A Retrospective on NFL Heartbreaks: The Top Ten Teams That Fell Short

Hello, everyone.

I hope you had a great weekend of NFL football.

We still have one game left tonight coming on, but as we go into that game and have this little bit of a day break to reflect on the weekend, let's reflect back on some losing teams in the super bowl and the best of them.

We have Ed Cleese joining us to tell us about his top 10 teams that lost the Super Bowl.

Ed's up in just a moment to.

Tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal positive football history.

And it is time for a top 10 list.

We haven't done one of these for a few weeks now, and we have Ed Cleese here visiting us, the top 10 specialist.

Ed, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren.

I always get very excited for these.

Yeah, these are a lot of fun.

You have a very imaginative and very accurate mind in recalling things that have happened in the past.

And this will be interesting to hear because you have a very interesting topic that you're going to share with us tonight, and maybe you want to tell us what that is.

Sure.

So, you know, it's plenty of people have done the, you know, 10 best teams of all times, 10 best Super bowl winners of all times.

I thought it would be interesting and kind of fun to go back and try to find the 10 best teams to have lost the super bowl or the 10 teams maybe that are forever tortured because, you know, maybe they were better than the team that actually won the super bowl or just had terrible luck in terms of who they matched up against.

But the 10 teams of all of the teams that made the super bowl that didn't win it, that are the best.

All right, well, missing rings, I think they call it.

So you got like 57 candidates to choose from here.

You know what's funny is a lot of these have been really hard, the top 10 lists.

This one, actually, it was.

I got it down to about 15, and it was kind of hard from there, but it actually was not terribly difficult to just say, cross off, cross off, cross off.

We had a very long stretch there in the 80s when the NFC dominated and then again kind of through a lot of the 90s.

They, you know, kind of like magical years came out of nowhere.

Playoff runs, you know, teams that were just so much so inferior to the team that they played in the Super Bowl.

So it actually wasn't as hard as I thought it was.

The very end there in the ranking.

The actual top 10 was tough, but it was very easy to eliminate, you know, two thirds of the teams right off the bat.

All right, well, I am interested to hear what you have to say, my friend, so why don't you go ahead?

Let's, let's give us the number 10 that you came up with.

Yeah, number 10.

So we're going to go pretty far back.

We're going number 10.

And I thought it would be in, you know, looking at it, I felt like, you know, they lost four Super Bowls in the 70s, right, the Vikings.

So I felt like we needed to pick at least one of those teams to sort of represent that era of Vikings football.

And looking at the 73 Vikings back in the 14 game season, they held half of their games.

That defense was incredible.

Right.

You had three hall of Famers on the defense.

And that does not include Jim Marshall, who I know a lot of people think is a Hall of Fame snub.

Unfortunately, he just passed away this past summer, so if he ever gets in, it'll be, you know, I, I don't like it when they do the.

They do it posthumously.

I don't like that at all.

So at this point, maybe it's better if he doesn't get in, but.

So they had three hall of Famers plus Marshall and then obviously a Hall of Fame quarterback, Fran Tarkenton as well.

They went 14 and two.

I'm sorry, 12, two.

14 game season.

And in half of those games they held their opponent to single digits, which is pretty wild.

Purple people eaters.

The Purple people eaters, yes.

The reason that I only had them 10th and maybe didn't have them a little higher and really they're kind of on the verge of not making it at all is because they were really non competitive in the super bowl against the Dolphins that year.

That was the year after the Dolphins went undefeated when maybe you would think Miami did a little ripe for the picking, you know, maybe, you know, it's harder to repeat.

That game was 24 to nothing at one point.

Wound up being 24 to 7.

And what's really funny is, do you have Any idea how many passes that Bob Greasy completed against the Vikings defense in that game?

It was very few.

I know that because I think they were running the ball with the Mercury, Morrison, zonka and kick six.

He completed six passes for like 60 yards passing in a game that they won going away.

So you know, the purple people eaters in the super bowl kind of just got run over, you know, like so what they'd done all year long.

Purple pancakes.

Purple pancakes.

There you go.

So that kind of, that, that took them down a few notches for me.

But it doesn't take away the fact that that was a very.

They dominated the nfc.

They were hall of Famers all along.

The defense, one of the better defenses of all time and are number 10 on my list.

Okay, so you're saying they were the better for the entire season, the entirety of the season, not the better competition in the Super Bowl.

