Super Bowl champ with worst regular season record?

Reverend Conehead

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Worst regular season record that won the Super Bowl was the Giants at 9 and 7, right? No one's ever done it at 8 and 8, right? If an 8 and 8 or 7 and 9 team ever wins the big dance, that will be a facepalm. My feeling is if you can't muster a winning record, you don't belong in the playoffs, but what do I know?
 

Flamma

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Two other teams made it to the SB at 9-7, they just lost. There are several reasons there's only been 3 with that type of win percentage in the last 50 super bowls since the merger. But I agree. To me the playoffs are supposed to be a tournament between the best teams during the regular season. But other league's like the NHL and NBA disagree. They use the regular season as a warm up for the playoffs. The NFL is getting close.

1979 Rams. They were a 5-6 team until Vince Ferragamo took over. Then on top of that they didn't need to win their last game.

2008 Cardinals. For whatever reason Warner didn't play in week 16 and they got slaughtered making them 8-7. They didn't even need to win in week 17 but I guess they thought getting beat by 40 points two weeks in a row would not be good for momentum. So back came Warner to make them 9-7.

2011 Giants. If my memory serves me correct they had a lot of injuries on defense at one point in the season. I think they lost 4-5 games in a row. Once they came back it was lights out.

In these 3 specific cases I think every one of them were better than their records. But circumstances had them fall to 9-7.
 

DallasInDC

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QUOTE="Reverend Conehead, post: 10415388, member: 26158"]Worst regular season record that won the Super Bowl was the Giants at 9 and 7, right? No one's ever done it at 8 and 8, right? If an 8 and 8 or 7 and 9 team ever wins the big dance, that will be a facepalm. My feeling is if you can't muster a winning record, you don't belong in the playoffs, but what do I know?[/QUOTE]

I don't know, say you start the season 1-7 playing in a crappy division...you finish the year on a 7-1 winning streak, make the playoffs and win 3 straight playoff games and ultimately win the SB. At that point you would have been 11-1 in your last 12 games. That sounds like a team that deserved to be in the playoffs. Like the saying goes...its not how you start, but how you finish.
 

Flamma

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I don't know, say you start the season 1-7 playing in a crappy division...you finish the year on a 7-1 winning streak, make the playoffs and win 3 straight playoff games and ultimately win the SB. At that point you would have been 11-1 in your last 12 games. That sounds like a team that deserved to be in the playoffs. Like the saying goes...its not how you start, but how you finish.[/QUOTE]

If you want to look at it that way. In hindsight. Your example could happen if a quarterback is out until mid season, and they're lucky enough to win the Div. at 8-8. What makes a team deserve to be in the playoffs? A good record, a division winner. But you can't honestly say an 8-8 team that isn't a division winner deserves to be in the playoffs if you value the regular season at all.
 
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