- 4 weeks ago
Throughout the 59 years spanning 1966-2024, the NFL produced 118 conference champions. As they entered the Super Bowl, they were all on a winning streak and playing at a high level to have won their conference, but there still exists a vast range of precisely how good. Focusing specifically on the latter stages of a season, who were the biggest juggernauts we've ever seen entering Super Sunday? And when that day rolled around, how exactly did that recent dominance manifest itself?
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00:00The Super Bowl is the culmination of the arduous, nonstop grind comprising an NFL season,
00:06from the slog of training camp and brutal summer heat, to the four-month regular season,
00:12to dispatching multiple worthy playoff opponents in January when the weather turns helmet-shatteringly
00:17cold. All teams that win their conference championship and advance to the big game
00:22have clearly proven their chops, but they don't all enter it on equal footing. While many have to
00:28scratch and claw and struggle their way to the conference mountaintop, some find the escalator,
00:33seemingly encountering little to no difficulty. How has that manifested itself in the showdown for
00:39all the marbles? Well, here are the point differentials and win percentages of each of
00:44the Super Bowl era's first 118 of them, from week 1 up through their conference title game.
00:49But I figure some of these full-season figures don't necessarily provide an accurate comparison
00:55to their other peers here, due to the idea that more recent performance would be more
00:59predictive of what we could expect to see in the Super Bowl. Two teams could have identical,
01:03full-season metrics, but if for instance one were far more dominant in September and October,
01:09whereas the other were far more dominant in December and January, what does that portend?
01:15Everyone knows about the full-season exploits of the best of the best, how the 72 Dolphins and 07
01:21Patriots entered the Super Bowl having won all their games. You also got another seven teams residing
01:27in the 90 to 95% range, having lost just one game. But there are some more under-the-radar
01:33squads
01:33lurking here, who, when isolating a more truncated part of their campaign leading into the Super Bowl
01:39as opposed to their entire season, shine more than you might have realized.
01:49Let's start with the 2016 Patriots, a team synonymous with a meme, but that also had quite
01:55the unique run of success entering Super Bowl 51. They'd outscored their opposition by 132 points
02:02across their prior seven games. For context, nearly 30% of the rest of the league's teams have never at
02:09any point in their entire history produced such a dominant seven-game stretch. But if you dig deeper,
02:15there's something far, far more fascinating about what they managed to pull off.
02:20They never at any point faced any deficit in any of those seven games. They prepared to take on the
02:28NFC champion Atlanta Falcons, having been 10 weeks removed from the last time their opponent had a
02:33higher number on the scoreboard at any point in a game. Some seasons, no team in the entire league
02:39play seven such games, let alone consecutively. Here's my favorite tidbit to underscore just how
02:45difficult it is to never trail in a game. The Super Bowl champion 2011 New York Giants won the Super
02:51Bowl, yet they trailed at some point in each and every one of their first 15 games. And did I
02:58mention
02:58that they wound up winning the Super Bowl? Those champs played precisely one game all regular season in
03:05which they never trailed, and five years later a juggernaut formed that didn't just rattle off
03:10seven such games consecutively, but did so leading into the Super Bowl. Outside the extreme needle
03:17threading of a scoreless tie, or a game's first point serving as a walk-off that breaks a scoreless tie,
03:23to never trail in a game means authoring the game's first score. Of course there's plenty of work beyond
03:28that to ensure not relinquishing that lead, but that's obviously the first step. There are not one,
03:35not two, but three NFL teams who have never even had a seven-game streak scoring first, let alone all
03:42that's entailed beyond that. Best I can tell, there are only two other team seasons in the Super Bowl era
03:47that featured a similar streak, and those would be Dan Marino's 84 Dolphins and Peyton Manning's 05 Colts.
03:54And the 16-pats streak can still be distinguished in that not only were none of the seven games all
04:00that competitive, where perhaps New England's opponent, say, at least knotted up the score at
04:05some point deep in the contest, but in six of the seven games they were never even tied beyond the
04:10obligatory 0-0. In the lone exception in Denver, the Broncos merely tied the game at three in the first
04:17quarter before the Pats pulled ahead for good early in the second. So those were the heights at which the
04:23Patriots were flying and that Atlanta was forced to contend with. Bookmark that. We'll check back here.
