In the 1992 and 1993 NFL seasons, the Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo Bills met in Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII. It was, and remains to this day, the only time the same two teams played in the Super Bowl in back-to-back seasons.
It doesn’t work like that in other sports. A pair of juggernauts meeting at the end on an annual basis has happened several times.
The Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics met in back-to-back NBA Finals four different times and it wasn’t that long ago that the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers played for the title in four straight years. There are plenty of stretches in MLB history where the perennial AL champ New York Yankees just kept running into the Dodgers, Giants, or Cardinals in the World Series.
It’s just too dang hard to stay on top in football, though.
Yet, here we are — more than nine months removed from the Kansas City Chiefs’ 38-35 win over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII — and those are still the two best teams in football.
Of course, there’s still a lot to be decided over the next three months or so. There are more than a few contenders in each conference who will have something to say about a Super Bowl rematch coming to fruition.
But when the Chiefs and Eagles duked it out Monday, it was for the title of the best football team of right this second and Philadelphia came out on top. Here’s how the rest of the league stacks up entering Week 12: