Useful Notes / National Football League

The Shield.^note The most recent (2008) iteration of the NFL logo reduced the number of stars in the canton from the previous 25 down to 8 – one for each division in the league. The football itself resembles its depiction atop the Vince Lombardi trophy.

"In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness. In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being. "

— George Carlin

The National Football League (NFL) is the top-level professional American Football league. Founded in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association,^note Its history should not to be confused with the NFL that briefly existed in 1902 out in Pennsylvania that featured teams owned by Pennsylvania-based Major League Baseball teams at the time. it is the sport's longest-lived pro league, as well as the most popular professional sports league of any kind in the United States and the wealthiest one by revenue in the entire world.

Originally consisting of fourteen teams scattered throughout the Midwest and Northeast of the United States, the NFL competed (and eventually merged) with various smaller leagues over the following decades. By the 1950s, it had grown into the premier pro football league in the nation, though continuing to trail Major League Baseball and even Collegiate American Football in terms of overall popularity. In 1966, the league agreed to partner and merge with the competing American Football League (AFL), bringing an end to a mutually-destructive bidding war over players and greatly expanding its number of teams and markets. And although the NFL had been playing an annual championship game since 1933, it was the Super Bowl contest, introduced in 1967 (played initially between the champion teams of the NFL and AFL, and then — after the merger went into effect in 1970 — between the NFC and AFC champions), which truly elevated the sport into must-watch television. Engrossing game action, reasonable competitive parity, and skillful marketing under then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, a former PR executive, all helped propel pro football ahead of its rivals to make it the most popular spectator sport in the United States by the 1970s, and it has only become even more dominant over the ensuing decades.

The NFL plays mostly on Sundays (with additional games on Mondays and Thursdays^note For most of the regular season the NFL is prohibited from televising (though not playing) games on Friday evening and Saturday due to an anti-trust agreement with the federal government. This is to protect high school and college football, which play games on Friday and Saturday, respectively. The NFL does a handful of Saturday games after the college football season has ended, and starting in 2023 plays a game on Black Friday.) between September and February. The regular season currently lasts eighteen weeks from early September to late December/early January, with each team playing one game per week (minus a mid-season bye week for each) — in contrast with the other major team sports in North America, football is simply too physically punishing a game to play dozens of times per season.^note The intricacies of football game-planning also necessitate a longer time off between games. Players will spend as much (if not more) time in a classroom setting watching film or diagramming plays than they do things like wind sprints and hitting tackling dummies during the week between games. Thursday night games have become notorious for sloppy football thanks to players and coaches not getting that time and playing on only 3 days rest, which contributes to relatively bad ratings; Fox notably dumped TNF off on Amazon Prime at cost in 2022 with a year still left on the contract. The division winners and three "wild card" teams (those with the best records in each conference not to win a division) proceed to a seeded playoff tournament played through January and into February, culminating in the Super Bowl game played between the conference champions on the second Sunday in February (which is usually the most-watched television program of the year, and therefore gets the best commercials).

One geographic oddity of the NFL is that no team actually plays in New York City; while there are two "New York" teams, which did in fact play in the city for decades, both of them now play in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey.^note Plus, from 1995-2016, no team played in the Los Angeles area at all. The city had the Rams from 1945-1994 and the Raiders from 1982-1994, when they both left (for St. Louis and Oakland respectively) for different reasons. The Rams moved back in 2016, and the Chargers returned in 2017 after a 55-year stay in San Diego. On the flip side, the NFL also has a team in the smallest metro area to host any major league sports franchise: Green Bay, Wisconsin, which managed to be the only one of many smaller Midwestern cities from the league's early years to hold on to its team mostly due to the Packers being owned by the town, being close enough to the Milwaukee media market, and having a rabid fanbase (they have a home sellout streak dating to 1960).

The NFL is also the only one of the four "major" North American sports leagues which has no teams outside of the United States.^note Both MLB and the NBA have teams in Toronto, and there are currently seven Canadian teams in the NHL. There is also a nine-team professional Canadian Football League which plays a version of gridiron football similar to American Football (their championship game is called the Grey Cup), but they have no affiliation with the NFL, although many do see the CFL as a kind of unofficial "minor league", due to the number of failed former NFL and college players who ultimately go play up North, plus the occasional CFL-to-NFL success story.^note Warren Moon and Doug Flutie are the most famous examples.

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NFL Divisions and Teams

Red is the AFC, Blue is the NFC. Different shades represent divisions.

The NFL's 32 teams are divided between two conferences with four divisions each, all of which have their own unique personalities. The conferences, the National and American Football Conferences, are Artifact Titles from the time when many of the AFC franchises played in the rival American Football League (AFL) before the league merged with the old NFL in 1970.^note As part of the AFL-NFL merger, the Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers all moved from the NFL to the AFC. Normally, each team considers every other team in its division as a rival, but there are some inter-conference and inter-divisional rivalries as well.^note Between 1950 and 1961, seven games were played between CFL and NFL/AFL teams, the NFL teams won the first six, and the CFL won the last one, over the AFL's Buffalo Bills.

Divisions change from time to time, most recently when the Houston Texans entered the league in 2002. Each conference has four divisions ("North", "South", "East", "West") of four teams each. These divisions are organized to promote established rivalries, so they bear little resemblance to actual geography, especially if teams change cities:

• The Baltimore Ravens are in the AFC North, despite Baltimore being in the Mid-Atlantic.^note The team was created from the Cleveland Browns and remained in the same division as the former Browns because there was no other division they would fit in. This was retained upon realignment in order to avoid splitting up the original AFL teams in the AFC East. Geographically it would make the most sense to put the Ravens in the AFC East and the Buffalo Bills in the AFC North, given that Buffalo is closer to Cleveland and Pittsburgh than it is to any team in the AFC East, and putting the Ravens in the AFC East would put all 4 AFC East teams in cities actually on the East coast (more or less, the Patriots are basically split between Boston and Providence). But as noted here, selling tickets takes priority over geography, with good reason.
• The Dallas Cowboys are in the NFC East even though Dallas is in the Southwest, albeit in the Central Time Zone. Interestingly, this was not caused by a relocation.^note This is because Tex Schramm, general manager of the Cowboys in 1970 (though with almost all of the authority of a team owner), figured Dallas would be better served to be in NFC East because much of the media runs through the Northeast. Therefore, the Cowboys was ensured some of the best media coverage, and it paid off. There were also geographical reasons for this: while Dallas is west of both Atlanta and New Orleans, placing the Cowboys in the NFC West would have required the Falcons and Saints to be placed in separate divisions. Prior to the Rams moving back to Los Angeles, both the NFC East and the NFC West were both even screwier, as the Cowboys were geographically west of the St. Louis Rams, a member of the NFC West. The Rams' placement was retained upon realignment despite their move because they wouldn't fit anywhere else; their move back makes at least the Rams make geographic sense.
• The Indianapolis Colts^note originally the Baltimore Colts are in the AFC South, even though they're a Midwestern team that's more north by latitude than the Baltimore Ravens or Cincinnati Bengals, two members of the AFC North.^note The legal settlement over the Cleveland Browns relocation required that the revived Browns be placed in the same division as Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Baltimore became the fourth AFC North team rather than Indy to preserve their old rivalries. No other team in either South Division is located outside the Southern United States.
• Prior to the four-division alignments in 2002, many of the teams were placed in even worse configurations compared to the division name. A prime example: the Arizona Cardinals played in the NFC East from 1988 to 2001. ^note Before that, they were in St. Louis, which still did not make sense. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints, and Carolina Panthers were originally in the NFC West (and no, they hadn't moved from somewhere else). ^note The Falcons and Saints were placed in the West due to the lack of any better options as well as the fact that both were the then-newest teams in the NFL/NFC, while the Panthers joined them because no other division was open.

