There will be a bit of manufactured history made Sunday when the NFC (and possibly, too, when the AFC) crowns a champion. Only one No. 6 seed (2005 Steelers) has ever made it to the Super Bowl. There exists the possibility of an Eagles/Ravens meeting of 6s in the Big Game. Short of that, though, the winner of the Eagles/Cardinals game will have another dubious distinction: a place among the worst Super Bowl teams of all-time, at least with the regular season used as a gauge. Not counting the strike year of 1982, only two teams have ever made it to the Super Bowl with single-digit regular season win totals: the 1969 Packers and the 1979 Rams. Yes, it’s been nearly 30 years since it happened, and it’s guaranteed to happen when the 9-6-1 Eagles face the 9-7 Cardinals. In fact, last year’s Giants were the first team since the 1988 49ers to make it to the Super Bowl with fewer than 11 wins (both teams had 10).

Now: Those 1979 Rams were pretty mediocre. They were 4-5 at one point in their season. They had a minus-8 turnover differential and they defeated Tampa Bay of all teams in the NFC title game. The 11-5 Patriots of 1985 won three road games to reach the Super Bowl, where they were routed by the Bears. That was not a good team at all, but it was hardly worse than those Rams.

Beyond mere won/loss numbers, let’s look at how the Cardinals and Eagles fared this year. The Cardinals won a division in which the other teams went a combined 13-35. They had as many giveaways as takeaways. They had a point differential over the season of just +1 and gave up a staggering 426 points (26.6 per game). They went 1-4 against playoff teams during the regular season and were routed 47-7 by another playoff-caliber team (New England) in the second-to-last game of the regular season. They rushed for almost 600 fewer yards than they allowed on the ground.

The Eagles? Much better. Five of their losses were by a touchdown or less, and their “expected” won-loss record based on point differential has them over 11 wins. They were inconsistent and snakebitten to an extent, but these Eagles, despite being the No. 6 seed, are a much better team — at least statistically — than the Cardinals. That said, they would still probably both rank at least among the top 10 worst Super Bowl teams ever, with the Cardinals ranking very high and perhaps at the top. Your thoughts?

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Coming up: A crazy dance-filled COW from Rocket.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 8:37 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.