ESPN Report: Sad News” Patroit Are In Huury To Sack A Coach…
In less than two weeks, either the Kansas City Chiefs or the San Francisco 49ers will win Super Bowl LVIII. There have been 57 Super Bowls since the NFL champion first took on the AFL champion after the 1966 season, which means we have 57 teams in this exclusive club. One more is coming soon.
Some of these teams were dominant from start to finish. Other teams slipped into the playoffs after a mediocre regular season and then went on a shocking postseason run to a title. We’ve done our best to rank all 57 Super Bowl champions here from worst to best, looking at both the regular season and the playoffs to find the most powerful teams in NFL history.
To rank these teams, I used my proprietary DVOA ratings (explained further here) which look at efficiency on a play-by-play basis adjusted for situation and opponent. For teams prior to the start of DVOA in 1981, I estimated DVOA ratings based on Pro Football Reference’s Simple Rating System plus the average margin of victory during the postseason. There’s also an adjustment for the first four Super Bowl champions to reflect that the NFL was stronger than the AFL before the merger.
Let’s start with a team from the 1970s.
This was the first season after the merger, and the NFC was still far superior to the AFC. According to Pro Football Reference, the Colts had the second-easiest schedule of the 1970 season. Despite that schedule, they outscored opponents by just 6.2 points per game and finished the regular season 14th in PFR’s Simple Rating System. Johnny Unitas, in his final season as the starter, threw more interceptions (18) than touchdown passes (10).
In the playoffs, the Colts shut out the Bengals 17-0 and beat the Raiders 27-17 but then needed a last-minute field goal to beat the NFC champion Dallas Cowboys 16-13 in Super Bowl V.
The 2011 Giants are the only Super Bowl champion in history to get outscored during the regular season, although they did face the third-toughest schedule of the season and thus finished 13th in regular-season DVOA. They lost four straight games in the middle of the season to drop from 6-2 to 6-6, but then finished 3-1 and won a very mediocre NFC East at 9-7.
In the playoffs, the Giants had big wins over the Falcons and Packers and survived the 49ers in overtime. In Super Bowl XLVI, the Giants pulled off a 21-17 win against a Patriots team that had the worst defense to ever play in a Super Bowl.
You know the story: The Patriots started 0-2, Drew Bledsoe got hurt, Tom Brady came in, and a legend was born. But the Patriots were far from a great team at the start of the dynasty, finishing just 11th in both offensive and defensive DVOA that season. They ranked 29th in the NFL in schedule strength.
All three of their playoff victories came by just one score, and of course the divisional round win over Oakland required overtime, a lot of snow and a couple of legendary field goals. They beat the Rams 20-17 in Super Bowl XXXVI.
This team had the lowest regular-season DVOA of any Super Bowl champion, in part because I don’t count the three games, all wins, during the players strike. Washington ended the season eighth on offense with a below-average defense and special teams for a total DVOA of just 4.2%. They also escaped their first two playoff games with close victories, beating the Bears by just four points and the Vikings by seven. But they destroyed the Broncos 42-10 in Super Bowl XXII, and that’s why they don’t come in on the bottom of this list.