A note on championships: While the Super Bowl has been the NFL Championship game since the 1966 season, it is not the only championship counted by the NFL. Winners of the NFL Championship from the 1920-65 seasons are recognized as on par with the Super Bowl winners, though more attention is paid to the latter. From 1920-32, the "world" champion was crowned by division standings as there was only one division. In 1932, a tie between the Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans (now known as the Detroit Lions) forced the first ever NFL playoff game, won by the Bears 9-0. The idea of a game to determine the champion was highly popular and continued ever since, including the expansion of the playoffs. The first official NFL Championship Game was the following season, with the Bears repeating by beating the New York Giants 23-21.

There are a few other quirks when it comes to what banners teams hang from the rafters. The Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts^note No direct relationship to the team that currently plays in Indianapolis all moved from the All-America Football Conference which ran from 1946-49; in all four years of the league's existence, the Browns won the AAFC title, and their wins there are also counted as legitimate championships despite the NFL not otherwise recognizing their wins and losses in that league. Furthermore, the AFL title winners from the 1960-65 seasons are counted as world champions, so teams with no Super Bowl wins like the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers do have legitimate championships in their histories. However, the NFL and AFL Championship winners from the 1966-69 are not considered "world" champions, as the Super Bowl supplanted it as the undisputed title game. For example, the 1969 Minnesota Vikings, the last "NFL Champions", are not World Champions because they lost in Super Bowl IV to the Kansas City Chiefs. Winners from these seasons are marked with an asterisk.

The divisions and their teams, along with overviews of their histories, traditions, titles, and famous figures, are presently as follows:^note Win records use combined regular and postseason numbers as of the end of the 2023 season. For "Notable Historic" figures, only include players and coaches with entries on their corresponding pages who spent the peak of their career with the team.

AFC Divisions and Teams

AFC East

AFC East (Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, & New York Jets): From the creation of the current division structure until the departure of Tom Brady in 2020, New England had an absolute lock on this top heavy division, winning it almost every year^ExceptionsThe Jets won in 2002 in a tiebreaker over the Patriots and Dolphins and the Dolphins won in 2008 in a tiebreaker over the Patriots. while the other teams usually struggled for a wild card berth. The Bills rose to take the Pats' place on top after Brady's departure. Historically, the division has had a lot of postseason success, being the winningest AFC division in the Super Bowl, with nine victories from twenty-one appearances^note and ten of twenty-two if we include the 1970 Baltimore Colts. It is also notable for containing only former AFL franchises, with three of them being original AFL teams; that's why it retained the geographic oddity of having Miami in its division even though it is geographically the southernmost NFL city (unlike the NFC East, at least all its teams are actually located in East Coast states). One more geography fact: None of the teams play in the main cities of their metropolitan areas.^note The Bills have played in Orchard Park, NY since 1973 (and the agreement for a new stadium will keep them there until at least 2052); the Dolphins in Miami Gardens (which is not part of the City of Miami), FL since 1987; the Patriots in Foxborough, MA (which is why they changed their name from the Boston Patriots to New England Patriots) since 1971; and the Jets in East Rutherford, NJ across the river from NYC since 1984.

Buffalo Bills

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 492-522-8 (.485, 11th lowest)
Colors: Red, white, and blue
Abbreviation: BUF
Home Stadium: Highmark Stadium (71,608 capacity) [1973-2025]
Future Home Stadium: New Highmark Stadium (62,000 capacity) [2026 onwards]
Current Owners: Kim and Terry Pegula
Current Head Coach: Sean McDermott
Current Starting Quarterback: Josh Allen
Notable Historic Players: Cookie Gilchrist, Tom Sestak, Billy Shaw, Jack Kemp, Jim Dunaway, Butch Byrd, O. J. Simpson, Joe DeLamielleure, Joe Ferguson, Bruce Smith, Andre Reed, Frank Reich, Jim Kelly, Kent Hull, Thurman Thomas, Steve Tasker, Scott Norwood, Steve Christie, Ted Washington, Doug Flutie, Brian Moorman, Willis McGahee, Kyle Williams, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Stefon Diggs, Damar Hamlin
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Ralph Wilson, Lou Saban, Harvey Johnson, Jim Ringo, Marv Levy
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 4; XXV (1990), XXVI (1991), XXVII (1992), XXVIII (1993)
AFL Championships: 2; 1964-65^note 3 total appearances; 1966

The Buffalo Bills, one of the AFL's original teams, brought the long-struggling city of Buffalo two championships in the early days of that league and were a game away from playing in the first Super Bowl. These remain the only professional titles claimed by a Buffalo sports team in one of the "Big 4" sports, as the Bills have largely struggled through most of their franchise history; even the legendary talents of O. J. Simpson and his "Electric Company" in the '70s weren't enough to elevate the team to regular playoff contention.^note This was in no small part due to sharing a division with the then-dominant Dolphins; through the '70s, the Bills lost every game against their rival in Miami, a 20-game single-opponent losing streak that remains unmatched in NFL history. After years of middling performances with relatively few bright spots, the franchise's greatest era by far came in the late '80s and early '90s, when coach Marv Levy, quarterback Jim Kelly, and a supporting cast of Hall of Famers ran the AFC and brought the team to the Super Bowl four years in a row for the Bills' only appearances in the Big Game. This was the only such streak in NFL history and would be seen as an incredible run of dominance... had the Bills not lost all four contests, the first by a missed kick against the Giants that went ''wide right'' and the next three by fairly sizable margins. This ultimately doomed one of the league's greatest dynasties to trivia status due to their inability to seal the deal^note leading to the infamously mocking nickname of Boy I Love Losing Superbowls; if non-Bills fans remember these teams, its likely for them mounting legendary greatest comeback in NFL playoff history by overcoming a 32-point deficit in the 1992 Wild Card Round. While the Bills stayed competitive into the late '90s, they receded to mediocrity in the 2000s.

As the city of Buffalo's economy has been in a tailspin for nearly four decades, the Bills were commonly considered a candidate to move to Los Angeles. From 2008-13, they played some home games in nearby Toronto to attempt to expand their regional appeal and alleviate this concern, but this just raised other concerns that they would make the full leap over the border. Speculation about a future move increased after founding owner Ralph Wilson died in 2014; Donald Trump publicly expressed an interest in buying the team to keep it in the U.S. but lost out to Terry Pegula, an energy billionaire who also owns the city's other major sports franchise, the Buffalo Sabres, and promised to keep the team in town, ending the Toronto home games early as part of his commitment.^note Further cementing his expressed desire to keep the team in Buffalo, he placed a large ownership share in his wife Kim's name—significant because (1) she's for all intents and purposes a Western New York native, having grown up in the Rochester area after having been adopted from South Korea in her early childhood, and (2) is 18 years younger. At the time of the purchase, the Bills held the dubious distinction of not only having the longest standing postseason drought in North American sports but also being the last "Big Four" team founded in the 20th century that hadn't made a playoff appearance in the 21st. This 17-year drought was finally snapped in 2017 under current coach Sean McDermott.^note Bills fans were so grateful to Bengals QB Andy Dalton, who pulled off a victory that was meaningless to his team but ensured the Bills a playoff seed, that they donated half a million dollars to his charitable foundation. Sports! After many years as a Butt-Monkey franchise, the Bills have finally returned to being one of the strongest teams in the league under franchise QB Josh Allen, winning their division and a playoff game for the first time in 25 years in 2020 on the way to their first AFC Championship Game appearance since the '90s Glory Days and remaining a regular contender ever since. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to reach the big game due to the Bills getting constantly roadblocked in the playoffs by the Mahomes-led Chiefs.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the size of their market, struggling local economy, and on-field challenges, the "Bills Mafia" fanbase is one of the more dedicated and rowdy in the league. Their tailgating festivities are extreme, bizarre, and borderline masochistic (these include elbow dropping flaming tables and spraying each other head-to-toe with condiments), and few teams in pro sports are as closely tied to the morale of their local citizens. By playing in Buffalo, the Bills are the only NFL team to actually play in New York State; the two teams with the state in their names play in New Jersey. Buffalo has likely the worst weather of any market in the entire NFL, with nearby Lake Erie generating plenty of harsh storms over the aging Highmark Stadium (nicknamed "the Ralph" after the late owner, who at one time was the stadium's namesake), an open-air venue built in the early '70s next to a cemetery.^note The poor weather led to the Bills facing regular TV blackouts far more often than the Packers, the nearest runner-up; 149 Bills home games were blacked out of broadcast in Western New York from 1973-2013; in contrast, the Packers only had five blackouts in that period, four of them in Milwaukee and only one at Lambeau Field. The team is set to build a mostly taxpayer-funded $1.4 billion stadium right next to Highmark's current site, and the deal's 25-year lease should keep the team in the smaller market for decades to come. The team's logo and mascot is not a "Bill" but a charging buffalo—their team name is in reference to the American entertainer Buffalo Bill.^note They took the name from a former AAFC team, which went one season as the "Buffalo Bisons" (a name used the past for Buffalo based teams and still in use for their Triple-A baseball team) before the owners held a fan poll to change it.

