Best* Teams To Never Win The Super Bowl: 20-16

Introduction

This is a quick ranking of the best teams that have never won the Super Bowl by era/schedule adjusted scoring margin. The stat for that Pro-Football Reference calls Simple Rating System (SRS), but you just need to read it as a team's expected margin of victory per game if they played an average schedule, and an average scoring environment through the history of football.

In case this needs to be said, this is not my personal ranking or opinion. It's a list of results, not beliefs. So there.

Five more teams.

20 - 1973 Dallas Cowboys (10-4, NFC East Champions, 382 PF, 203 PA, 12.8 SRS)

The Cowboys from shortly after their inception, until the end of the 20th century, were interesting. They had won five Super Bowls, with no one else having won more, but given their track record of success, they should have probably been expected to win more.

Rarely were they ever bad, with a very long run of being the best, or nearly the best, in their division, and a brief downturn followed by another decade of dominance. They lost close championship games all over the place, they lost a Super Bowl on a fluke touchdown and last second field goal, and another on a phantom PI and some weird bounces.

The result is they're all over this list, and have five total seasons of +10 or better SRS without winning titles. That said, the result of being rarely good over the past decade has allowed other franchises to say the same things, with the Vikings -- whose total is inflated by having never won -- Colts, and Steelers catching up, and 49ers passing them.

Anyway, there is not much noteworthy about the '73 team that isn't remembered by the teams that made it farther. There was a plethora of memorable players across the roster, with Roger Staubach, Drew Pearson, Bob Hayes, Rayfield Wright, Bob Lilly, Mel Renfro, Cliff Harris, and this is a list of names of people. They were balanced on offense, ranking second in YPA passing and fourth rushing, and also ranked second at stopping the run. If there was a weakness, it was against the pass, where they were middle of the pack in yards per attempt.

The Cowboys did not have the best SRS in the conference in '73, but the team that did also failed to make the Super Bowl. Tease!

19 - 2012 New England Patriots (12-4, AFC East Champions, 557 PF, 226 PA, 12.8 SRS)

So far, this list is all teams that didn't even make it there.

This is also, already, the second team from 2012. The Patriots making this list is actually kind of a thing. Three teams have had a season of +12 or better SRS without winning, and the Patriots have put together all of those seasons just in the past five years. Is that a spoiler, it seems obvious? Their dynasty has weirdly transitioned in to this post season failure thing.

I don't have much to say about team that was so recent. For all their points scored, the Patriots were actually only fifth in YPA.

Every now and then, the NFL is top heavy with strong teams, and 2012 was one of those years. It didn't feel like it to me following the season week to week, but looking at the 49ers, Broncos, Pats, and Seahawks with some more depth (even before discovering SRS) indicated an unusually tough cream of the crop.

Then none of them won, because of Ray Lewis's divine destiny or something. That alone makes this year interesting to me.

18 - 1967 Baltimore Colts (11-1-2, Out of Playoffs, 394 PF, 198 PA, 13.2 SRS)

The Colts in '67 only lost one game, but didn't make the playoffs.

At this point in history, only one team from each of the NFL's four divisions went to the playoffs. The Rams and Colts tied for the lead in the Coastal division, after a 24-24 game (right there on the left!). The Rams had a 24 point better scoring differential, though, so they got the tie-breaker and the playoff birth.

So, a one loss team, and one of the best teams to ever fail to win the Super Bowl, wasn't even in the post season. I'm pretty sure that's the only team on this list that can say that.

Johnny Unitas won the MVP. The Colts had two straight MVPs at QB, but different players. Isn't that neat?

The Colts, like the Cowboys and 49ers, have a lot of teams with a big SRS that didn't win the Super Bowl, but for different reasons. Unlike San Francisco and Dallas, Baltimore/Indianapolis did have a really long period of awful football during the Super Bowl era; they didn't get on these lists by having lots of good seasons, they got here because of two distinct and unfortunate eras.

We are very familiar with the recent years that put Indianapolis here. Peyton Manning is arguably the greatest QB who ever lived, and got to play for one of the greatest year-to-year rosters ever put together. Unfortunately, at the same time, an inferior-but-still-great QB was matched with arguably the greatest head coach who ever lived, and an even better roster, to create a dynasty that kept Manning's Colts from seeing many Super Bowls.

Johnny U had the same thing going. He had early success that Peyton didn't, but once the 60s got going, Baltimore had Vince Lombardi preceding Bill Belichick, Bart Starr preceding Tom Brady, and the Packers preceding the Patriots. The Packers were too busy winning to let the Colts in, even though they fielded some fantastic teams.

I think it's pretty cool when history repeats itself like that.

On another note, an astute reader will notice scoring margin affects these rankings, and affected the tie-breaker in '67, yet the Rams didn't win the Super Bowl. So. . .

17 - 1987 San Francisco 49ers (13-2, NFC West Champions, 459 PF, 253 PA, 13.5 SRS)

In 1987, the 49ers were at their elite peak. The West Coast offense had combined innovation with spectacular talent to set new ground for NFL offenses. Joe Montana was in his prime. Jerry Rice, in his second year, caught 22 touchdowns in 12 games. And they matched this with one of the league's best defenses.

Then they lost their first game in the playoffs. This team won back-to-back Super Bowls after this, and fell just short of appearing in a third. It took one of the biggest upsets in NFL history to knock them out, and that's what the Vikings pulled off in '87.

Somewhat surprisingly, this is the only time the 49ers are on this list. They did have several very good years where they failed to win the Super Bowl. Their six seasons of having an SRS better than +10 without winning it all is the most of any franchise, with this past season setting the new mark. That happens when you're consistently great for a long period, you can't expect to win them all.

Other teams that can say the same thing, though, have more appearances in the top 20. The 49ers of the 80s had this knack of, when they were at their best, they finished the job. I think it was helped by being a cut above the rest of the league, and way above the opposing conference, though, to a degree the other teams here can't say.

16 - 1973 Los Angeles Rams (12-2, NFC West Champions, 388 PF, 178 PA, 13.3 SRS)

John Hadl is a ridiculously underrated QB, and past his prime at 33, he went to the Rams for one season. In that season, he lead the league's most efficient passing offense. Coupled an almost-as-strong running game, the Rams put forth a phenomenal offense.

Along with having one of the hardest defenses in the league to run on, they put up an SRS that was just shy of the eventual-champion Dolphins, in the midst of being one of the most revered teams in the history of football.

This is probably one of the most unfairly-forgotten teams on the list of great squads that had disappointing postseasons. There's just not a whole lot of flash on the roster, but the result was a seriously awesome team. Just a few spots above, you see the team that beat them in the playoffs.

This begins a pretty interesting portion of the list, that continues on the next post, whenever that happens.