The first two decades following the NFL’s most recent realignment spanned most of the New England Patriots’ dynasty. But even as the Patriots were a constant, rule changes encouraging passing production and player safety contributed to the league producing 20 sometimes very different Super Bowl champions during that span.
The game’s evolution complicates efforts to compare teams from the two-back, under-center era to the teams of today. But as The Athletic commemorates the 20th anniversary of the NFL’s move to 32 teams spread over eight divisions, Austin Mock’s betting model allows us to fairly rank the past 20 Super Bowl champions, adjusting for era.
The model has over the past five seasons returned 5 percent profit against the Vegas spread, including about 25 percent since debuting on The Athletic in 2021. Applying the model backward to evaluate past teams requires era adjustment, and once that was completed, the 2004 Patriots and 2013 Seattle Seahawks stood above all other champions from the previous 20 years.
Of course, the best team in a given season doesn’t always win it all, especially in the absence of the seven-game playoff series that other sports use to prevent a single outlier game from determining championship fates. While ranking the last 20 Super Bowl winners, we’ll point out which ones ranked especially high or low among all 640 teams from the past 20 seasons.
To produce a ranking fairly, we compared each team’s metrics to its peers’ metrics in that specific season.
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