Miami Dolphins

Year Established: 1966
Overall Win Record: 516-422-4 (.550, 6th highest)
Nicknames: The Fins/Phins
Colors: Aqua and orange
Abbreviation: MIA
Home Stadium: Hard Rock Stadium (64,767 capacity) [Since 1987]
Current Owner: Stephen M. Ross
Current Head Coach: Mike McDaniel
Current Starting Quarterback: Tua Tagovailoa
Notable Historic Players: Bob Griese, Earl Morrall, Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, Mercury Morris, Larry Little, Nick Buoniconti, Jim Langer, Paul Warfield, Garo Yepremian, Bob Kuechenberg, Dwight Stephenson, David Woodley, Don Strock, Dan Marino, Mark Clayton, Mark Duper, John Offerdahl, Richmond Webb, Zach Thomas, Karim Abdul-Jabbar, Jason Taylor, Olindo Mare, Ricky Williams, Chad Pennington, Jake Long, Cameron Wake, Ryan Tannehill, Jaylen Waddle, Tyreek Hill, Raheem Mostert
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Joe Robbie, George Wilson, Don Shula, Wayne Huizenga
Super Bowl Championships: 2; VII (1972), VIII (1973)
Super Bowl Appearances: 5 total; VI (1971), XVII (1982), XIX (1984)
AFL Championships: 0

The Miami Dolphins were an AFL expansion team founded in 1966 by lawyer/politician Joe Robbie as the first professional sports team in Florida. After a shaky early start, they broke out as one of the strongest teams in the league after the merger thanks in no small part to the great Don Shula, who coached the team from 1970 to 1995. The Dolphins had only two losing seasons under Shula's leadership and appeared in five different Super Bowls, including three consecutive appearances from 1971-3, the only such streak in the NFL for another two decades—they also won two of those matchups back-to-back. The franchise remains best known for having the only team in the Super Bowl era to achieve a "perfect season" (no losses or ties in regular season or playoffs), doing so in 1972 in a 14-game season with a dominant run game and the so-called "No Name Defense". Nearly half a century later, aging alumni from this team still meet every year for a champagne toast whenever the last undefeated team falls short of their record.^note Several teams have won 14 or 15 games after the expansion of the regular season to 16 games in 1978, but the only team to go perfect in the regular season in that time, the 2007 Patriots, still lost the Super Bowl. NFL Films named the '72 Dolphins the #1 Greatest Team of the league's first century.

Right after a fourth Super Bowl appearance in 1982, the Fins managed to scoop up quarterback Dan Marino in the Draft, who immediately broke out as the greatest pure passer of his generation. However, Marino only appeared in one Super Bowl at the end of his record-shattering second season, which the Dolphins lost in a legendary battle of the QBs against the Montana-led 49ers who proceeded to deliver a Curbstomp Battle. Though the team remained competitive with him under center, they never returned to the Big Game... and they still haven't, not even returning to the AFC Championship Game since '92.^note For the record, this is the reason why Darius Rucker of Hootie & the Blowfish says dolphins make him cry in "Only Want To Be With You"; it has nothing to do with the environment. Ever since the retirements of Shula and Marino in the late '90s, the Dolphins have pretty much had a revolving door at both coach and quarterback and have sadly floundered, usually hovering around a .500 regular season record and only putting up four playoff appearances and zero playoff wins since 2000, the longest active drought in the league—the fact that their all-time win record still remains so high compared to other teams is a testament to just how consistently solid they were in the Shula era. However, the Dolphins were at least regularly an annoying thorn in the side of the league's best team in that era, usually costing their division rival Patriots one game per season no matter how dominant the Pats were and no matter how terrible the 'Fins became. After many years of being stuck in limbo, the Dolphins finally look to be righting the ship in the 2020s, building themselves up as a speedy offensive powerhouse (though that still has yet to translate to postseason success).

The Fins played in the Orange Bowl for their first two decades and, for a few seasons, had a dolphin (creatively named Flipper) that sat in a small tank by the end zone and jumped through hoops when the team scored touchdowns. They later moved to the new Joe Robbie Stadium, which has been renamed eight times since then; it is currently known as Hard Rock Stadium and is instantly recognizable for its massive canopy roof built to shield the team and spectators (but notably not the opponent's sideline) from the South Florida sun. For many years, the Dolphins logo was a very stern cartoon dolphin wearing a football helmet over its blowhole, though that was admittedly part of the charm and the team continues to bring the old logo back out a few times a season.

New England Patriots

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 578-455-9 (.559, 4th highest)
Prior Names/Locations: Boston Patriots (1960-70)
Nicknames: The Pats, The Death Star, The Ghosts (2019 defense, referencing an infamous quote by Jets QB Sam Darnold)
Colors: Nautical blue, red, new century silver, white
Abbreviation: NE
Home Stadium: Gillette Stadium (65,878 capacity) [Since 2002]
Current Owner: Robert Kraft
Current Head Coach: Jerod Mayo
Current Starting Quarterback: Drake Maye
Notable Historic Players: Babe Parilli, Gino Cappelletti, Jim Nance, John Hannah, Sam Cunningham, Steve Grogan, Stanley Morgan, Mike Haynes, Andre Tippett, Kenneth Sims, Tony Eason, Ben Coates, Drew Bledsoe, Willie McGinest, Troy Brown, Ty Law, Tedy Bruschi, Adam Vinatieri, Kevin Faulk, Terry Glenn, Tom Brady, Mike Vrabel, Richard Seymour, Rodney Harrison, Vince Wilfork, Logan Mankins, Stephen Gostkowski, Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Rob Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez, Matthew Slater, Julian Edelman, Devin and Jason McCourty, James White, LeGarrette Blount
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Mike Holovak, Clive Rush, Chuck Fairbanks, Raymond Berry, Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Charlie Weis, Scott Pioli
Super Bowl Championships: 6; XXXVI (2001), XXXVIII (2003), XXXIX (2004), XLIX (2014), LI (2016), LIII (2018)
Super Bowl Appearances: 11 total; XX (1985), XXXI (1996), XLII (2007), XLVI (2011), LII (2017)
AFL Championships: 0^note 1 appearance; 1963

The New England Patriots have been the strongest team of the 21st century following a nearly two-decade dynasty that elevated them to one of the greatest franchises in NFL history. However, the Pats first spent decades as one of the NFL's perennial whipping boys. After a few competitive years in the early AFL, the Patriots visited the playoffs only five times in a thirty year span and only notched postseason victories in 1985, when they went on an unexpected Super Bowl run before getting completely obliterated by the legendary vaunted 1985 Chicago Bears squad by a score of 46-10. Just a few years later, team founder Billy Sullivan was forced to sell the team to avoid bankruptcy after an ill-advised investment in a Jacksons tour right before Michael Jackson's departure. Ownership of the team passed through multiple hands and the franchise very nearly was moved to St. Louis after the Cardinals left and at one point was almost sold to the notorious media mogul Donald Trump, which was only blocked due to Trump's then-ownership of the failed USFL. However, the owner of their stadium's land, Robert Kraft, kept the team from moving to another market long enough to buy them out entirely in 1994, and started to turn its operations around.

