Innovative offensive minds, creative play design, and a new era of Quarterbacks have been the talk of the NFL the past year or so.

It's fun and refreshing to dissect Sean McVay's SmarterChild brain, Doug Pederson pulling out the Philly Special on 4th & Goal in the Super Bowl, and Patrick Mahomes stretching the limits of what we thought was possible for a Quarterback to do.

Unfortunately, NFL fans will have to wait until Saturday to get their Mahomes' fix but Wild Card Weekend had 3 other up and coming franchise Quarterbacks on display and to put it bluntly, things did not go as planned. All 3 struggled for stretches and lost their playoff debut which has been a recent trend. Over the last 5 years, Quarterbacks making their playoff debut have a 4-15 record. Two of those wins (and losses) came in match-ups between Quarterbacks making their debut. Over the last 10 years, they have a record of 12-22.

When you skim the list of debuts you'll notice that unfortunate injury luck has forced backups into action in recent years but for every TJ Yates and Brock Osweiler victory, there are ugly performances by future Pro-Bowlers in Andrew Luck and Cam Newton. So before we crucify the young-guns for their struggles this past weekend I wanted to see how the most successful Quarterbacks fared in their playoff debuts. Does the amount of prior starting experience matter?

Let's take a look.

QB MOUNT RUSHMORE

Tom Brady

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 14

Playoff Debut: (W 16-13) 32-for-52, 312 Yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 70.4 QB Rating, 5 Att, 16 Yards, TD

Peyton Manning

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 32

Playoff Debut: (L 16-19) 19-for-42, 227 Yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 62.3 QB Rating, 2 Att, 22 Yards, 1 TD

Joe Montana

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 24

Playoff Debut: (W 38-24) 20-for-31, 304 Yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 104.8 QB Rating

Drew Brees

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 42

Playoff Debut: (L 17-20) 31-for-42, 319 Yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 101.2 QB Rating

How many of you knew that Tom Brady's 1st career playoff start was the "Tuck Rule" game? Joe Cool breezed to a W while Manning and Brees failed to crack 20 points in close defeats.

CLASS OF 2004

Eli Manning

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 23

Playoff Debut: (L 0-23) 10-for-18, 113 Yards, 0 TD, 3 INT, 35.0 QB Rating

Philip Rivers

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 16

Playoff Debut: (L 21-24) 14-for-32, 230 Yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 55.5 QB Rating

Ben Roethlisberger

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 13

Playoff Debut: (W 20-17) 17-for-30, 181 Yards, 1 TD, 2 INT, 57.8 QB Rating, 4 Att, 30 Yards

Eli. Yeesh.

Rivers struggled vs the 2nd ranked Pats defense. Per usual, Tom Brady and the Patriots closed the game out with two scoring drives (11 points in total) in the final 8 minutes to put New England ahead.

To his credit, Big Ben did throw a game-tying TD pass with 6 minutes left in the 4th Quarter but he also nearly lost PIT the game by throwing an INT  that New York into field goal range with 1:59 remaining. Fortunately, Doug Brien missed from 43-yards sending the game to overtime where PIT largely relied on the running game to get into field goal range. Ben would go onto throw 3 INTs in the next round vs New England.

GOLD JACKET CLUB

John Elway

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 10

Playoff Debut: (L 7-31) 10-for-15, 123 Yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 64.0 QB Rating

Troy Aikman

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 38

Playoff Debut: (L 6-38) 11-for-16, 114 Yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 63.0 QB Rating

Terry Bradshaw

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 35

Playoff Debut: (W 13-7) 11-for-25, 175 Yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, 64.6 QB Rating

Dan Marino

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 9

Playoff Debut: (L 20-27) 15-for-25, 193 Yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, 77.6 QB Rating

Steve Young

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 55

Playoff Debut: (W 20-13) 20-for-30, 227 Yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 97.5 QB Rating, 8 Att, 73 Yards

Elway and Aikman got spanked. Bradshaw needed the immaculate receptions (60-yard TD pass to Franco Harris with 5 seconds left) to pull out the victory. Steve Young excelled in his first playoff start, although it's worth making note he had attempted 24 passes in the playoffs filling in for Montana in previous seasons.

IS JOE FLACCO ELITE?

Joe Flacco

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 16

Playoff Debut: (W 27-9) 9-for-23, 135 Yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 59.1 QB Rating, 5 Att, 8 Yards, 1 TD

Shannon Sharpe's viral Joe Flacco tweet over the weekend was fake news but it should be noted that he was atrocious in his playoff debut.

For all you “FAKE ASS” Raven fans bashing Lamar Jackson and wanting Flacco to play. Flacco’s 1st playoff start he was 4-10 for 34 yds and int. Ravens rushed for over 200yds on 40 rushes in the win. Stop acting like Flacco was Brady of today in his playoff start. FOH.

— shannon sharpe (@ShannonSharpe) January 6, 2019

ESTABLISH THE RUN

Michael Vick

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 17

Playoff Debut: (W 27-7) 13-for-25, 117 Yards, TD, 78.2 QB Rating, 10 Att, 64 Yards

Colin Kaepernick

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 7

Playoff Debut: (W 45-31) 17-for-31, 263 Yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 91.2 QB Rating, 16 Att, 181 Yards, 2 TD

Kordell Stewart

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 20

Playoff Debut: (W 7-6) 14-for-31, 134 Yards, 0 TD, 1 INT, 44.3 QB Rating, 11 Att, 68 Yards, 1 TD

None of these players will be inducted into Canton but I wanted to see how QBs with similar skill sets to Lamar Jackson fared. All 3 came out with victories although Kaepernick is really the only one who balled out. Vick's debut was memorable and he certainly made plays with his legs but the story was really Atlanta winning the turnover battle 5 to 0.

REIGNING MVPS

Aaron Rodgers

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 32

Playoff Debut: (L 45-51) 28-for-42, 423 Yards, 4 TD, 1 INT, 121.4 QB Rating, 3 Att, 13 Yards, 1 TD

Matt Ryan

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 16

Playoff Debut: (L 24-30) 26-for-40, 199 Yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, 72.8 QB Rating

Brett Favre

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 29

Playoff Debut: (W 28-24) 15-for-26, 204 Yards, 3 TD, 1 INT, 105.3 QB Rating

Kurt Warner

Career Starts Before Playoff Debut: 16

Playoff Debut: (W 49-37) 27-for-33, 391 Yards, 5 TD, 1 INT, 143.0 QB Rating

Warner and Rodgers each accounted for 5 touchdowns. Favre threw a highlight reel 40-yard touchdown pass to Sterling Sharpe with one minute remaining to give the Packers the lead. Matt Ryan fell to Kurt Warner's Cardinals and turned the ball over 3 times.

Overall, 13 of the 20 Quarterback I reviewed failed to have a QB Rating above 80.0 in their debut. 2 fell between 80.0 and 100.0 and 5 eclipsed 100.0. 

Even some of the best of all-time needed improved supporting casts or to ride their defense until they matured as a Quarterback. It’s clear you shouldn’t have too high of expectations for someone making their playoff debut and a rough start shouldn't change your long-term outlook on that individual. The front runner for MVP is making his playoff debut this weekend. Let's see if he can continue to exceed expectations.