Where Super Bowl winners started in the playoffs

[DallasEast]

The NFL began adding wild card teams to the Super Bowl playoffs in 1978. I was curious where Super Bowl winners began in the playoffs before and after the 1993 CBA went into effect during that timeframe, since the before and after eras are comparable in length.

I used the current tie-breaking procedure (i.e. division winner with the best record #1, division winner with the second best record #2, etc.) to ‘seed’ each season’s playoffs. The number of playoff teams from 1978 – 1989 were 10 teams/five teams per conference--with the only exception being the 1982 strike season, when 16 teams made up the playoff field. Between 1990 to today, twelve teams, six per conference, have competed for the Lombardi trophy. Here are the results:

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Super Bowl winning teams seeded 3rd or greater during the 16 seasons before the CBA: 1980 Oakland Raiders (5th), 1987 Washington Commanders (3rd/strike season) and 1988 San Francisco 49ers (3rd).

Super Bowl winners seeded 4th or greater during the 14 seasons since the CBA: 1997 Denver Broncos (4th), 2000 Baltimore Ravens (4th), 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers (6th) and 2007 New York Giants (5th).

Another example of NFL-enforced parity since the ’93 CBA perhaps?

 

[CrazyCowboy]

nice read.....thanks

 

[ZeroClub]

Question... so these seed values are calculated on a within-conference basis, right? (so that if you were to pool the AFC and NFC teams together, there would be two #1 seeds, two #2 seeds, two #3 seeds, etc.)

Is it the case that the past 3 Super Bowl winning teams (and 6 of the past 11 Super Bowl winning teams) did not have a first round bye? That's interesting.

 

[DallasEast]

Question... so these seed values are calculated on a within-conference basis, right? (so that if you were to pool the AFC and NFC teams together, there would be two #1 seeds, two #2 seeds, two #3 seeds, etc.)

Yep.

Is it the case that the past 3 Super Bowl winning teams (and 6 of the past 11 Super Bowl winning teams) did not have a first round bye? That's interesting.

Yep. It includes all Super Bowl winners from '78 through last February.

 

[Boysboy]

Actually-the '88 Niners were a 2nd seed. They were just a merely good 10-6(The Vikes had the 2nd best NFC record that year, but their NFCC divisional rival Bears won the division).

Not going to go through every single Super Bowl winner since the 16 game schedule started, but for example, in the Steelers' case-if that Pitt defender hadn't gone after Carson Palmer's knees, the Bengals would have won in a route.

With that being said-maybe, just MAYBE it's a GOOD thing if you want to make a Super Bowl run, that you would just MAYBE go through a minislump or a few losses earlier in the season-where in the long run, these teams become battle-tested(i.e. Pitt in '05, Colts in '06, Giants last year, etc).

Look at the Chargers in '06-going 14-2 and ending the reg season on the long win streak may have tempted them to eat the cheese too early(they looked mentally unprepared in that playoff game).