After losing to the Packers in Super Bowl XXXI in 1996, the Pats became a true juggernaut in the early 2000s under quarterback Tom Brady and head coach Bill Belichick, winning three Super Bowls in four years and compiling an NFL record 21-game win streak from 2003-04. They remained very competitive for the rest of the decade and returned to the Super Bowl in '07 and '11, the former after posting the league's only 16-0 regular season, but lost both times to the Giants. Remarkably, the Brady-Belichick Pats proceeded to launch an even more dominant dynasty in the '10s, making the playoffs in an NFL record 11 straight seasons, appearing in eight straight AFCCGs, making four Super Bowls, and winning three of them, making them the second team to win six after the Steelers, and the first team ever to appear in 11. Their loss to the Eagles in 2017 ironically made them the second team to lose five as well, tying the rival Broncos for most losses. Brady's departure from the team in 2020 marked the end of the most successful coach-QB pairing in NFL history. The team immediately suffered their first losing record since Brady started playing the following season and generally continued to struggle in his absence, leading to Belichick stepping down after 2023, effectively all but ending the Patriots Dynasty permanently.

The Pats' status as the league's Invincible Hero (and the attitudes of some of their fans) haven't won them many supporters outside their home market becoming one of the most hated teams—they have often been called "The Empire" of the NFL, a reputation that worsened after numerous cheating scandals^note though many argue these scandals represent common behavior for most competitive sports teams that were only so harshly punished because of the team's prominence. They were accused of illegally recording their opponents' defensive signals from the sidelines in 2007, an allegation known as "Spygate". Belichick was fined $500,000^note the highest amount ever levied against a coach, as well as the highest allowed by current NFL rules, the Patriots' organization was fined $250,000, and they lost their first-round pick in the 2008 Draft, this incident would reignite the rivarly between the Jets (who were the victims of Spygate) into outright full blown hatred between the two teams that's still going on. In the 2014 postseason, the Patriots were accused of cheating yet again; dubbed "Deflategate" or "Ballghazi", the team was accused of using deliberately underinflated game balls during the AFC title game against the Colts. Much like Spygate, Deflategate resulted in a hefty fine and the forfeiting of several draft picks, along with the suspension of Tom Brady for the first 4 games of the 2016 season.^note It later emerged in early 2022 that the NFL had ignored a great deal of evidence that the air pressure of the balls likely offered no competitive advantage in those games anyways. Needless to say, reactions from the Patriots Faithful were unpleasant.

The team was originally called the Boston Patriots (appealing to the city's history related to the Revolutionary War) prior to the building of Foxboro Stadium in 1971. Since that venue was actually closer to Providence, Rhode Island than to Boston, it was decided that the team should represent the whole New England area. Foxboro was known for many years as one of the worst stadiums in the league—not only was it extremely barebones, its toilets overflowed in their first game and didn't work for the next thirty years. Its successor Gillette Stadium, built right next to Foxboro the year after their first Super Bowl win and nicknamed "The Razor" after its corporate sponsor, is much nicer; it prominently features a lighthouse behind the end zone that blows a horn during visiting teams' third downs (and the toilets work). The Patriots' logo of a Revolutionary minuteman is nicknamed "the Flying Elvis" due to his apparent sideburns and chin; even after being in use for more than two decades, some fans still greatly prefer the old logo of "Pat the Patriot" snapping a football.

New York Jets

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 440-560-8 (.440, 6th lowest)
Prior Names/Locations: New York Titans (1960-62)
Nicknames: Gang Green, New York Sack Exchange ('80s defense)
Colors: Gotham green and black
Abbreviation: NYJ
Home Stadium: MetLife Stadium (82,500 capacity) [Since 2010]
Current Owner: Woody Johnson
Current Head Coach: Robert Saleh
Current Starting Quarterback: Aaron Rodgers
Notable Historic Players: Don Maynard, Larry Grantham, Matt Snell, Joe Namath, Winston Hill, Pat Leahy, Richard Todd, Joe Klecko, Marvin Powell, Wesley Walker, Mark Gastineau, Freeman McNeil, Ken O'Brien, Dennis Byrd, Vinny Testaverde, Curtis Martin, Mo Lewis, Wayne Chrebet, Kevin Mawae, Chad Pennington, D'Brickashaw Ferguson, Nick Mangold, Darrelle Revis, Thomas Jones, Mark Sanchez, Geno Smith, Sam Darnold, Sauce Gardner
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Harry Wismer, Weeb Ewbank, Walt Michaels, Rich Kotite, Bill Parcells, Herm Edwards, Rex Ryan
Super Bowl Championships: 1; III (1968)
Super Bowl Appearances: 1
AFL Championships: 1; 1968*

The New York Jets are the New York market's other, more forgettable team. Originally, they were named the New York Titans before changing their name in 1963, after they moved to play in the Mets' Shea Stadium, to reference the jet airplanes from neighboring LaGuardia Airport that loudly flew overhead during games. The high point of the franchise came in 1968, when quarterback Joe Namath "guaranteed" victory over the heavily favored Colts and won Super Bowl III. Besides popularizing the annoying tradition of underdog teams "guaranteeing" victory in important games, this had the more lasting effect of proving the viability of the AFL and validating its merger with the NFL.

After the Super Bowl win, however, the Jets have yet to revisit the Big Game. They have spent decades as a bottom-of-the-barrel team, resulting in derisive nicknames like "the New York Jest", though in the '80s they were known as a defensive powerhouse led by their "New York Sack Exchange" D-line and were one game away from a return to the Super Bowl in the strike-shortened 1982 season. They made another AFC Championship appearance with coach Bill Parcells in the late '90s and were fairly competitive in the 2000s with Herm Edwards. This culminated with a brief but noteworthy boom period in 2009-10 when new outspoken HC Rex Ryan declared war on the Patriots and, with rookie QB Mark Sanchez and a stout defense, eliminated the Pats from the 2010 playoffs and made two consecutive AFCC games. However, that era's promise soon evaporated, encapsulated best by Sanchez's Thanksgiving Eve "Butt Fumble", one of the most infamous blunders in NFL history. The Jets have slid back into mediocrity and failed to return to the postseason ever since, giving them the longest active playoff drought of any team in America's "Big Four" leagues at thirteen seasons and counting. Allegations of the team being cursed persist, especially after the team acquired future Hall of Fame QB Aaron Rodgers in 2023 and lost him to a torn Achilles tendon after just four snaps.

Traditionally Long Island and New Jersey's football team, the Jets have been based in the Giants' home stadium since 1984, though they are co-owners of their current home in MetLife Stadium. Before sharing a home venue with the Giants, the Jets shared their home venue with the MLB's Mets, first at Polo Grounds, then at Shea Stadium. Jets fans are known for their "J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets" chant, which some of the rowdier fans translate to... other four-letter words. Did we mention that the Jets, like fellow "green team" the Eagles, have a rather aggressive fanbase? Especially when it comes to the Patriots, whom they have a nasty rivarly with (Bill Belichick infamously signed on to be head coach in New York for one day before bailing for the Pats, which mostly dominated the Jets for the next two decades and subjected them to the infamous "Spygate" controversy).

