Best* Teams To Never Win The Super Bowl: 15-11

Introduction
20-16

I don't feel like I have to type out an intro anymore.

15 - 2001 St. Louis Rams (14-2, NFC Champs, 503 PF, 273 PA, 13.4 SRS)

Different city, different era, same franchise we left off with.

This also makes the first team on this list to even make the Super Bowl, which is weird.

This is also a team whose story is so well known it's probably not necessary to even talk about. In 1999, the Rams were a storybook team whose grocer quarterback had come out of nowhere to turn around a ruined franchise and take them to the promised land. The following year their defense set back their offense mightily, so they overhauled it. The result was one of the most efficient teams at dispatching opponents the league had ever seen.

This was a complete team. The defense was merely good, not quite dominant, but when the offense averages nearly seven yards a play -- a hilarious total at the time -- it doesn't need to dominate. In two years, they went from a cool story to a scary juggernaut set to swallow up the Little Team that Could.

It's funny to think about this time where the Patriots were plucky underdogs who the nation was rooting for to finish off their own storybook.

The Patriots, of course, now know just exactly how they made the Rams feel, but that's a later story. In the mean time. . .

14 - 1967 Los Angeles Rams (11-1-2, NFL Coastal Champs, 398 PF, 196 PA, 13.6 SRS)

More Rams!

It's an interesting quirk that, over the 47 years of the Super Bowl and margins of victory, it just so happens that the Rams take three consecutive spots. Especially when the middle appearances is out of St. Louis.

Of course, the Rams have also been a game short of the Super Bowl six times, which has to suck.

This is the team that kept the 18th ranked Colts out of the playoffs via a margin of victory tie-breaker, so you should have expected them to pop up soon. I don't remember '67, since I wasn't even close to born, but it seems like a really fun division race. By the Simple Rating System, the two teams were far and away the best in the NFL. The Rams, in particular, had the league's best offense and defense in points allowed, and yards per pass, as well as the league's most efficient rushing attack. The left side of the defensive line had Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones,

This was not one of the six Rams teams to fall a game short, though. After keeping the Colts out, they couldn't even win a game themselves, falling to the Cowboys and setting up the Ice Bowl.

While the Rams were the best team by SRS in the NFL, though, another team in 1967 was even better from the AFL.

13 - 1968 Dallas Cowboys (12-2, NFL Capitol Champs, 431 PF, 186 PA, 13.8 SRS)

A year after putting a team on this list, the Cowboys end up a spot higher themselves.

Dallas was already getting the reputation of being an annual disappointment, the league's bridesmaids, before this. Their losses to the Packers in the prior two Championship Games stand out on NFL Films, due to how historic those games are, but this team was probably the most disappointing yet.

The Cowboys did everything well offensively, and shut down the run on defense. They had historic talent all over the place. They had a fan base that was expecting them to burst through the door eventually.

This was also the last season of their first star quarterback Don Meredith.

With Vince Lombardi out of Green Bay, with an even better team on the field, this would seem like a prime spot to put Dallas football on the Super Bowl map.

Then they didn't even win a game. The Cowboys' relative weakness was their passing D, and Paul Warfield caught 86 yards against them, as Cleveland knocked Dallas out in the first round. The exact same thing happened the next year, too, with Warfield gaining 99 yards.

There is one argument for calling this a less disappointing Cowboys team. Yes, they should have made it past one round, but in there way was the best team in the NFL. In fact, by SRS, the Cowboys weren't even in spitting distance of being the best team in '68. Making the Super Bowl would have taken a tremendous upset.

Any amateur fan of NFL history knows where this is going, but that's a few posts away.

12 - 1983 Washington Redskins (14-2, NFC Champs, 541 PF, 332 PA, 13.9 SRS)

Now we're starting to get to the meat of the list, the teams that are thrown around frequently as "would have been the best if they'd won the Super Bowl."

Of course, by SRS, there are seven teams ahead of the Redskins, most of whom actually came before '83. A lot of that was because of a mediocre defense. Against the pass, the Redskins ranked 22nd in YPA. Now, yeah, it wasn't as big of a deal in '83, but even then, if teams are getting more than six yards every time they drop back against you, there's a problem. They were also helped by a ridiculous +43 turnover margin, which I'm willing to bet was largely flukey.

The offense was so good, though, they were still emphatically a great team. They had perhaps the most legendary offensive line in NFL history, protecting perhaps the most annoying QB in NFL history -- passing to a couple of Hall of Fame receivers -- and leading the way for a Hall of Fame runningback. When you look at the older teams on this team, you don't see "541 PF" often. That's not even an out of place number by modern NFL standards. In fact, the '83 Skins still have the sixth highest PPG total ever, and held the record for 15 years. When you score that much, it's okay to have a questionable defense.

