The Super Bowl might not feature the two, true best teams in the NFL every year, but there is never a doubt that they are among the best and most resilient teams in the league.
Making it that far into the playoffs is challenging and takes loads of talent. It requires beating — sometimes upsetting — other talented rosters in difficult environments and playing consistently well enough to make it to the last game of the NFL season.
One would think that if a team makes it to the Super Bowl, it would immediately be among the favorites to win it all the next year. But that's not always the case. There is a common belief that teams reaching the Super Bowl are actually less likely to perform well in the following season, and instead will be suffering from a Super Bowl hangover.
While there are no doubt countless hangovers suffered across the globe on any given day, there is not much data on Super Bowl hangovers because there have only been 56 of them — only 55 with a complete season the following year. That means there are only 110 follow-up seasons to keep track of, and even fewer than that since the NFL-AFL merger.
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From what data there is on Super Bowl hangovers, however, The Sporting News is going to sift through and find whether the Super Bowl hangover is myth or reality.
Super Bowl hangover meaning
Ever stayed up late, had a good time and then had a not-so-good time the next time you were awake? Most of us have been there.
The Super Bowl hangover is exactly that. Two teams stay the latest into the previous season, have a good time with plenty of emotional highs — or lows — and then come into the next season trying to find the rhythm that got them to that big game in the first place.
There have rarely been repeat teams in the Super Bowl, and the general idea is that teams that reach the final game have a hard time replicating the success of the previous season, win or lose.
Is the Super Bowl hangover real?
Ask the Bengals and they might say no. They are a win away from returning to the playoffs, and appear to be a legit title contender. Ask the Rams, however, and they would probably say yes. Los Angeles is on the verge of the worst record ever for reigning champions with a 4-10 record on the year, and they have already been eliminated from playoff contention.
Overall though, the evidence coming into the year isn't really supportive of a major Super Bowl hangover. More than half the time, both teams make the playoffs next season (51.9 percent of the time) and only 9.6 percent of the time have both Super Bowl teams missed the playoffs the next season.
What about when just one team from the big game makes the playoffs the next season and the other doesn't? That's an even split of 19.2 percent and 19.2 percent with the winners going back to the playoffs and the loser missing, and the opposite, with the loser making it back and the winner missing.
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Super Bowl winners next season
By an ever-so-slight margin, being the Super Bowl winner tends to be more indicative of future success in the following season than being the losing team, which would certainly make sense.
Super Bowl winners, on average, have a winning season the following year 80.8 percent of the time and have an average record of 11-5. They make the playoffs 71.2 percent of the time, return to the Super Bowl 25 percent of the time and have won the Super Bowl 13.5 percent of the time.
The best record a team has ever posted the year after winning the Super Bowl came in the 2011 season, when the reigning Super Bowl champion Packers went 15-1 during the regular season. The worst happened in 1982, when the 1981 champion 49ers went 3-6 in a strike-shortened season. Excluding that campaign, the 1999 Broncos went 6-10 and the 1987 Giants went 6-9 (again, due to a strike).
While it is rare for teams to win the Super Bowl in back-to-back seasons, it has happened a fair amount. The last repeat came when the Patriots won back-to-back Super Bowls in 2003 and 2004. The only other teams to go back-to-back are the Dolphins (1972-73), Steelers (1974-75), Steelers (1978-79), 49ers (1988-89), Cowboys (1992-93) and Broncos (1997-98).
Slightly more rare is appearing in two straight Super Bowls, winning the first and losing the second, though it has happened quite a lot recently. The Chiefs won in 2019, but lost to Tampa Bay in 2020. Tom Brady has been on both sides as he won the Super Bowl in 2016 to the Falcons and lost in 2017 to the Eagles, while his Patriots kept the Seahawks from winning in 2014 after they beat the Broncos in 2013. The Packers were kept from two straight when losing to the Broncos in 1997, Washington fell to the Rams in 1983 after winning in 1982 and the Cowboys lost to the Steelers in 1978 after winning in 1977.
Worst record after winning Super Bowl
Depending on your point of view, that could be the 1982 49ers or the 1999 Broncos. Based on winning percentage, it would be the 49ers (.333) compared to the Broncos (.375), but the Broncos played a full season and finished the year 6-10. Denver set the record for the most losses with 10.
The 2022 Rams appear to be on the verge of setting both records, however. Los Angeles has already tied the most losses with its 4-10 record through Week 15, and with a winning percentage of .286, it would also be below San Francisco. Two more losses the rest of the way would clinch both distinctions.
Overall, there have only been seven teams that have won the Super Bowl and came back the next season to post a losing record. It has not happened since the 2003 Buccaneers, fresh off the 2002 Super Bowl win, went 7-9.
Super Bowl losers next season
The team that comes away empty-handed from the Super Bowl is one that has often become the target of the hangover speculation. But the numbers don't fully support the idea that teams that lose the Super Bowl regress the next year.
On average, Super Bowl losers post a record of 10-6 the next season and have reached the playoffs at the same clip as the Super Bowl-winning teams: 71.2 percent of the time. The most notable drop-off comes in terms of reaching the Super Bowl again. While 25 percent of winners made it back to the big game, only 15.4 percent of losers return the next season.
And while there could be a dispute over the worst record for a reigning Super Bowl champion due to labor strikes, there is no disputing which team was the worst after losing the Super Bowl. The 2003 Raiders, after falling to Tampa Bay in the previous Super Bowl, went a meager 4-12 the next year. Two reigning runners-up finished with only five wins (1990 Broncos and 1999 Falcons).
Three teams have bounced back from defeat on the sport's biggest stage to win the title the next year. The most recent example is the Patriots, who lost to the Eagles in the 2017 edition, but beat the Rams the following year. Perhaps the most famous example is the Dolphins, who after losing to the Cowboys in 1971, spun a perfect season in 1972 with an undefeated regular season and Super Bowl title. The Cowboys that beat that Dolphins team in 1971 was the first to lose one, then win the next, having fallen to the Colts the year prior.
There have been five teams that have lost back-to-back Super Bowls, though there's a bit of an asterisk on that. The first to do so was the 1973-74 Vikings and the second was the 1986-87 Broncos. The asterisk? That belongs to the early-'90s Bills. Buffalo accounted for three back-to-back losers because it lost four straight Super Bowls from 1990 to 1993. Not ideal.