AFC North

AFC North (Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, & Pittsburgh Steelers): The home of intimidating defenses and hardcore players, all of these teams have fairly storied and interconnected histories, especially for the AFC. The Steelers and Browns are two of the three pre-AFL teams to move conferences after the merger, the Ravens play in the same market the third team (the Colts) was in when they made the jump, and the Bengals and Ravens both have foundational ties to the Browns. The division was typically a showdown between Pittsburgh and Baltimore, with Cincy a respectable third and Cleveland a distant fourth, having never won the division since the realignment. The balance of power shifted in the first half of the 2010s, with Cincy winning the division twice and clinching a wild-card berth three other times... only to fizzle in the playoffs. The division remains strong today, with the Bengals shaking off their playoff struggles in the early 2020s and even the Browns becoming more competitive. In 2023, it became the only division in modern NFL history to have all four teams finish the season with a winning record.^note The last time this happened was in 1935, when the NFL West (Lions, Packers, Bears, Cardinals) accomplished this. It was so long ago that the Cardinals were still in Chicago, and only one "American Football League" had existed. (The one that merged with the NFL was the fourth AFL.)

Baltimore Ravens

Year Established: 1996^{De Jure}De facto, they were the original Cleveland Browns from 1946 to 1995, but all history and identity is currently with the modern Browns.
Overall Win Record: 273-207-1 (.569, 3rd highest)
Prior Names/Locations: Cleveland Browns [I] (1946-95)^{De Facto}De jure, the Ravens were first established in 1996.
Colors: Purple, black, and gold
Abbreviation: BAL
Home Stadium: M&T Bank Stadium (71,008 capacity) [Since 1998]
Current Owner: Steve Bisciotti
Current Head Coach: John Harbaugh
Current Starting Quarterback: Lamar Jackson
Notable Historic Players: Ray Lewis, Jonathan Ogden, Matt Stover, Orlando Brown Sr./Jr., Peter Boulware, Trent Dilfer, Jamal Lewis, Todd Heap, Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs, Derrick Mason, Sam Koch, Marshal Yanda, Ray Rice, Joe Flacco, Anquan Boldin, Michael Oher, Jacoby Jones, Justin Tucker, Mark Andrews
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Art Modell, Ozzie Newsome, Brian Billick
Super Bowl Championships: 2; XXXV (2000), XLVII (2012)
Super Bowl Appearances: 2

The Baltimore Ravens began play as an "expansion" team in 1996, though they were not a traditional new franchise but rather the result of the original Cleveland Browns' relocation. Browns owner Art Modell sought to leave Cleveland with the Browns, but their name and history remained in Cleveland (to be used by a "revived" Browns team under new ownership) while the Ravens were considered to be the "new" team. Confused? You should be.^note Ironically, a similar thing happened to Baltimore in the '80s, when the then-Baltimore Colts team famously left unannounced in the middle of the night in a fleet of moving vans. At the time, the biggest critic of the Colts' move outside the state of Maryland was... Art Modell. Modell ceded ownership of the team to Maryland businessman Steve Bisciotti in 2004.

Despite their early hurdles, the Ravens have developed a strong following in Baltimore by... well, winning. In sharp contrast to most of the NFL's "true" expansion franchises, the Ravens have been extremely and consistently successful. They have never had a worse season than their four-win debut (the best "worst season" of any franchise), have not put up consecutive losing seasons since 1998, reached five AFC Championship Games, and won two Super Bowls. The Ravens have been known mostly for their stifling defense, and the face of the team for their first 17 years was star linebacker Ray Lewis; their 2000 Super Bowl defense still holds multiple NFL records, bringing Baltimore a championship in its first visit to the playoffs despite a fairly anemic offense. This defense over offense approach mostly remained the team's identity for the next decade, save for a standout 13-3 Steve McNair-led season in 2006. After that came the Joe Flacco era (2008-18), where the Ravens were known for the noise they made in the playoffs after middling regular seasons, including the 2012 Super Bowl run that had Flacco going on an incredible 4-game streak.^note His 11:0 TD/INT playoff ratio is tied for the best with Joe Montana. After a brief rebuilding period in the mid-'10s that followed a series of post-Super Bowl retirements from the old guard, salary cap issues, and a zero tolerance policy on criminal behavior instituted to restore the team's public image in the wake of the Ray Rice scandal, the Ravens turned into an offensive ground-game powerhouse under superstar QB Lamar Jackson without sacrificing much of their prior defensive identity, returning to the AFCCG in '23. Fun fact: The Ravens have one of the oddest records of any NFL franchise, with a 24-game win-streak in the preseason stretching from 2016-23.

Though the team is technically the successor to the former Browns, many fans hold the unofficial but well-cultivated view of the Ravens as the direct successor of the Baltimore Colts. Not only did the Ravens play their first two seasons at the Colts' old Memorial Stadium and inherit that team's former marching band, most former Baltimore Colts players, most notably Johnny Unitas, considered the Ravens to be "their" team—a statue of Unitas sits outside the Ravens' current home at M&T Bank Stadium in Camden Yards. Their mascot, nicknamed "Poe", is a reference to Baltimore's most famous poet (as is the team name).

The Ravens' complicated history is one reason why their division rivalry with the Pittsburgh Steelers is among the most bitter in the NFL. Besides carrying on the old Steelers-Browns rivalry, Baltimore is also still home to many former Colts fans who grudgingly switched allegiance to Pittsburgh after their original team left and dislike the Ravens for abandoning Cleveland in the same way. Steelers' ownership was also outspokenly against Modell's decision to relocate the team to Baltimore—owner Dan Rooney was one of only two team owners to vote against the move, and many Pittsburgh fans wore orange armbands to the final Browns/Steelers game as a sign of respect to Cleveland. The Ravens therefore picked up the animosity of the old rivalry but none of the mutual admiration, and their battles remain some of the grittiest in the NFL to this day.

Cincinnati Bengals

Year Established: 1968
Overall Win Record: 404-487-5 (.454, 7th lowest)
Nicknames: The Bungles, SWAT team (defensive secondary of the 1988 season)
Colors: Orange and black
Abbreviation: CIN
Home Stadium: Paycor Stadium (65,515) [Since 2000]
Current Owner: Mike Brown
Current Head Coach: Zac Taylor
Current Starting Quarterback: Joe Burrow
Notable Historic Players: Bob Johnson, Greg Cook, Virgil Carter, Ken Riley, Bob Trumpy, Lemar Parrish, Ken Anderson, Isaac Curtis, Archie Griffin, Pete Johnson, Jim Breech, Cris Collinsworth, Anthony Muñoz, Boomer Esiason, James Brooks, Ickey Woods, Corey Dillon, Carson Palmer, Chad Johnson(/Ochocinco), Andrew Whitworth, Cedric Benson, Kevin Huber, Andy Dalton, Carlos Dunlap, Adam "Pacman" Jones, Vontaze Burfict, Ja'Marr Chase
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Paul Brown, Forrest Gregg, Sam Wyche, Dave Shula, Katie Blackburn, Marvin Lewis
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 3; XVI (1981), XXIII (1988), LVI (2021)
AFL Championships: 0

The Cincinnati Bengals joined the AFL as an expansion team in 1968. They were founded by former Cleveland Browns legend Paul Brown pretty much solely as a Take That! effort to allow him to come back to coaching after he was fired from his namesake team; the Bengals even used the same helmets as the Browns for their first several seasons. Brown's team got off to a slow start and were decent but inconsistent for the rest of his tenure. After he stepped down from coaching, they went to two Super Bowls in the '80s and lost both in close contests to the 49ers, but they were hardly a league power even then—they only made the playoffs one other time that decade. Starting in 1990, the team endured a massive 31-year playoff win drought, earning them the nickname "the Bungles" after accruing the worst postseason win record of any franchise. They were truly terrible through the '90s, and while they had moments of promise in the 2000s and boasted a five-year streak of playoff appearances in the early '10s, they were knocked out of the first round every time. Their owner throughout this entire era, Paul Brown's son Mike, is well known as one of the cheapest and most conservative in the league, which likely contributed to the team's struggles; he kept Marvin Lewis as the team's head coach for 16 seasons despite an 0-7 playoff record and invested far less in his team's practice facilities than any other owner. In fairness to Brown, he is also (likely) the poorest NFL owner, having not come from another business background and inheriting a franchise that has never been the most highly valued. This streak of mediocrity was finally broken in dramatic fashion in 2021, when QB Joe Burrow helped lead the team all the way to a Super Bowl appearance and right back to the AFCCG the following year, establishing the Bengals as a real power in the AFC.

