for the catches and receiving yards are still the records for tight ends, and if Kelce is serious about his relationship with Taylor Swift, then he may not be in the game much longer to take those records down.
Gonzalez was not the first tight end to be featured as his team’s best receiver, but he was on a short list of players to do that. His 102 catches led the entire NFL in 2004, and he made 14 Pro Bowls and was selected as a 1st-team All-Pro 8 times.
Tony Gonzalez’s Career Stats:
— NFL Stats (@NFL_Stats) April 13, 2015
270 Games
1,325 Receptions
15,127 Yards
111 TDs
864 1st Downs#Falcons #Chiefs pic.twitter.com/KtpavDS2bM
But Gonzalez was not blessed with Hall of Fame quarterback play in his career like Gronk and Kelce, and none of his teams ever reached the Super Bowl.
There were chances. In his rookie season in 1997, the Chiefs had the No. 1 seed, but they blew the divisional round playoff game 14-10 at home to rival Denver. In a 2003 game against the Colts, neither team ever punted, and the Chiefs lost 38-31.
When Gonzalez joined the Falcons with Matt Ryan, the team had the top seed in 2010 and 2012, but they lost at home in the playoffs both years. In the 2012 NFC Championship Game, the Falcons blew a 17-point lead, a record at the time. Gonzalez never played in another playoff game.
Of the top 10 players in receiving yards in NFL history, Gonzalez is the only one who did not at least play in a Super Bowl.
4 DE Bruce Smith
Honorable Mention (Defensive Ends): J.J. Watt, Deacon Jones, Julius Peppers
The all-time leaders in passing (Tom Brady), rushing (Emmitt Smith), and receiving (Jerry Rice) all won at least 3 Super Bowls each in their careers. That just goes to show again how offense is easier to sustain success than defense in the NFL, and individual defensive greatness is harder to build around for team success.
Of the 5 players who had at least 150 official sacks in their careers, only the great Reggie White won a Super Bowl for the 1996 Packers.
Buffalo legend Bruce Smith is still the only player with 200 sacks, a record we may not see broken in our lifetimes. But he never won a Super Bowl despite leading the Bills to 4 straight big games in 1990-93.
Bills Milestones~
— VintageBills (@VintageBills) January 29, 2024
The Franchise Leader in sacks is Bruce Smith‼ Bruce had an incredible 1️⃣7️⃣1️⃣in 217 games played. He ranks 1st All-Time in History also with 200. The G.O.A.T in Sacks!! #GOAT #BruceSmith #BillsMafia #NFLRecord #NFLhistory pic.twitter.com/tPUtNUbQHl
The breaking point was the first game in that run when the 1990 Bills faced the Giants in Super Bowl XXV. That was supposed to be the peak of Smith’s Hall of Fame career. He won his first Defensive Player of the Year award after having a career-high 19.0 sacks. He even finished No. 4 in the MVP race with 11 votes that year.
In the Super Bowl, Smith recorded a safety when he sacked Jeff Hostetler in the end zone in the 2nd quarter, giving the Bills a 12-3 lead. But New York’s ball-control offense frustrated the Bills as they held the ball for 40 minutes and 33 seconds.
After the Giants drove for a go-ahead field goal, the Bills had their chance to answer with their vaunted offense. But they had to settle for a 47-yard field goal, and kicker Scott Norwood was not good from distance on natural grass. He missed wide right in the final seconds and the Bills lost 20-19 in one of the closest Super Bowls ever.
Smith and the Bills continued coming back to the Super Bowl for the next 3 seasons, but they never got that close again, losing in blowout fashion to Washington and twice to Dallas.
Smith’s last playoff game was with Buffalo in 1999, the famed Music City Miracle loss to the Tennessee Titans, another special teams failure of epic proportions. But Super Bowl XXV is always the one that got away for Smith and that great Buffalo team with Jim Kelly, Andre Reed, and Thurman Thomas.
#OTD in 2000 the Titans pulled a Miracle pic.twitter.com/31CGqEpGgU
— Tennessee Titans (@Titans) January 8, 2024
None of those Hall of Famers ever won a ring.
3 RB Barry Sanders
Honorable Mention (Running Backs): LaDainian Tomlinson, Eric Dickerson, Adrian Peterson
Emmitt Smith or Barry Sanders used to be a debate, but it feels like time has swung things in the favor of Sanders, who was a human highlight reel for the lowly Lions. Smith played with a great offensive line and several Hall of Famers in Dallas, but if Detroit was having a good season, it started with Sanders.
Sanders had 20 touchdown runs of at least 40 yards, which is still tied with Adrian Peterson for the most in NFL history. He also had 15 touchdown runs of 50-plus yards, which only trails Peterson (16).
Not only could Sanders hit the home runs, but he could make a 3-yard gain look like the most exciting play in a game just because of how much ground he covered by making guys miss. It is too bad no one has charted how many avoided tackles he made in a season to compare to modern backs. Sanders was a one-of-a-kind talent.
But the Lions were still the Lions back then, and they only won 1 playoff game during Sanders’ career in 1989-98. They reached the NFC Championship Game in 1991 but never had much of a shot against a Washington juggernaut, the same team that took out the Bills that year in the Super Bowl.
Sanders shared co-MVP honors with Brett Favre in 1997 when he rushed for a career-high 2,053 yards, his 4th rushing title in his career. He rushed for another 1,491 yards in 1998, but then Barry shocked everyone when he retired before his age-31 season in 1999.
The 🐐, Barry Sanders https://t.co/BHMJR9SBTR pic.twitter.com/nXvE614VzZ
— 𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕢𝕦𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕖 𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕗𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣🌻✊🏿🟥⬛️🟩 (@PanAfriKeem) February 4, 2024
With 15,269 rushing yards, many believe he would hold the all-time rushing record if he didn’t retire so early. But when people make their choice for which all-time great running back they’d love to pick for their fictional all-time team, they often go with Barry Sanders.
It is hard to imagine he wouldn’t have been able to win the Super Bowls in Dallas that Smith won.
2 WR Randy Moss
Honorable Mention (Wide Receivers): Terrell Owens, Larry Fitzgerlad, Calvin Johnson
It is hard to trust the idea that any team is ever “one wide receiver away” from a championship, but Randy Moss was one of a kind. It is no coincidence that he joined the 1998 Vikings as a rookie, and they set the record for points scored in a season.
A decade later, a rejuvenated Moss joined the 2007 Patriots and caught a record 23 touchdown passes from Tom Brady on the way to the only 16-0 regular season. He did what he could to catch a touchdown in the Super Bowl too, but the Patriots lost 17-14 and Moss was denied a ring and perfection.
In fact, you could say Moss played on two of the absolute greatest teams to not win a Super Bowl in this era. Those 1998 Vikings were 15-1, scored at least 24 points in every game, and the main reason they weren’t in the Super Bowl was because kicker Gary Anderson missed a field goal for the first time all year when he could have put away the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game.
But Moss was the scariest receiver of his generation. If that hand went up, he was telling the quarterback he was open, and you just had to pray the quarterback would make a bad throw because of how fast Moss was and how effortless he could make a 50-yard touchdown bomb look.
Randy Moss was an absolute menace at the 2000 Pro Bowl. He broke Pro Bowl records and won MVP with 9 catches 212 yards and a touchdown. pic.twitter.com/MoliFXgZgY
— The Brohioan (@TheBrohioan) February 2, 2024
It is hard to think of another receiver who could inflate his quarterback’s numbers like Moss did. He had some motivational issues in Oakland when the Raiders were bad, but once he got to New England, he was on top of his game again.
But that only lasted for a few years, and eventually Moss was jumping from team to team in his 30s. He landed with the 49ers in 2012 and appeared in another Super Bowl for his last shot at a ring, but his final game ended up being a 34-31 loss to the Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII.
Moss did not have Jerry Rice’s longevity (who has?), but he is still No. 2 with 156 touchdown catches. That number has a chance to hold up for a while as no active player is within 60 touchdowns of Moss.
Rice is still the GOAT, but if you were starting a team from scratch with the ability to pick anyone in their prime, it would be hard to not pick Moss.
1 QB Dan Marino
Honorable Mention (Quarterbacks): Fran Tarkenton, Dan Fouts, Philip Rivers
We’ll see how the current era goes with Patrick Mahomes starting to have a monopoly of the Super Bowl rings in the AFC. Players like Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, and others are seemingly going to have to step up, wait, or go to the NFC.
