Head to head · Era by era
The greatest NFL player rivalries.
Quarterbacks do not share the field, but their answers to the same pressure can define a generation. Open any rivalry for its best verified head-to-head games.
2001–2015
Tom Brady vs Peyton Manning
Seventeen meetings, five conference championships and opposite quarterback styles made this the defining individual rivalry of modern football.
Watch the rivalry →2020–present
Patrick Mahomes vs Josh Allen
Two limitless arms turned the AFC into a weekly race toward their next postseason collision, beginning with thirteen seconds of divisional-round chaos.
Watch the rivalry →2007–2015
Tom Brady vs Eli Manning
Brady owned the era; Manning twice denied him on the sport's largest stage, including the game that ended New England's pursuit of perfection.
Watch the rivalry →1986–1996
Dan Marino vs Jim Kelly
Two members of the 1983 quarterback class turned the AFC East into a decade-long argument between Marino's passing genius and Kelly's no-huddle contender.
Watch the rivalry →1995–1998
Brett Favre vs Steve Young
Green Bay and San Francisco met in four straight postseasons as two MVP quarterbacks traded improvisation, precision and increasingly painful endings.
Watch the rivalry →1992–1995
Troy Aikman vs Steve Young
Dallas and San Francisco met in three consecutive NFC championship games, with the winner taking control of the decade and then the Super Bowl.
Watch the rivalry →2012–2021
Aaron Rodgers vs Russell Wilson
Two improvisational champions produced the Fail Mary, an impossible NFC title-game comeback and a decade of consequential Green Bay–Seattle meetings.
Watch the rivalry →2004–2019
Tom Brady vs Ben Roethlisberger
The AFC's two most durable championship quarterbacks repeatedly put New England's precision against Pittsburgh's toughness and vertical aggression.
Watch the rivalry →2005–2016
Peyton Manning vs Philip Rivers
Rivers and the Chargers became the recurring complication in Manning's otherwise dominant AFC years, winning games that rarely followed the expected script.
Watch the rivalry →2018–2022
Tom Brady vs Patrick Mahomes
The established standard met his apparent heir in an AFC title game, a Super Bowl and four high-leverage meetings that felt like a transfer of eras.
Watch the rivalry →2018–present
Patrick Mahomes vs Lamar Jackson
The conference's most inventive thrower and its most transformative runner made every meeting a showcase for how far quarterback play could expand.
Watch the rivalry →2018–present
Josh Allen vs Lamar Jackson
The same draft produced two radically different dual-threat MVPs whose playoff meetings keep reshaping the AFC's immediate future.
Watch the rivalry →