• The top offensive players are Dan Marino, John Hannah, Anthony Munoz, and Barry Sanders
• The top defensive players are Bruce Smith and Ken Houston
• Players whose careers began before the first Super Bowl are not included

Since the first Super Bowl was played in 1967, there have been a handful of amazing football players who were consistently named All Pro and ended up in the Hall of Fame, yet never played on a team that won the Super Bowl. Not included in this article are players who started playing before the first Super Bowl in 1967, including quarterback Johnny Unitas, linebacker Dick Butkus, and defensive tackle Merlin Olsen.

Here, at Electro-Mech, we take pride in producing quality football scoreboards, as well as staying up on the latest football news. Here we’ll talk about some incredible NFL players who may not have gotten the glory they deserve.

Dan Marino
Miami quarterback Dan Marino made it to the Super Bowl in just his second season, but after his team lost to San Francisco in January 1985, Marino never made it back to the Big Game for the rest of his 17 seasons. In that 1984–1985 season, Marino passed for 5,084 yards, a record that still stands. For many years Marino held career passing records for quarterbacks, but those records were recently broken by Brett Favre. Another record that he still holds is most games with 400 or more yard passing, 13. He had a lethal combination of a quick release and pinpoint accuracy that have led some experts to call him the greatest quarterback ever.

John Hannah
Offensive guard John Hannah played all 13 of his seasons with the New England Patriots. Legendary college coach Bear Bryant called Hannah the best offensive lineman ever to play on one of his teams. Hannah was named to nine Pro Bowls. He could both lead sweeps and shut down expert pass rushers. He was a driving force in the 1978 Patriots’ rushing attack, one of the few ever to exceed 3,000 yards in a season. Hannah missed only a handful of games in his career. Sadly, his only trip to the Super Bowl was against one of the best defensive teams in NFL history, the 1985–1986 Chicago Bears. The Patriots lost in a rout.

Anthony Munoz
Offensive tackle Munoz was one of the most dominating players in NFL history. He combined nimbleness with power. He could drive block and pancake an opponent on one play and use textbook footwork to steer a blitzer away from his quarterback on the next. He also caught a few touchdown passes as a tackle-eligible. Named to the Pro Bowl nine times and elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, Munoz was the first player of predominantly Latino ancestry to become an NFL star. He spent his entire career with the Cincinnati Bengals and played in two Super Bowls. The Bengals lost both times, the second in an epic struggle with San Francisco in 1989. Munoz also developed a reputation for giving back to the community.

Bruce Smith
The Buffalo Bills are the only team to play in the Super Bowl four straight years, and defensive end Bruce Smith was the anchor that got them there. Unfortunately, the Bills lost all four contests, including a heartbreaking 1-point loss in the first one in 1991. Smith racked up 200 sacks, an NFL record, over his 18-year career. He spent his last few seasons with the Washington Redskins. Smith made the Pro Bowl a whopping 11 times.

The next two players not only did not win a Super Bowl, they did not even get an opportunity to play in one.

Barry Sanders
Running back Sanders spent his entire career with the mediocre Detroit Lions and quit while still at a high level of performance. Sanders has an impressive portfolio of accomplishments: ten straight 1,000 yard seasons, fourteen consecutive games with 100 or more yards rushing (in 1997), and 10 Pro Bowl appearances. Sanders was brilliant at juking and deking his way through a horde of defenders and then turning on the jets for a long touchdown run. Sanders chose to leave the game on his own terms, retiring when only about a season shy of surpassing the NFL career rushing record.

Ken Houston
Safety Houston played during the earliest part of the Super Bowl era, starting in the AFL for a few years with the Oilers before going on to fine career in the NFL with the Redskins. He had a lethal combination of great instincts, good hands for intercepting, and textbook tackling form. In 1971 he returned four touchdowns for interceptions, something unheard of at the time. At 6 foot 3 he was tall for his era and able to outreach many opponents for the ball. He made the Pro Bowl a whopping 12 times.