Next Sunday’s game in Las Vegas will crown this season’s best team, but the very nature of the Super Bowl invites comparisons to champions past. Whether it’s Kansas City or San Francisco standing under the confetti shower at the end of Super Bowl LVIII, we’ll never truly know how they stack up against any of the 57 teams who have been there before.
Or can we?
ESPN recently took on the task of ranking every previous Super Bowl-winning squad to determine the best of the best. To do it, Aaron Schatz used his own proprietary DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) ratings that look at a team’s efficiency on a play-by-play basis when adjusted for each situation and opponent. For teams that played before 1981 (when that metric was invented), estimates were calculated using stats from those years.
What results is a comprehensive ranking of Super Bowl winners, from the weakest team to hoist the Lombardi Trophy (sorry, Colts fans) to the greatest of all time (Cowboys fans, hide your eyes).
Here’s how Dallas’s five Super Bowl-winning rosters placed, plus how the three teams that beat the ‘Boys in a Super Bowl went on to finish.
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