In the 1983 Hall of Fame Bowl, Hostetler pulled out a come-from-behind 20–16 victory over the University of Kentucky, throwing two touchdowns.

Hostetler was named to the 1984 GTE/CoSIDA academic All-America team and that same year won the National Football Foundation postgraduate scholarship.

He was also a fan favorite in Morgantown and inspired a record, "Ole Hoss (The Ballad of West Virginia's Jeff Hostetler)".

[3] In his first five seasons, he played sparingly, rarely making an appearance as he was the third-string quarterback behind Phil Simms and Jeff Rutledge.

In 1989, he started a key game in the middle of the season, leading the Giants to a Monday night victory over the Minnesota Vikings.

However, outside of these games, Hostetler's primary roles were mop-up duty and as a holder for kickers Raul Allegre, Bjorn Nittmo, and Matt Bahr.

Heading into Week 15 against the Buffalo Bills, Hostetler had decided that at the end of the season, he was retiring from the NFL and returning home.

As it turned out, Simms had suffered a severe foot injury and thus would be out for the remainder of the season, giving Hostetler his long-awaited opportunity.

Instead of giving the starting job back to the now-healthy Simms, the coach held an open competition that Hostetler would ultimately win.

[5] He then led the Giants to victory in the season opener against the 49ers at home, snapping their NFL-record 18 game road winning streak.

In his twelfth start against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Hostetler broke his back and missed the rest of the season.

Simms, meanwhile, lost his first three starts against the lowly Cincinnati Bengals (who won only three times that year), the Philadelphia Eagles (a loss which eliminated the Giants from playoff contention), and the eventual Super Bowl champion Washington Redskins.

After the 1992 season, Ray Handley was fired, and former Denver Broncos coach Dan Reeves was hired as his replacement.

The veteran quarterback threw for 294 yards and three touchdowns in what would be the last NFL playoff game played in Los Angeles until the 2017 season, when the LA Rams hosted the Atlanta Falcons in the wild card round.

[7] Hostetler's final year in Oakland saw him reach a career high in touchdown passes with 23, as he started thirteen games and finished with a 7–6 record.

During a late season Sunday night matchup against Hostetler's former team the Giants, Frerotte scored what would prove to be the Redskins' only touchdown in a 7–7 tie.

His loss came at the hands of his former team, as the Giants defeated the Redskins in the penultimate game of the season to win the NFC East championship.

He nearly came out of retirement in 1999 after a tryout with the St. Louis Rams where he would have backed up newly signed quarterback Trent Green, who supplanted both Hostetler and Frerotte as the starter in Washington in 1998.

It can be argued that the Rams not signing Hostetler helped kick-start The Greatest Show on Turf era due to Green's injury in the subsequent preseason and Warner's unexpected rise to stardom and eventual induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.