The Bengals' team name does not refer to the Bengal region of South Asia but to Bengal tigers. As a result, their current uniforms are some of the most distinctive in the league, boasting an orange and black tiger stripe pattern on the helmets. The team's logo is not featured on the helmet, which has resulted in a bit of a confusion for team merchandise—their official logo is a tiger-striped "B" (strangely not a "C" for the city they represent) but they also sometimes use a tiger head logo. The Bengals hosted the coldest game in NFL history accounting for wind chill^note −9 °F air temp, −37 °F with wind chill, the 1981 AFC Championship (nicknamed "the Freezer Bowl"), in their old Riverfront Stadium. The Bengals' current home, Paycor Stadium (a.k.a. "the Jungle"), is the only venue besides Lambeau Field to feature a heating system under the field to keep the ground from freezing solid. Coincidentally, it was also the only other one named after the team's founder before the Bengals took a sponsor name in 2022. The Bengals' insistence on keeping things within the family also made them the first NFL team with a woman serving as chief contract negotiator: Mike's daughter Katie Blackburn, who is also the first woman to serve on the league's influential competition committee (which sets the playing rules).

Bengals fans have a slogan/fight chant called "Who dey?"; don't mention to them its similarities to the Saints' "Who dat?" song, which predates it by several years. They inherited the Browns' rivalry with the Steelers and, in some respects, have greatly expanded on it. In fact, by the early '10s, the Bengals-Steelers rivalry was a candidate for "most bitter in the NFL", starting when Cincy's 2005-06 playoff appearance, their first in fifteen years and first AFC North title, was spoiled by Pittsburgh at home after star QB Carson Palmer sustained a devastating knee injury in his first passing play. Games between them in that era became known for high injury and penalty counts on both sides.

Cleveland Browns

Year Established: 1946^{De Jure}De facto, the modern Browns were established in 1999, with the prior franchise becoming the Baltimore Ravens in 1996.
Overall Win Record: 524-551-11 (.488, 13th lowest)^note 52-4-3 (.907) in the AAFC, 576-555-14 (.509) total
Nicknames: The Dawgs, The Brownies
Colors: Brown and orange
Abbreviation: CLE
Home Stadium: Cleveland Browns Stadium (67,452 capacity, can be expanded to 73,718)^note Known as FirstEnergy Stadium from 2013–2023; the Browns and the company ended the naming rights contract early after the company was involved in a major political corruption scandal [Since 1999]
Current Owner: Jimmy Haslam
Current Head Coach: Keven Stefanski
Current Starting Quarterback: Deshaun Watson
Notable Historic Players: Otto Graham, Marion Motley, Bill Willis, Lou Groza, Mac Speedie, Dante Lavelli, Lou Rymkus, Horace Gillom, Frank Gatski, Len Ford, George Ratterman, Mike McCormack, Milt Plum, Gene Hickerson, Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Dick Schafrath, Frank Ryan, Gary Collins, Leroy Kelly, Don Cockroft, Brian Sipe, Greg Pruitt, Clay Matthews Jr., Hanford Dixon, Frank Minnifield, Bernie Kosar, Ozzie Newsome, Michael Dean Perry, Eric Metcalf, Eric Turner, Phil Dawson, Joe Thomas, Josh Cribbs, Peyton Hillis, Johnny Manziel, Myles Garrett, Baker Mayfield, Nick Chubb
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Paul Brown, Art Modell, Blanton Collier, Marty Schottenheimer, Hue Jackson
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 0
Pre-Merger Championships: 8; 1946-49 (AAFC Championships); 1950, 1954-55, 1964^note 15 total appearances; 1951-53, 1957, 1965, 1968-69

The Cleveland Browns are a former powerhouse that has appeared in more championship games than any other pro football (though four of them came from outside the NFL) but has also not appeared in one since the NFL-AFL merger. Their history is messy and complicated. Named after their coach, the legendary Paul Brown^note Who was initially against this idea and wanted to call them the "Panthers", but the owner of a defunct team with that name refused to give up the rights, they originally started out in 1946 as the dominant team of the short-lived All-America Football Conference. This team, assembled largely of players overlooked by the NFL due to the chaos of the WWII years, won the AAFC's title in each of its four seasons with QB Otto Graham and color-barrier-breaking RB Marion Motley at the helm, and they attracted greater attendance numbers than any team in pro football ever had to that point. To the shock of much of the football world, who had figured their dominant success (including a perfect 15-0 1948 season) had come from lesser competition in the AAFC, they then continued to dominate when they joined the NFL in 1950; they won the championship in their first year, appeared in six of the next seven championship games, and won another two of those back-to-back.

The Browns remained successful even after Graham and the other stars retired and owner Art Modell fired the team's namesake coach in 1963. The team won one more league title with legendary fullback Jim Brown in 1964 but lost the final NFL Championship before the introduction of the Super Bowl and fell just short of appearing in Super Bowls III and IV by losing in the last two NFLCGs before the merger. These losses seemed to leave a Curse on the franchise: once the Super Bowl became the NFL's true championship game, the team truly became known for always dramatically choking in the clutch, from the infamous "Red Right 88" play that ended MVP Brian Sipe's "Kardiac Kids" run in 1980 to three different AFC Championship losses to the Broncos in the following decade. (Don't ask Browns fans about "The Drive" or "The Fumble".) The team struggled in the '90s, and in 1996, the original team was moved to Baltimore by Modell (don't mention him around Browns fans either, unless you're cursing him out) over a dispute about the team's stadium. That would have been the end of the storied franchise's time in Cleveland...

...had the city not filed a federal lawsuit whose settlement awarded the city the Browns' name, colors, and franchise history. Modell still took the players and staff and was awarded an "expansion team", the Ravens.^note Some fans still recognize them as the real heir of the Browns legacy, especially ones bitter about the Ravens' multiple Super Bowl titles and winning culture. The Browns then technically returned as an expansion team in 1999, but these "new Browns" have generally been a laughingstock, winning the fewest games of any team since their rebirth, failing to ever win their division,^note The old Browns last won in 1989, giving the franchise the longest such drought among any team. After the Lions won the NFC North in 2023, the Browns are now the only team to have had failed to win their division since the 2002 realignment. only making three postseasons, and not winning a playoff game until 2020. This has been attributed to constantly-shifting coaching staffs, a paranoid front office, and high-profile draft picks like Johnny Manziel that have dramatically flamed out.^note The National Football League Notorious Figures page has an entire folder dedicated to these busts. The team was purchased by truck stop mogul Jimmy Haslam in 2012, who seemed serious about reforming them, but his company was investigated for fraud soon after his purchase, complete with the FBI and IRS staging a raid. The franchise bottomed at an 0-16 mark in 2017, only the second team with such a "perfect" record. The head coach of this season, Hue Jackson, was rehired despite going 1-31 across two seasons at the helm, largely because he was already the team's sixth coach in the past ten years, which brought further questions about Haslam's competence as owner. Jackson was ultimately fired the next year as rookie QB Baker Mayfield led the Browns to more wins than they had in the three previous seasons combined. In 2020, new HC Kevin Stefanski broke a decade-long losing streak, 17-year playoff drought, and 26-year playoff win drought. A regression the following year led them to give up on Mayfield in favor of the controversy-ridden Deshaun Watson, but the Browns have been generally competitive since, returning to the playoffs in 2023 while starting their fourth quarterback—Joe Flacco, who had started that season unsigned—after an injury to Watson early on.

