Five years is an eternity in the NFL. With the average playing career under that number, the majority of the league fully turns over in that span. Consider that a stray thought for July, but the reason I’m bringing this up now is because it’s been exactly five seasons since I asked my MMQB colleagues which teams they thought would win the next five Super Bowls. Which means it’s time for America’s true pastime: dragging people for things they said on the internet!
I asked the question in February 2019, shortly after the New England Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII. You may remember that as the season Patrick Mahomes won an MVP award as a first-year starter, and the conference title games were swung by Dee Ford being offsides and Nickell Robey-Coleman not getting flagged for pass interference against the New Orleans Saints.
At the time, my colleagues (and we’ve had plenty of roster turnover as well) were smart to say that the Kansas City Chiefs’ day was coming. Overwhelmingly. Eight out of 10 people picked them to win a title, and six people actually picked them to win two. It seems obvious in hindsight—especially because they won —but projecting multiple championships for a QB who had played one season and a coach who had a reputation as a guy who couldn’t win the big game was pretty bold at the time, no matter how many people agreed. It’s really hard to win a Super Bowl, and who knows what can happen in five years. (Look no further than the fact that the players who joined Mahomes in SI design whiz Bryce Wood’s graphic accompanying the piece were Andrew Luck and Baker Mayfield.)
But the Chiefs’ titles may not even be the most interesting ones in that span. The other Lombardi Trophies were scooped up by the Rams (who, again, were coming off a Super Bowl loss when we voted and were picked by three people on their ballots) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who were not thought to be close—though they were picked on one lone ballot, , by the incomparable Conor Orr, who predicted they would move to San Antonio and win a title as the S.A. Bucs). Instead, they stayed in Tampa, pilfered Tom Brady in free agency and won Super Bowl LV with him. Which outcome would have seemed less likely at the time?
Breaking the league down into specific five-year blocks in an effort to make sweeping generalizations can be a case of cherry-picking arbitrary endpoints. It’s hard to draw too many conclusions from one five-year stretch, even if it’s the most recent period for which we have data. But it’s interesting that both of those franchises, in back-to-back seasons, built up championship-caliber cores and then imported veteran QBs to put them over the top. Remember that Jared Goff, not Matthew Stafford, was the Rams’ QB in that Super Bowl LIII loss. On the night Los Angeles. won Super Bowl LVI, I wrote about Stafford (and Brady before him), giving “more hope to franchises that consider themselves ‘a quarterback away’—a phrase that once felt as empty as being just five numbers off from hitting the Powerball.”
So who will win the next five championships? Once again, there are many types of teams to consider. Some are ready-made contenders now. Some are in the coveted star-QB-on-a-rookie-contract window. Some might be in that window a few years from now, if they draft superstars in 2025 or ’26. And who knows what team is ready to prop open a window we don’t see coming.
Here’s what my colleagues said this time around. (Teams are not listed in chronological order.)