It is not okay to allow Marcus Allen to run for 191 yards.

11 - 1968 Kansas City Chiefs (12-2,  AFL West Co-Champs,  371 PF, 170 PA, 14.0 SRS)

The second team this post alone from 1968.

AFL teams on the list feels a little strange. Yes, this was the very year the AFL went on to win the Super Bowl. Yes, this very franchise would win another Super Bowl for the Americans the next year.

Still, while the AFL was obviously good enough to demand a merger, I do not believe they were good enough to say a there was the same degree of parity in the league as the NFL, which would be necessary to justify a 14.0 per-game margin of victory, even when adjusted for league average.

That said, the Chiefs of this era were clearly a great team. They were two years removed from playing in the first Super Bowl, and what they were a year from was just mentioned. They were balanced, they were a revolutionary passing attack in a revolutionary league.

This could be considered the second team on this list not to have made the playoffs, depending on how you look at it. The Chiefs tied for first in their division, which in the AFL meant a playoff game, a concept long forgotten by football. Like many teams on this list, the Chiefs were not a choke job, they just happened to have a great season in a year where another team was even better, and that other team ended their year before the (planned) playoffs even began.

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.

Best* Teams To Never Win The Super Bowl: 21

I was just watching the NFL Network's presentation on the 10 greatest teams not never win the Super Bowl, and it got me thinking about the subject.

Now, there is way, way too much luck, and way too many moving parts, over way too small of a sample size in football to be confident on any sort of rankings like that, so I certainly don't feel like their list was right or wrong. That said, I wanted to find a quick way to create an objective list, some method of rankings teams with more granularity than wins and losses, but not having to insert my own subjective judgements.

Fortunately, Pro-Football Reference gave me a great method. They have a nifty stat they call Simple Rating System, which is just as simple as it suggests; nothing to be afraid of. It's merely margin of victory, adjusted for opponents' margin of victory (for strength of schedule) and compared to league average. So, simply, you get how much a team beat their opponents by, with theoretical stability for different eras and different schedules.

Very cool, and a nice way of comparing teams quickly and easily in terms of strength. There are things it's missing, like the luck that goes in to actual points scored, or the postseason being 1-4 more valuable games for judging teams by, but whatever, this is good enough for a framework.

So, I pulled out a list of every team that ever had a SRS of 10+ (again, that is outscoring their opponents by 10 points a game, with schedule and league average adjustments) that did not manage to win the Super Bowl. The result is 57 teams. So I cut that down to every team that had an SRS of 12+, which is obviously out of reach by simply scoring a touchdown and a field goal, plus that gives an almost-perfect 21 teams. Then I wanted to post them somewhere, so I figured I'd dust off this blog and do just that.

So that's what's happening. I'm going to post them in groups of fives, with #21 in this here post as an introduction. I think there are some obvious teams in here, along with a few surprises. I hope someone other than me actually finds this interesting.

Obviously when talking about teams that didn't win the Super Bowl, I'm going to look only at teams since 1966.

Let's start with one I'll bet no one guesses.

21 - 2012 Seattle Seahawks (11-5, Wild Card, 412 PF, 245 PA, 12.2 SRS)

This one surprises me. I did think the Seahawks were close to the best, if not the very best, team in the NFL this year, going from solid to awesome as their young team grew up. I had no idea there would be a statistical suggestion that they were one of the best teams to ever fail to win the Super Bowl.

The Seahawks get here largely by having the best scoring defense in the league. though not by having the best defense at preventing yards or first downs. I think there's a little bit of reason to believe, while awesome, the defense was not "truly" awesome enough to have them as the actual 21.

I do think they were the best team in the NFC, though, at the time the playoffs came around. If not for playing an early away game on the east coast, I think they probably would have been expected to at least make the Championship Game.

Being a recent team, though, there is not much to talk about in way of their place in history, which is something a list like here is usually intended to focus on. This isn't a team that time will remember, other than maybe the start of something great if their talent blossoms the way a lot of experts expect. There aren't noteworthy players to talk about yet, there aren't huge moments other than what you see in the picture. Just a good team that scoring margin thinks was a great team, that failed to get very far. They did go on a 150-30 stretch over three games, though, including one over the eventual NFC champs. That's pretty cool.

As a side note, this was one of four teams this past year to have a +10 or better Simple Rating System scoring margin to not win the Super Bowl. At the bottom, the Broncos (+10.1) rank as the 52nd best non-Super Bowl winner ever, while the 49ers (+10.2) rank 47th, but at least managed to get there. Another team will be on this list later.