The Browns' current stadium was built right after Modell first left town as part of the agreement to let the city keep the team's history. Once again known by its original name of Cleveland Browns Stadium, it is often referred to by the derisive nickname "The Factory of Sadness", though some exchanged that for the less dismal moniker "The Bakery" when Mayfield was in town. Its location off the shore of Lake Erie often invites harsh weather, and its lakefront neighbors are mostly museums, including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Their colors, as you might expect, are brown... and also orange. They are the only team in the league that doesn't wear a logo on their helmets; an image of one of these orange helmets itself serves as the Browns official icon. Adding to the confusion: the team's mascot is a dog, and their fans are referred to as the Dawg Pound and often dress up as dogs at games.^note The Browns do have an alternate symbolism-laden logo featuring a front facing mastiff. The original idea was to add a interlocking "CB" logo to their helmets, but the blank look proved to be more popular with Art Modell and the Browns brass. In the early years, the team had an elf mascot (of a Christmas/Keebler variety, not Tolkien); fans who would prefer to remember the Browns' more winning days often still sport this logo. The Dawg Pound is one of the more loyal fanbases in the NFL, but the constant losing has also made them one of the most angry, violent, and willing to take on-field matters into their own hands, an attitude that has spread to Cleveland sports fans in general. Among other incidents, the Dawgs pelted the visiting Broncos with so much debris in '89 that the team had to switch sidelines^note which ensured Denver kicked into the wind on their final drive, costing them the game, tore up the old Municipal Stadium's seats during the old team's final home game, and threw beer bottles at the refs after an officiating error cost them a game in 2001.

And, yes, the Family Guy character Cleveland Brown is named after this team.

Pittsburgh Steelers

Year Established: 1933
Overall Win Record: 707-606-22 (.538, 9th highest)
Prior Names/Locations: Pittsburgh Pirates (1933-39), Phil-Pitt "Steagles" (1943), Card-Pitt (1944)
Nicknames: Steel Curtain ('70s defense), Stillers, The Black and Gold Brigade, Blitzburgh
Colors: Black and yellow
Abbreviation: PIT
Home Stadium: Acrisure Stadium (68,400 capacity, can extend to 75,000) [Since 2001]
Current Owner: Art Rooney II
Current Head Coach: Mike Tomlin
Current Starting Quarterback: Russell Wilson
Notable Historic Players: Mose Kelsch, Walt Kiesling, Bill Dudley, Jim Finks, John Henry Johnson, Jack Butler, Ernie Stautner, Andy Russell, Bobby Walden, "Mean" Joe Greene, Rocky Bleier, L.C. Greenwood, John "Frenchy" Fuqua, Terry Bradshaw, Mel Blount, Dwight White, Franco Harris, Joe Gilliam, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, Mike Webster, Jack Ham, Ernie Holmes, Jack Lambert, Donnie Shell, Craig Colquitt, Tunch Ilkin, Gary Anderson, Rod Woodson, Merrill Hoge, Dermontti Dawson, Neil O'Donnell, Barry Foster, Kevin Greene, Kordell Stewart, Jerome Bettis, Alan Faneca, Hines Ward, James Harrison, Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Antonio Brown, Cam Heyward, Le'Veon Bell, Alejandro Villanueva, Ryan Shazier, T.J. Watt
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Art Rooney, Bert Bell, Bill Austin, Chuck Noll, Bill Nunn, Dan Rooney, Bill Cowher, Dick LeBeau
Super Bowl Championships: 6; IX (1974), X (1975), XIII (1978), XIV (1979), XL (2005), XLIII (2008)
Super Bowl Appearances: 8 total; XXX (1995), XLV (2010)
Pre-Merger Championships: 0

The Pittsburgh Steelers have been the most consistently successful team of the Super Bowl era in terms of regular season win record. This is a sharp contrast to their status as perhaps the most pathetic team in the pre-merger NFL.^note In fact, the merger itself played a major role in their turnaround—they were one of three pre-merger NFL teams (alongside the Browns and Colts) who switched to the AFC in order to balance the conferences and received $3 million (approximately $18 million today) as compensation. The windfall allowed the historically cash-strapped franchise to begin pursuing and retaining more talented players that became the core of their '70s successes. The team was founded in 1933 by Art Rooney as the Pittsburgh Pirates, in reference to the city's baseball team; they were renamed the "Steelers" in 1940 in reference to the city's steel industry. For their first four decades, the team was generally terrible and only made the postseason once (a 1947 divisional tie-breaker, which they lost). As a result, the franchise regularly faced financial difficulties—they had to merge with the Eagles and Cardinals just to make it through World War II, and the latter team went 0-10. ^note The second combination team, officially Card-Pitt, was nicknamed the "Car-Pitts" because opponents walked all over them. While they were more average than truly terrible for most of the next two decades, the Steelers were mostly an afterthought in the wider league.

This reputation changed starting with the tenure of coach Chuck Noll, which began in 1969. Under Noll, the team ran the '70s NFL with superstar QB Terry Bradshaw, an absolutely stacked passing and rushing offense, and an implacable "Steel Curtain" defense. This team contained more Hall of Famers and colorful characters than practically any single era of any franchise and won four Super Bowls in six years (still the most dominating stretch in NFL history). The success of the '70s Steelers dynasty essentially erased the team's reputation as the league's Butt-Monkey from memory. More importantly, it helped to boost the city's morale during a severe economic downturn in the region (though tragically, many members of the great '70s teams later suffered various misfortunes and mental/physical problems traced to their playing days). This era of the team is still so revered in Pittsburgh that they got a massive roller coaster named after them at the local Kennywood amusement park, the main attraction of a whole land themed to the franchise.

The Steelers are still owned by the Rooney family^note through a unique arrangement where the NFL lets them represent the team in owner meetings despite not holding the necessary majority ownership. Since hiring Noll over half a century ago, the Rooneys have never had to fire a head coach and have hired just two (Bill Cowher and current HC Mike Tomlin) to replace their predecessors upon retirement. This lack of turnover has given them one of the most stable identities in the league, still known for playing a smothering defense and a run-first offense that, thanks to the team's uncanny knack of drafting talented wide receivers from any round,^note prime recent examples include Hines Ward, who was scooped in round three of 1998, and Antonio Brown, who was drafted in round six of 2010 and originally envisioned as a punt returner enables them to run a gunslinging high-passing offense as needed. Outside of a brief rebuild period in the late '80s, the Black and Gold never go more than two or three seasons between (usually lengthy) playoff runs, and Tomlin has yet to have a losing season through his long tenure. After a Super Bowl appearance in the '90s, Cowher and Tomlin each brought Pittsburgh another Super Bowl victory apiece with QB Ben Roethlisberger in the 2000s. After one more Super Bowl visit with "Big Ben" in 2010, the Steelers have won a total of six Super Bowls and have played in eight, tied with the Patriots for the former and tied with the Cowboys and the Broncos for second in the latter. Post-2010, however, the Steelers have been in a bit of a rut where they've become known as a team that's good enough to make the playoffs but end up getting ousted early, the one exception being an AFC Championship appearance in 2016. Roethlisberger's retirement in 2021 has also left them searching for a new offensive identity, though their defense, led by superstar T.J. Watt, remains a top-notch unit. Overall, the Steelers have made a total of 16 conference championship appearances, the most in the AFC and second behind only the 49ers in the league. In addition to their divisional rivals, the Steelers have intense rivalries with their fellow Pennsylvania team, the Eagles, and fellow "'70s great with an intense fanbase", the Raiders.