04:31The next team soaring at similarly lofty heights entering the big game was the 96 Packers.
04:37There's an important backdrop to understand about those Packers. Under head coach Vince Lombardi,
04:42they won five championships in the seven years spanning 1961 to 67. They then immediately wandered
04:50through the NFL abyss for a full quarter century. From 1968 through 92, they made the playoffs in a
04:57league low two of those 25 seasons. They went from dining for years on nothing but the finest filet mignon
05:05and lobster tail to all of a sudden foraging for decades in the NFL's barren wilderness seeking
05:12berries and coconuts. Led by the duo of head coach Mike Holmgren and quarterback Brett Favre,
05:18their fortunes started changing in 93 when they re-established themselves as a consistent playoff
05:24participant. Things reached a crescendo late in 96. In each of their seven games leading into Super
05:32Bowl 31, they scored at least 24 points while allowing no more than 17. Not only is that the
05:39longest streak of all time, but in the 20 years prior, no team had a season with even six consecutive
05:45such wins. And in the 29 years and counting since, the NFL likewise never saw a team with even six
05:51consecutive such wins. With a margin of victory of at least 11 points in all of them, they also became
05:57the first team since 1970s AFL-NFL merger to win seven straight games by that many points, and they
06:04did so despite a trio of 12-win opponents, including waxing the Broncos when they were 12-1. Cumulatively,
06:11they outscored their opposition by 155 points across those seven games. Again, using as context the best
06:19seven-game stretch in the entire history of other teams, we see half the league's clubs have never
06:25replicated that which Green Bay had going on as they cruised into Super Sunday. Just two years earlier,
06:32we have the fascinating story of a team near and dear to my heart, the 94 Niners. On October 2nd,
06:40they welcomed to town the Philadelphia Eagles in an infamous game within Niners lore that represents
06:45the ultimate inflection point any team could ever experience. In his first career game, Philly running
06:52back Charlie Garner caps the first drive with a score, and in what has to be the ultimate omen of
06:57what's to come, on the Niners' first offensive play, the ball bounces off the hands of some guy named
07:03Jerry Rice and into the waiting arms of an eagle. Garner cashes in on the very next snap,
07:10ripping off a beautiful touchdown run, his second by the time his career's just 6 minutes and 45 seconds
07:17old, the least amount of time anyone's ever needed to get multiple TDs under his belt. It also completely
07:23opens the floodgates to a comprehensive annihilation. The Eagles eventually take a 30-8 lead into the
07:31break, the only such halftime score we've ever seen through the league's first 105-plus years.
07:37After the Eagles at a field goal, Young, who's been harassed and clobbered by the Eagles' front
07:42all game, takes yet another hit. This prompts coach George Seifert to realize his completely
07:48decimated offensive line is thoroughly overmatched, and he waves the white flag, yanking Young mid-series.
07:55Down 25 points with only a few minutes left in the third quarter, they're buried in an
08:00obviously insurmountable hole, so after a day of enduring non-stop brutal punishment, he just wants
08:06to keep his superstar quarterback in one piece for the long season ahead. Not normally a hothead,
08:12Young is something less than thrilled about this. I'm no professional lip-reader, but it appears he's
08:18hollering to Seifert something along the lines here of schmucking schmulshit. Please advise.
08:24In the fourth quarter, with the horse dead and fully buried, Eagles QB Randall Cunningham seizes the chance
08:31to twist the dagger just a little bit more to put the finishing touches on a score-a-gomic 40
08:36-8 beatdown.
08:38As of 2025, this game has given us not only the only halftime score we've ever seen, but also the
08:44only final score we've ever seen. It's also by far the worst loss the Niners had ever exposed their
08:50fans to in the 24-year history of Candlestick Park with no other game even close, especially in recent
08:56years. I was a fan aged only six at the time, and seeing my beloved team play so poorly back
09:03then was
09:03so foreign to my eyes that in the aftermath I think I still said, the hell did I just watch?
09:09And yet,
09:10at the end of a column in which he justifiably scorches the Niners like the rest of the world has,
09:16the Oakland Tribune's Dave Newhouse closes with an about-face and calls his shot.