But in general, you would be surprised with just how many of the all-time great quarterbacks won a championship. Maybe this is a chicken or egg argument, and the championship fuels our perception of their greatness, but this has been true for many decades of NFL history.
You can go back to the pre-Super Bowl days before the NFL even held a real playoff tournament, and the top quarterbacks won championships, including Sammy Baugh, Sid Luckman, Bob Waterfield, Norm Van Brocklin, Otto Graham, Bobby Layne, and Johnny Unitas.
But in the Super Bowl era, no name stands out more than Dan Marino when it comes to a quarterback who did not win the Super Bowl. He started out as red hot as a quarterback possibly could, he had a Hall of Fame coach in Don Shula who had the league’s only perfect season (17-0 with 1972 Dolphins), and Marino’s quick release made it possible for him to succeed with any offensive line combination as you just couldn’t pressure him consistently.
Of course @DanMarino would hit a dot on the hardest throw at the ’91 QB Challenge 🎯
— NFL (@NFL) January 31, 2024
📺: #ProBowlGames start Thursday 7pm ET on ESPN pic.twitter.com/Hv9XfDlYca
Early Playoff Heartbreaks
But in many ways, Marino’s rookie season in 1983 would be a preview of things to come. In his 1st NFL start against Buffalo, Marino threw for 322 yards, he threw a game-tying and go-ahead touchdown in the 4th quarter, and his defense gave up the lead. He set his kicker up twice in overtime for game-winning field goals, and the kicker missed both. Buffalo won 38-35 on a field goal.
Later that season in the playoffs against Seattle, Marino led the offense on a go-ahead touchdown drive with 3:43 left to play. The defense gave up the lead, the Dolphins fumbled the kickoff return, Seattle added a field goal, and the Dolphins fumbled that kickoff too to end the game. Marino never touched the ball after giving his team the late lead.
Missed field goals and fumbled kick returns would become a theme throughout Marino’s career, including a missed field goal in the 1994 AFC divisional round loss to the Chargers that would have won the game in what would be Marino’s last great playoff run.
Going back to his 2nd season in 1984, Marino had possibly the greatest passing season ever when he rewrote the record books with 5,084 yards and 48 touchdown passes. He shattered the single-season records at the time that year.
But as luck would have it, Marino ran into a San Francisco juggernaut in the Super Bowl, a 15-1 team with Bill Walsh, Joe Montana, and an elite defense. The Dolphins lost 38-16, and Marino would become the poster child for never assuming there will be more chances like this in the future.
Put 1981 Dan Marino in a time machine and he’s throwing for 6,000 yards in 2024 https://t.co/43rcBGGeyI pic.twitter.com/OBroAAdNpZ
— Colton Denning (@Dubsco) February 3, 2024
The Decade of Defensive Struggles
He never got back to the Super Bowl. Not even in 1985 when the Dolphins were the only team to beat the vaunted Chicago Bears and their historic defense. The Dolphins lost the AFC Championship Game at home that year to the upset-minded Patriots, another game with many fumbles and mistakes by the Dolphins.
Marino spent the rest of the decade saddled with awful defenses that kept him out of the playoffs entirely. Even if he made it back to the Super Bowl, the AFC lost every Super Bowl to the NFC from 1984-1996. The NFC had the best defenses and some of the best coaches at the time.
Marino was statistically as good as any quarterback through 5 seasons, but the rest of his career did not live up to that high standard. We mentioned 1994 was a highlight year after his return from a torn Achilles that ended his promising 1993 year. But that still ended in playoff disappointment in San Diego.
It at least was a close loss as the final years of Marino’s playoff career saw him lose 37-22 in Buffalo, 17-3 to the Patriots, 38-3 to the Broncos, and an embarrassing 62-7 defeat in Jacksonville in the final game of his career.
Shula’s Legacy
Shula retired with the most wins in NFL history, but it is a wonder how a coach who won with a great ground attack and defense in the 1970s never bothered to build up either part of the football team for Marino all those years.
Many of Marino’s records have since been broken, leaving his lack of a ring despite a red-hot start to his career as the part that is going to make him stand out to future historians of the game.
Simply put, Dan Marino is the best player to never win a Super Bowl.
