The last time an NFC team repeated
Will Seahawks break the trend?
Did you immediately know the answer?
The last time an NFC team repeated as Super Bowl champions:
There were only 6 divisions
The Seahawks finished at the bottom of the AFC West
Seattle’s head coach was Tom Flores
The highest-rated show on television was 60 Minutes* (19.7 million)
It’s been 32 years since the Cowboys won back-to-back Super Bowls. While three AFC teams have repeated over the past three decades, something has tripped up every single NFC Super Bowl winner (and there have been 15) since Dallas lost in the 1994 NFC Championship.
The NFC team that came the closest to repeating? The 2014 Seahawks.
*By the way how unique has the NFL’s television success been? 60 Minutes is still ranked as a top-5 show for ratings but the overall number has dipped from almost 20 million to roughly 6-7 million. Whereas Monday Night Football averaged 15.5 million viewers in 1993 when it was exclusively on ABC and last season MNF averaged 15.8 million viewers despite moving to ESPN. Sunday Night Football on NBC is regularly over 25 million.
(60 Minutes ratings wouldn’t be nearly as high if it didn’t have the NFL lead-in.)
Whereas scripted network television has seen linear ratings for the most-watched shows get cut by 65-75%* compared to the mid-90s, football is more dominant than ever…which is totally off-topic but also fascinating and important.
*I know that with streaming and later viewers included, these numbers get significantly better. Tim Allen had the #1 sitcom of 1993, Home Improvement, which averaged nearly 20 million viewers; but Allen also has one of the most-watched sitcoms of today, a show called Shifting Gears, with roughly 5 million watching it live and 5 million watching it later.
The NFL’s rare ability to not just sustain its success but grow is not just “because sports” either. NBA ratings are roughly half what they were in the Jordan era: From an average of 3 million viewers in 1995 to 1.5 million viewers last season.
—The Bulls-Sonics 1996 NBA Finals averaged 25 million viewers.
—The Pacers-Thunder 2025 NBA Finals average 10 million viewers.
(MLB ratings have been on the decline since the 70s.)
But 125 million people watched the Seahawks beat the Patriots last month, cited as the second-highest ratings in Super Bowl history.
It’s official: Seattle delivers sports ratings in championships games!
Now can the Seahawks do something that no NFC team has done for the last 32 years and get back to the Super Bowl and win it (in SoFi Stadium no less) in 11 months?
What happened to them?
Forgive me for not knowing or remembering every single important and pertinent detail, so if you think I’m overlooking a key element for any of these let me know in the comments.
1994 Cowboys: The 49ers just had their number (and the better team) that season, but Dallas came back to win the Super Bowl in 1995.
1995 49ers: Steve Young missed 5 games with a bum shoulder, then they lost to the Packers in the divisional round as Young had an ugly 32/65, 0 TD/2 INT stat line.
1996 Cowboys: In the NFL, your career is often over before you realize it. A year earlier, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin were at the top of the game. Sometimes a minor tipping point happens and nobody knows yet that the best seasons of the best players are in the past because although Dallas was still good (wild card win), they’d never be great again. And I do mean NEVER.
1997 Packers: Kenneth Walker III is the first RB to win Super Bowl MVP since….? Terrell Davis had 157 yards and 3 TDs to beat the Packers.
2000 Rams: Dick Vermeil retired after the Super Bowl, but the Rams started 6-0 the next season. Then Kurt Warner missed 5 games, returns before the playoffs but throws a ton of picks, St. Louis stumbled into the playoffs and though they nearly completed a comeback in the wild card against the Saints (Rams trailed 31-7 in the fourth quarter but made it 31-28), Az-Zahir Hakim muffs a punt that could have setup a tie or a win.
2003 Bucs: Tampa Bay went 7-9. I don’t really know what happened but the Bucs did lose five games by 3 points or less, including two in overtime.
2008 Giants: As shocking as New York’s Super Bowl win over the previously-undefeated Patriots was, the Giants were actually a much better team in 2008 and they went 12-4 with a bye week. They hosted the Eagles in the divisional round and they lost 23-11.
2010 Saints: New Orleans forced 39 turnovers in 2009, then only 25 turnovers in 2010. Then they ran into a unnatural disaster in Seattle in the wild card.
2011 Packers: They went 15-1! PackersNews.com did a whole oral history of the divisional loss to the Giants because of how shocking it was for Aaron Rodgers to lose and Eli Manning to win. The Packers dropped eight passes and lost four fumbles and Manning became a two-time championship instead of Rodgers.
2012 Giants: They had the same 9-7 record as the year they won the Super Bowl but didn’t make the playoffs.
2014 Seahawks:
You may have noticed that the previous NFC team to get back to the Super Bowl was the ‘97 Packers. In fact, none of these teams since Green Bay even won a single playoff game! Not only did Seattle earn the number one seed and win two playoff games, they came that close to a repeat championship.
I know Seahawks fans don’t get to celebrate anything about 2014, but with that context it’s worth appreciating how much better Seattle’s follow-up season was compared to the majority.
2018 Eagles: They were worse in almost every respect and not just because nobody had accepted that Carson Wentz would never be the same again. The run game went from 4th in YPC to 30th. The defense was worse. Philadelphia eked out a wild card win but lost to a much better Saints team.
2021 Bucs: They actually took the Rams to the brink in the divisional round, but they just lost it. If anyone could have repeated in the NFC at the time, it was Tom Brady.
2022 Rams: The worst reigning Super Bowl winner of all-time. L.A. had a bad offensive line to begin with but their problems were compounded with injuries to virtually every good starter on the roster and they went 5-12. They’re the only Super Bowl winner that failed to win 6 games the next season.
2025 Eagles: It just happened, right? So you probably have a good idea of what happened or what you think went wrong. Offensive line not so good, Saquon Barkley not so effective, doesn’t really feel like coaches have any control of the locker room and won’t hold certain players accountable. It’s always the same story with the Eagles after they get to the Super Bowl.
The “same story” with the Seahawks would be that they become the only NFC team in the last 20 years — besides the 2014 Seahawks — to get back to the Super Bowl the season after winning it.
How do the Seahawks get back?
I would’ve hoped that there was some sort of cautionary tale to be learned from this exercise, but how do you teach:
Don’t get injured (Warner, Wentz, Stafford)
Don’t improve and then have one bad game (Giants, Packers)
Don’t regress as normal (Cowboys, Saints, Eagles)
Don’t throw an interception at the one-yard line (Rams, 49ers, Rams, 49ers, Rams, 49ers)
Just getting back to the Super Bowl has been a herculean effort and unless you’ve been the Patriots or Chiefs in the past 25 years, no other franchises have sustained that level of Super Bowl-achieving success that stretches beyond one great season. The 2013-2014 Seahawks represent a rarity of the 21st century just by going back-to-back.
For the 2025-2026 Seahawks to be the next it will require more than just being better next season than they were last season, avoiding major injuries to star players, and staving off regression for outstanding performances among both individuals and units. There is also plenty of luck involved.
Things aren’t always going to be the way they used to be. But if you give it your all for 60 minutes, you might find that shifting gears leads to just enough home improvement to sustain your success.