09:22Even with their exasperated head coach tepid about his own team's ability to pick up the pieces,
09:28Newhouse insists they'll rebound. Immediately. And look how right he is.
09:35Thanks to being pulled while still intact during the Philly game, Young goes on to win MVP in the
09:40wake of perhaps the most efficient season that had ever been seen. For the next 15 weeks that lead up
09:46to
09:47Super Bowl XXIX, Young and the Niners lay waste to the rest of the NFL, winning every single game
09:52that they're interested in, mostly in blowout fashion. Their lone loss, and the only reason I
09:58can even use this metric for the y-axis since zero can't be a denominator, comes in the regular season
10:03finale when they've already clinched the top playoff seed, mostly deploy backups, and lose by one score to
10:10a desperate Viking squad playing with a division title on the line. And it proves to be a mere speed
10:16bump,
10:16as the Niners still manage to generate a point differential of plus 231 from after that Philly
10:22meltdown up through the NFC title game. It's one of the most dominant 13-game stretches in NFL history,
10:29a number reached by only a couple teams in the subsequent decades. And if you'll humor me by
10:35pretending the game they didn't care about didn't exist, that'd be plus 238 across a 12-game stretch,
10:42as they rampage into their Super Bowl clash with the San Diego Chargers. That's a number surpassed by
10:49only a few teams ever, including only the 07 Pats in the 30-plus seasons since. All sparked by their
10:56uniquely rare 40-8 kick in the ass. Talk about finding beauty among the ashes.
11:03We'll now turn the clock back 8 years, where we see that the 86 Giants scored 63 points more than
11:10they
11:10allowed in their intra-conference playoff games to punch their ticket to Super Bowl 21. And the team
11:16sitting atop this throne just so happened to shellack the Packers by 31 in their prior game to close the
11:23regular season. And the game before that, they clipped the cards by 20. Sum that all up, and you get
11:30a
11:30plus 114 point differential. This too was the first post-merger instance of a team outscoring its
11:36opposition by that much across a quartet of games, despite the playoffs and its inherent high-level
11:42opposition constituting half of them. Last but not least, as a brief honorable mention, the 85 Bears.
11:50Though there's nothing sneaky about their overall bona fides here, and they're a frequent answer to the
11:55question of the greatest defense of all time with a unit that pitched back-to-back playoff shutouts
12:00entering Super Bowl XX, there's still something about Buddy Ryan's 46 defense worth shining a light on that
12:06I bet even their most ardent supporters are likely unaware. And that something is that from halftime of
12:12week one, up through the NFC Championship game, the 85 Bears played nine and a half games at Soldier Field.
12:19Across those 570 minutes of football, their defense surrendered a grand total of five touchdowns and
12:25three field goals. For those scoring at home, and in a climate where the average NFL half featured
12:31nearly 11 points scored per team, that's an average of 2.3 points allowed per half across a sample as
12:38big as 19 halves, with shutouts pitched in over 63% of them. Their worst half here is still better
12:46than the NFL's rate at large, and it's the lone half allowing even two-thirds the league average.
12:52This level of destruction is so far beyond not funny, it's back to funny again. As one would imagine,
12:59those Bears mauled the Patriots in the ensuing 20th Super Bowl. The 86 Giants had little trouble
13:05overpowering the Broncos in the following Super Bowl, winning the NFL's only 39-20 game through
13:11more than a century and counting. The 94 Niners would have faced about as much resistance in Super
13:18Bowl 29 playing against Ayer as they did playing against the Chargers, and the 96 Packers easily
13:24managed to finally bring the Lombardi Trophy back home to Titletown. As for those 2016 Patriots? Well,
13:31the team that entered Super Bowl 51 having played with a lead for almost all of their previous seven
13:37games while never trailing by even a single point for even a single second in any of them,
13:42never led for even a single second against the Falcons, but they did trail for over 56 minutes.
13:49And not just trail by a little either, but sinking to a late third quarter deficit as massive as 25
13:56points. Legitimately one of the most mind-boggling juxtapositions imaginable. I forget what happened
14:04after that though. Oh well. So while the full season resumes of conference champions are generally
14:11going to be quite impressive, it can still belie reality as to who the most indestructible teams
14:16entering Super Sunday have truly been.
14:19I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
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