Correct.

Okay, I got you.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes, they were probably the best team in the NFL that year.

Obviously Miami proved that wrong, you know, in, in the Super Bowl.

But yes, I would say that throughout the entirety of the year, of all of the Minnesota teams that lost the super bowl, this is probably the one that they, the fans lament the most.

Okay, very interesting.

All right, so who do you have at number nine?

Number nine.

Having won it at 96 fairly easily over New England.

It was a fairly Easy run in 96, 97.

The packers got off to a slightly slower start.

By mid season they were kind of, I wouldn't say struggling, but maybe not dominating, but then they won their last five games of the year very, very easily.

That was a very, very balanced team.

They won both of their playoff games at home in Lambeau without a whole lot of trouble.

And they were eleven and a half point favorites going into the super bowl against the Broncos.

That's about as lopsided as you're gonna ever see in the Super Bowl.

So the packers were huge favorites.

Of course, you know, John Elway did his thing.

It was a kind of a magical night for the Broncos.

They win the game.

It was a very close game.

It was a seven point game.

It was a good game.

So the packers were highly competitive in the game, but just, just got upset.

Just got upset.

Green Bay was the better team.

They were the better team all year.

You're not going to be an 11 and a half point favorite and not be the better team, you know, but they weren't the better team that night.

And I really think that that loss really kind of mars Favre's career a little bit.

I think history.

I mean, he's a Hall of Famer.

He, most people have him, you know, top five, top ten of all time.

So, you know, it's not like we're kind of splitting hairs here, but I think that the one super bowl kind of lingers over him a little bit and I think the narrative's a little bit different if he's back to back super bowl champions or, and or Super Bowl MVPs, which he probably would have been had they won the game.

Yeah, I think, I mean, it was very much a milestone moment because I remember that, you know, vividly.

You know, I think everybody just assumed the packers were going to roll them because John Elway never does very well in the Super Bowls.

But you have four losses before that going in and you know, he was washed up.

He was the end of his career and all he did was come out and play a remarkable game and you know, running back, you know, TD was all over the place and doing his thing and made him his.

That was, I think that was his most productive season for Terrell Davis that year too.

And he really, he had a nice game and a defense for the, the Denver Broncos really came on strong too and played, you know, showed that powerful offense of the packers what was what.

And you know, that was really an exciting game and to watch and the outcome with it.

And you know, this one's for John and the whole thing that was kind of fun and these two gunslingers just going at it, you know, is what the buildup was.

And it was kind of fun.

And it had an all time great NFL film soundbite too because, you know, Terrell Davis sort of famously struggled with migraines.

And they're down there by the goal line and he's having a migraine and he tells, he tells Mike Shanahan on the sideline, he says, coach, I can't see right now.

And Shanahan just looks at him and says, you don't have to see anything on this play.

They just, but they won't believe it if you're not in the game.

So they were, they were, it was a fake handoff, a play action down by the goal line for a touchdown, but they needed Davis in the game in order for the packers to believe it.

So they, so Mike Shanahan says, you don't have to be able to see on this one.

So they Sent him back out there with his migraine.

Thank God he wasn't lined up backwards or something.

Right?

Yes, but that.

Yes.

So that's the.

That's my.

Number nine is the 97 Packers.

All right, so who do we have at the ocho?

Louis Rams.

And they wanted, of course, in 99.

If you remember, Vermeil retired right after that.

They went 10, 6.

They went from 23rd in the league, I believe, to top five, top maybe to number three on defense.

And their offense stayed at number one.

And they went 142 that year.

I think they were definitely better than.

I actually think that team was better than their 99 team that won it again.

Huge favorites in the Super Bowl.

Don't necessarily need to rehash that.

That's going to be Brady's first Super bowl in New Orleans.

U2 at halftime, post 9 11.

Lot of emotion in the building.

Huge underdogs at that point because it was the third year in a row that we'd seen the Rams, they were sort of the villain in the, in the game to an extent.

A brilliant game plan by Bill Belichick to take Marshall Falk out of that game and.

And they got braided at the end.

One thing I will point out that I've always liked, I'm a huge Kurt Warner guy.

Huge.

He played in three Super Bowls, Right.

And in all three Super Bowls he led a game tying or game winning touchdown drive in all three of them in the final minutes.

Just so happened that in two of them he didn't have the ball last.

And never got the ball back.

Kind of happened again to your guys.

Against the Steelers, he had a Hail Mary chance, but Roethlisberger got him in that one.

So.

James Harrison got him at the end of the first.

That's true.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

But I guess, you know, that was when the legend of Brady was born.

Yeah, that's definitely a good one.

I like that pick.

All right, so who do you have a seven.

Seven is going to be.

You had four choices here.

We.

This list would not be complete without a Bills team.

The reason that I chose 90 specifically is.

Is because I believe I mentioned this on the pod before.

91.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

91, 92, 93.

They were not as good as the Redskins or Cowboys in those games.

That was a little bit of bad luck for the Bills.

They were the best team.

They were better than the Giants, especially when you factored in that the Giants had a backup quarterback starting in the Super Bowl.

Might not had a better kicker in that game, though.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My.

I think I mentioned this before.

My.

My mom's family is all from Buffalo and it's talking about painful now.

The city responded very well to Norwood and that team, but it's still.

Yeah, wide right is always going to be painful because that was their team.

1990.

They went 13 and 3.

They scored 95 points in their two AFC playoff games.

They won the AFC championship game 51 to 3 over the Raiders.

They had nine Pro Bowlers on that team.

The Bills did.

The Bills were loaded.

And of course, we had a lot of Gold Jackets eventually going into Canton off that team.

That team was loaded.

They were better than the Giants.

They just, quite frankly, they got out coached in the Super Bowl.

Was that the year the Frank Reich come back against the Oilers?

No, that was two years later.

I think that was the 92.

Okay.

Pretty sure that makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So the 90 bills just cruised through the.

The playoffs and really the season.

Excellent, excellent team.

They were the better team in the Super Bowl.

They did not win.

Yeah.

I think of all the Bills for teams that the super bowl years that.

I think you're right there, that ride, white, wide right.

I can't even say it right.

That's definitely a shocker and a killer and one of the most disappointing moments in Buffalo history, I'm sure.

Yeah.

And I've always felt for Jim Kelly because he got him down there, Right.

They had the final drive.

They got him in position and, you know, sometimes the kick goes in and sometimes it doesn't.

And it's amazing how that one.

Oh, six, seven feet can make such a difference in history for so long.

Yeah, definitely.

They're still waiting.

They're still waiting.

They are, they are.

They still have a lot of disappointing things like the 13 second game and some others, you know, the game last year, but.

Yeah.

Okay, so who do we have at 6?

6.

This was the Peyton Manning's arrival in Denver.

Their defense was not anything particularly great or wonderful to write home about, but their offense was insane.

Of their 16 games that they played, they went.

Only once did they go under 400 total yards as an offense.

And then that one, that was 397.

And then they had five games where they went over 500 yards of total offense.

And Peyton Manning had 55 touchdown passes in that season.

Their first eight games were just off the charts.

Like it.

Looking at the score log, it's crazy.

That team was incredible.

They beat the Patriots in the AFC championship game.

And then, you know what's interesting about that is they got destroyed in the Super Bowl.

The Seahawks killed them.

That game was over early.

That was the weird one in New York, you know, where they.

The first potentially bad weather Super Bowl.

I think there was a bunch of snow early, but it ended up being okay.

But it was always.

It was a little weird seeing that everything about that was a little bit off.

You know, it was like.

It was odd.

It was cold weather.

It was strange.

You know, usually you're used to the.

The super bowl being in a dome or in the early part of the game, the sun's still out, you know, a lot of the time.

And it was just odd.

It was just odd to see the New York like that.

And everything was off for the Patriots all night.

I'm sorry, the.

For the Broncos all night.

So they kind of got dinged a little bit for getting so destroyed in the Super Bowl.

But that is one of the greatest offenses in the history of the NFL.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely.

It was a strong team.

And Peyton Manning, bad neck and all, really showed everybody that he could heal up and sort of shoving it back in the face of the Colts, I think, for taking Andrew Luck in the draft.

No doubt, no doubt.

It was.

It was.

It was his best year as a pro.

Yeah.

Yeah, most, definitely.

All right, we are at the halfway point.

So who do you have, number five?

This is probably one you remember pretty well.

This was another team that, you know, had a couple of super bowl disappointments during that era against The Steelers.

But I thought this was the team that should be recognized the most.

This was the second time that they played Pittsburgh in the super bowl.

And this is probably the one that really kind of sticks to Cowboys fans.

If you look at that Cowboys team you had, this is an incredible combo.

You have a Hall of Fame coach, you have a Hall of Fame quarterback, you have a Hall of Fame running back, and you have a Hall of Fame general manager.

So Tech, you know, Texram, Tom Landry, Roger Staubach, Tony Dorset, and you have two defensive guys that made the hall of Fame, Randy White and Cliff Harris.

Right.

So.

And they won the NFC championship game that year against the Rams, 28 to nothing.

That was that.

That was probably the most dominant of the Roger Staubach era.

Cowboys teams, unlike a lot of the teams on this list who either got.

Who were the better team and got upset in the super bowl or just kind of laid an egg in the super bowl, this team just ran into The Steelers of the 70s buzzsaw.

Because Dallas wasn't the best team in the NFL that year.

Despite everything that I just said, they were the second best team.

And it was just unfortunate for them to be that good in a year where they weren't the best.

And we can always go back to late in the third quarter of that game, it's 21 to 14 Steelers.

At that point in the game, the Cowboys are keeping pace, right?

And I'm sure you know which play I'm going to go to.

Roger Stall back on third down, he hits Jackie Smith right in the chest for a touchdown.

Smith drops it right, And I think it's.

Vern Lundquist says, oh, he must be the sickest man in the world right now.

I think.

I think that's who was on the call for the Cowboys.

And they settle for the field goal.

It's 21 to 17.

But it felt like that was the missed opportunity.

When you have a team like Pittsburgh, you had to take advantage.

You had to continue to keep pace, and they didn't.

The Steelers kind of pulled away in the fourth quarter and won it.

And I know that Jackie Smith play has always been one that's really stuck out for Cowboys fans because that was their opportunity that night.

Yeah, I. I agree with.

That was a big turning point there.

But I think in the buildup of the two weeks that they had, we had in between the championship games in the super bowl that year, and I remember this very vividly, there was bulletin board material because Hollywood, Henderson, the Cowboys, I think it was a defensive back or maybe a linebacker.

I can't remember which position he played but he.

That's when he was making comments about Bradshaw's intelligence, giving some insult saying, you know, he couldn't spell the word cat if he was spotted the CNEA or something.

Those effects and I think Bradshaw took a little bit of offense to that and that's why he had a pretty good game there.

But yeah, it was a four point win for the Steelers but the four point swing was on that Jackie Smith drop in the end zone.

Yes.

It's kind of funny.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not.

I'm probably not nearly the reader I should be.

But one book I remember that remember reading I think is probably an adolescent, maybe early teens is I read Hollywood Henderson's biography and that had some stories in it.

I learned a lot about a lot of things from reading from the sort of an off the rails NFL player in the 70s.

Wow.

I did not know that that kind of stuff all happened outside the.

Outside the fields of play.

I learned a lot from that book.

But yes, I think Hollywood opened his mouth and Bradshaw shut it.

Yeah, that's for sure.

And I think the rest of Steelers were kind of upset about it too.

I know Lambert was.

He fired off on a couple of different plays and has some good quips that they got on film for NFL.

Don't poke the bear, man.

Just don't do it.

Yeah, that's for sure.

But it was a fun game to watch.

A little bit stressful when you're a fan of one of the teams, but fun to watch.

Well, I'm not as old Darren, so I don't remember watching it.

There you go.

I think it's one of the greatest Super Bowls ever played.

Personally, I think.

I think I, I was obsessed as a kid.

I had the.

I think it was the VHS tape with the first 20 Super Bowls on it or 20 something.

And I would watch that thing over and over and over and over again.

So I had all the first 20 or so super Bowls basically memorized as if I had watched them.

And so yeah, that was always one of my favorite ones to stop and watch.

That looks really awesome.

And how often do you get to see the best two teams, the best team from the AFC play the best team for the nfc?

I know they say they go through the playoffs and everything, but there's a feeling for who the best team is in a year and maybe that best team doesn't play well in the playoffs or gets knocked off.

How often do you see the two best teams play.

And that was one year where you definitely.

I think it was.

You could argue the Raiders, you could, you know, argue a couple others, but I think the Steelers and Cowboys were the best two teams that year, just like you said earlier.

And in an era when you didn't have as many teams first of all, and then no free agency and so team, the rosters were just loaded.

You know, if you did it right, you keep guys forever.

So that's just.

There's just hall of Famers everywhere.

There's a lot of familiarity at that point.

You know, the Steelers have been around since the early 70s, as had the Cowboys.

So the fans across the league knew those teams.

They knew the players.

You know, he had, you know, the Cowboys down South, Steelers and the Rust Belt, you know, you know, it's very.

There's a lot to.

To like about that.

Yeah, there was, I think, if I'm not mistaken, there was, I think, a dozen total hall of Famers involved in that game between the two sidelines coaching staffs, the players.

Sounds about right.

Yeah, I think it was one of the most impressive, most impressive, most exposed thing of Pro Football hall of Fame candidates being in one game in history.

So it was pretty, pretty cool.

All right, all right, number four.

Okay, let's, let's go number four.

I don't know.

You'll have to tell me if you remember this one.

This one seems sort of obvious to me.

That kind of had to be on the list.

I guess that Colts team, they were first in defense in the NFL.

Obviously this is also before the merger.

So they were, you know, in the NFL, they were first in defense, they were second in offense.

This kind of blew my mind.

They forced 52 turnovers in a 14 game season.

That is crazy.

They went 13 and one.

They won the championship game over the Browns, 34 to nothing.

And in their whole, in that 13 and one record, all 30, only one of their 13 wins came by seven or fewer points.

So they were dominant in the NFL, which of course was viewed as the far superior league at the time.

Playing the winner of the AFL was just an afterthought.

And of course the guarantee.

Joe Namath, the biggest upset maybe to this day, not only in NFL history, but maybe in sports history changed the course of history.

But the.

That Colts team, maybe part of it was the Colts just didn't take the game very seriously.

Maybe they weren't up for it.

They got, you know, punched in the mouth and didn't really know how to respond.

But that Baltimore Colts team was probably far better than the team that actually would wind up winning the Super Bowl a couple.

Couple years later.

That.

That was.

But that 68 team was, was, was very, very good and completely dominated the league.

But two years later, Super Bowl 4, they were an AFC team then, right?

Right, Exactly.

Yes.

Yep.

Yep.

So they were the inferior team then, I guess.

There you go.

According to what they said two years prior.

Yeah, that.

Okay.

I do not remember that one because.

Okay.

I mean, this is actually how.

This is how I remember what super bowl we're on.

The Super Bowl 1, or what we now call Super Bowl 1, was played in January 66.

I was born in December 66.

So however old I am, I know that that next super bowl will be a year old.

You're as old as the Super Bowl.

Yeah, well, I'm actually a little bit younger.

I'm about eight months.

I won't cheat you 11 months younger than this.

I won't cheat you those 11.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

So who do we, who do we have next at number three?

We're at number three.

And this is probably the one that I would say is the most surprising on the list.

Kind of when I was kind of surprised, me.

And I bet you would probably maybe cause the most stir or argument coming back.

And this is a little bit, you know, I don't have the.

There's not as many numbers that stick out on this one.

This is a little bit more eye test.

You had a.

Even though he's become a little bit of a.

You know, there's controversy now about Russell Wilson and his place in history.

At that point in time, he was easily one of the five best quarterbacks in the league.

I think going to the hall of Fame someday.

He was so clutch and so good during that era.

For the Seahawks, they had the number one.

This is the Legion of Boom.

The Seahawks defense.

They were the number one defense in the NFL that year.

They had this amazing comeback win at home against the packers in the NFC Championship game.

Russell Wilson throwing an absolute dot IN overtime to win it.

A very special team in a city that had gone Seahawk crazy at the time.

They were on their way to winning back to back Super Bowls, which really Cements you in a legacy game.

And of course, we remember the play, which we'll talk about here in a minute, against the Patriots in the super bowl.

But they were also winning that game 24 to 14 midway through the fourth quarter.

So in addition to screwing it up so badly there at the end, they also had it before that they kind of dominated the Patriots that night.

Their defense was great.

They were holding Brady down.

Brady did get loose there at the end, got the Patriots the lead.

Seahawks come down.

Great drive by Wilson.

And I think what blows my mind about that play and is.

Which is going to be one of the most infamous plays in super bowl history, maybe NFL history, is they're at the.

They on first and goal from the five.

They gave it to.

To beast mode.

They gave it to lynch and he got four down to the one.

All right, there's 26 seconds left and they have a timeout.

And it's second and one to me to throw the slant.

There is maybe if you're third down or it's fourth down or you have no timeouts and you're afraid you're going to, you know, not be able to run another play, but that the confluence of.

Confluence of events there.

To have the extra two downs and the timeout and to still choose not to hand the ball off to lynch is just one of the most baffling coaching.

It's a great play by Butler for the.

For the Patriots.

I mean, incredible, awesome, awesome play.

But it's just amazing that that whole Seahawks legacy kind of gets ruined by that one decision, because I think you and I both know they hand that ball to lynch three times.

He's.

He's getting in, and they're winning the Super Bowl.

That's all they had to do was hand the ball to their guy, and they didn't do it.

Yeah, if you have any running back probably in NFL history, you know, save, you know, Jim Brown or Larry Zonka, it's going to be.

You want Marshawn lynch with the ball in his hand to get you 1 yard, 2 yards, because that dude is going to fight tooth and nail.

Everything he has in his, you know, his.

All his energy and strength to try to get that ball over the goal line.

Why you would not give that to him?

And I think they.

I think Pete Carroll just outsmarted himself and called a very poor play.

And as we saw with Kurt Warner, we talked about with James Harrison, throwing a slant down at the goal line in the super bowl is probably not a good idea.

There's Some good defenses playing in Super Bowl.

Yeah.

And what's amazing is, you know, if they.

Even if he gets stuffed, right, if he gets.

If he gets blown up, they lose three yards.

You know, whatever you call your timeout.

Now, you got Russell Wilson from about the three or the four with a little more room to operate, and he gets two plays to win the super bowl for you.

So, you know, it's just baffling.

I didn't.

The.

The Seahawks knocked the.

But.

So I was kind of rooting for the Patriots that game, but it was really.

I think that's a very forgotten team.

And then that.

That play sort of was what everybody remembers that era of Seahawks football about.

It's kind of wild.

Yeah, it is.

And pre.

That's a really.

Had to be a gut punch for.

For Seahawks fans to have that, because I can remember watching and thinking what.

What just happened.

What.

You know, you have all this anticipation of what you think is going to happen, and all of a sudden just, boom, you see something really spectacular happen with Butler's interception.

And it was spectacular.

And it's Super Bowl.

Nobody will ever forget to watch it.

So definitely a memorable moment.

Okay, so speaking about memorable moments, who do you have at number two?

Who might be the best team in Redskins franchise history?

Obviously that's going to go to the 91 team because they got it done.

And there's some statistics on that 91 team that would point to that as well.

They went 14 2.

And in their two losses, do you know what the combined margin of loss was in those two games?

No idea.

It was two points.

They lost each of their games that year.

Their two lost by one point.

Both on Monday Night Football, actually both in very classic games.

High scoring affairs, including a 48 to 47 loss to the packers in Lambeau.

But that was.

The Redskins at the time were the highest scoring team in NFL history.

They scored 541 points.

That number held for many, many years.

I can't remember exactly who broke it or when, but it was.

It was a.

It was many years down the road before that got broken.

And then what I find to be one of the most amazing NFL statistics I'VE ever seen is the Redskins that year were plus 43 in the turnover margin.

Not.

Not.

They.

They forced 43 turnovers.

They were plus 43.

That is an average of about over two and a half turnovers in your favor per game.

That is nuts.

They had like 34 interceptions from their.

From their defensive backs.

So while that team was an absolute juggernaut offensively, the defense was super opportunistic as well.

Made tons of plays, very exciting team, lots of personality.

With Theisman and Riggins, Dexter Manley, you had.

That was still the fun bunch that was before the posse, but it was still a fun bunch.

There was a lot of person hogs.

That was a super fun team.

There's always been chatter, rumors, innuendo about what happened down in Tampa before they got smoked by the underdog Raiders.

And there was some talk that maybe things got a little loose for the Redskins in the week or so leading up down in Tampa that maybe they thought they already had in the bag.

Maybe there's a little too many late nights.

Maybe for like the one time in his career, Gibbs may have kind of lost the guys a little bit.

Like, you know, he was very strict disciplinarian and was very paranoid about, you know, taking them, you know, ever.

Ever taking a team too lightly or anything like that.

He was very famous for that.

But something happened because that was not the 83 Redskins down in Tampa that got beat 38 to 9.

So.

But yes, that.

That is.

And I know for Redskin fans, that one really still stings because it changes the narrative a little BIT.

They won three Super Bowls in the Gibbs one era.

If they win that fourth one, then they're.

They're mentioned right there.

With the 49ers as the team of the decade.

Yeah, it probably could be.

And I think they got the revenge, though, from that game against Elway, I think was a year or two later.

When he was 87.

Yeah, the Redskins were renewed.

That was the Gibbs thing that the.

The three Super bowl teams, the one.

The 82 and 83 were one team, and then 87 was a different team, and then 91 was a different team.

They had like a.

A few staples throughout there, a few anchors, but they really changed through Gibbs teams.

But I think in a lot of ways, for especially the older.

Older than me, even, if you can believe that, Redskin fans, that.

That very first iteration with theism and Riggins, the Hogs, is still sort of the one that's most near and dear to people's heart, I think.

And that game really stings.

If you talk any of the older school Redskin fans, they'll always talk about that.

That fateful night in Tampa when.

When it all fell apart.

Yeah, I'll bet.

Yeah.

But that probably.

Of all the Redskins teams, that's the one I probably can remember the most players still to this day.

They were super fun.

Not even being a fan of the Redskins, you know, so, yeah, they're great.

Team, great team, but not.

But not the best team to ever lose Super Bowl.

And we all know who that is.

There's no.

I don't even know if we need to do a drum roll on this one, but we'll.

We'll do it anyway.

Drumroll, please.

And so the.

It's for all of the obvious reasons.

16 0.

This almost made me laugh when I looked at it, that for the first eight games of the year, they averaged 41 points per game.

That's like Alabama playing Mercer every week.

Didn't have the NFL right.

They averaged 41 a game over their first day.

They slowed down a little bit after that.

And of those eight games, no game was closer than 21.

So they were doing things in the NFL that we've just never, ever seen beyond going 16 0.

They also were just killing people.

Now, what's interesting is we all know how it ended for them in the super bowl with the Giants defense coming up with a brilliant plan, stopping them, the crazy helmet catch, and, you know, pulling off the biggest upset in the history of the Super bowl.

I do think that the Patriots probably is a bigger upset.

They did show some signs in the playoffs that year.

They played Jacksonville and they played the Chargers, and all of a sudden they.

They won those games.

They weren't like super crazy close, but they weren't dominant either.

And that was the game where Philip Rivers was playing with a torn ACL and Ladanian Tomlinson wasn't playing because he was hurt.

And the Chargers were hanging right with them.

And I don't think many people thought much of it at the time, but looking back, I wonder if maybe something got exposed in the playoffs.

Something got uncovered that the Giants were able to take advantage of, didn't they?

They play like the last Monday night game of the year.

And the Giants gave him a really close game and gave him a real scare.

Yeah, and it's funny because, you know, I've mentioned this a couple times.

I've got a lot of Giants fans in my life, which include my brother in law.

And I was like, oh, I'm kind of glad that the Giants gave him a good game that first one because now, you know, the Patriots will know what's up.

They've seen them, they're going to destroy them in the Super Bowl.

And while everybody else was probably rooting against the Patriots because of my brother in law and I was watching the game with him, I, you know, I, I was so convinced that the Patriots were going to, to win and then to have to watch him celebrate and then do it again a few years later, by the way, which made me even more upset.

That was quite, that was quite the evening.

It was quite the shock.

And that is the, that is the best team to ever lose the super bowl.

And quite frankly, it might be the best team in the history of the NFL.

No, sorry, I did.

95, no, thank you.

Neil O' Donnell was not making this list.

Because yes, they were, they were in the, they were in the running for this list, but not, not your 95 guys.

Sorry.

Yeah, it was just, it was a fun team because it was a bunch of no names.

It was fun.

Right, but that's your list, Darren.

All right, well, I like the list.

I like it.

Very interesting.

Great, great job.

Great research, great, you know, insight onto the games and, and what you remember or what you read if you didn't weren't alive during the game or, and yeah, I think it's spectacular.

So great job.

Thank you very much.

We'll see who I miss.

Let me know who, let me know who I left out besides the 95 Steelers.

Okay.

Larry Brown just caught another interception, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, that was a Larry Brown.

Yeah, let's not discuss Larry Brown on that or Neil o'.

Donnell.

But yeah, so great job on that.

We really appreciate you coming on here and giving us this top 10 and everything else you do to contribute to help make football history.

Thanks for having me.

I love it.

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