Their success earned the team one of the league's most die-hard local fanbases, the Steeler Nation, who can be found whipping their Terrible Towels and jumping around to Styx's "Renegade" in countless sold-out games. Because of their on-field success and intense fanbase, the team travels well and is a fixture in national sports media. Their current stadium, originally named Heinz Field^note Yes, after the condiment company, which is native to Pittsburgh; the scoreboard once featured two giant ketchup bottles that tipped after touchdowns, and the venue had the Embarrassing Nickname "the Mustard Palace" on account of its yellow seats. before a rename in 2022, was built in 2000 to replace the aging Three Rivers Stadium. It was known for having a terrible playing surface, though the players refuse to switch to artificial turf because of tradition.^note During a horrible rainstorm in 2007, the Steelers and Dolphins nearly played into overtime scoreless because of a very muddy field already pummeled by a pack of college and high school football games the week before; the Steelers only won near the end on a chip-shot field goal. This game might be best remembered for the punt that stuck in the turf when it landed. Non-football fans may recognize the venue as the field Bane attacks in The Dark Knight Rises; the movie was filmed in Pittsburgh and features many Steeler cameos. Like other Pittsburgh teams, the Steelers' color scheme is black and yellow. Their unique logo (three red, blue, and yellow four-pointed stars in a circle) comes from a flag once used by the local U.S. Steel company. Even more unique is that said logo appears only on the right side of their helmet.^note This is due to the fact that the Steelers wordmark and the 3 after mentioned stars inside the logo would end up being flipped if it had appeared on the left side and that during the development of their helmets their designer actually liked the unique look.

AFC South

AFC South (Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, & Tennessee Titans): One of the weakest divisions in the league, with a lower historic win record than any division outside their geographic counterparts in the NFC and no league championships since 2006, the longest drought for any division. That relative weakness makes the division one of the more internally competitive. The Colts ran away with the division title during the Peyton Manning years. The Titans and Jaguars usually put up a fight in the 2000s but fell to the bottom half of the league through much of the next decade. The Texans, whose creation in 2002 kicked off the division realignment, initially struggled, rose to become the division champ for most of the 2010s after Manning's departure, and likewise fell back hard to earth. In recent years, the division has been more or less up for grabs, with the Titans narrowly standing as the most consistent competitors.

Houston Texans

Year Established: 2002
Overall Win Record: 157-209-1 (.429, 4th lowest)
Colors: Deep steel blue and battle red
Abbreviation: HOU
Home Stadium: NRG Stadium (72,220 capacity) [Since 2002]
Current Owner: Janice McNair^note Her son Cal is the CEO and representative at owners' meetings.
Current Head Coach: DeMeco Ryans
Current Starting Quarterback: C.J. Stroud
Notable Historic Players: David Carr, Andre Johnson, Mario Williams, DeMeco Ryans, Matt Schaub, Arian Foster, Jon Weeks, J.J. Watt, DeAndre Hopkins, Jedeveon Clowney, Deshaun Watson, Laremy Tunsil
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Bill O'Brien, Lovie Smith
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 0

The Houston Texans are the NFL's youngest franchise. They began play in 2002, five years after the old Houston Oilers left town to become the Tennessee Titans. The NFL originally awarded the franchise to Los Angeles, but civic arguments over a new stadium in L.A., coupled with a record-breaking expansion bid by Houston businessman Bob McNair ($700 million, not including the price tag for the new stadium) forced the NFL to change its mind and award the team back to Houston instead. However, since the Titans owned, refused to sell, and ultimately retired the Oilers name and colors (Titans owner Bud Adams specifically had the team spend two seasons as the "Tennessee Oilers" so that a repeat of the Cleveland Browns situation would be impossible), the team took the name "Texans", becoming the sixth pro football team to use that name.^note They were only the second in the NFL to use the name, the first being the Dallas Texans, which were the last team in the league to fold. However, the Kansas City Chiefs also started out life in the AFL as the Dallas Texans, and McNair had to ask Chiefs' owner Lamar Hunt for permission to use the name. There were also the first Houston Texans, a WFL team that played in 1974; the Austin Texans, an AFA team that played in 1978; and the third Dallas Texans, an arena team that played in the early '90s.

After falling short of a winning record through their first eight seasons, the Texans broke through in 2011 with the franchise's first playoff berth and division win, fueled mostly by a revitalized defense led by J.J. Watt. They were a regular playoff contender through most of the '10s but have still yet to make it to the Big Game or even the conference championship game, the only franchise to never make it that far. The Texans fell back to the bottom of the league due to widely criticized front office decisions after the passing of the elder McNair in 2018, which led franchise QB Deshaun Watson to refuse to play for the team shortly before his career was derailed by sexual assault allegations in 2021. However, the Texans future currently looks bright thanks to a very promising young QB and HC combo.

The Texans' most die-hard fans occupy the "Bull Pen" section of the stands in NRG Stadium, which the team has played in through their whole history. NRG (originally known as Reliant Stadium) was built next to the Oilers' old digs at the Astrodome and was the first NFL facility with a retractable roof.

Indianapolis Colts

Year Established: 1953
Overall Win Record: 579-526-8 (.524, 13th highest)
Prior Names/Locations: Baltimore Colts (1953-83)
Colors: Blue and white
Abbreviation: IND
Home Stadium: Lucas Oil Stadium (67,000 capacity, expandable to 70,000) [Since 2008]
Current Owner: Jim Irsay
Current Head Coach: Shane Steichen
Current Starting Quarterback: Anthony Richardson
Notable Historic Players: Gino Marchetti, Art Donovan, Buddy Young, Alan Ameche, Raymond Berry, Johnny Unitas, Lenny Moore, Jim Parker, Gene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, Bobby Boyd, John Mackey, Bubba Smith, Earl Morrall, Lydell Mitchell, Bert Jones, Chris Hinton, Rohn Stark, Eric Dickerson, Jim Harbaugh, Peyton Manning, Edgerrin James, Jeff Saturday, Marcus Pollard, Marvin Harrison, Mike Vanderjagt, Reggie Wayne, Dwight Freeney, Robert Mathis, Bob Sanders, Adam Vinatieri, Pat McAfee, Andrew Luck, Jonathan Taylor
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Carroll Rosenbloom, Weeb Ewbank, Don Shula, Don McCafferty, Robert Irsay, Joe Thomas, Ted Marchibroda, Jim Mora, Tony Dungy, Ryan Grigson, Frank Reich
Super Bowl Championships: 2; V (1970), XLI (2006)
Super Bowl Appearances: 4 total; III (1968), XLIV (2009)
Pre-Merger Championships: 3; 1958-59, 1968*^note 4 total appearances; 1964

The Indianapolis Colts are a long-running franchise that dates back, in some form, to multiple different franchises stretching all the way to 1913, though the connection is convoluted and tenuous.^note See the Baltimore Colts' and Dayton Triangles' entries under "Defunct Teams" for more details. The NFL and the Colts don't officially recognize any of the history prior to 1953, when founder Carroll Rosenbloom set up shop in Baltimore. After struggling for their first few years, the Colts found their star quarterback, the legendary Johnny Unitas, and surrounded him with a host of Hall of Famers that took the team to two back-to-back championship titles in 1958-59. The first of these games, an away match against the Giants, was the first NFL game to be decided in sudden-death overtime, played a major role in popularizing pro football as a television spectacle, and is still often referred to as "The Greatest Game Ever Played". The team stayed one of the strongest in the league through the '60s, appearing in Super Bowl III in a surprise loss to the Jets before coming back for a messy victory against the Cowboys in Super Bowl V. However, outside of a brief period of promise in the mid-'70s, they largely struggled after Unitas' departure and the purchase of the team by Robert Irsay. With poor performance (including a winless 0-8-1 1982 season^note This coming the year after their defense set the standing NFL record for most points surrendered in a season.) affecting attendance and a lack of public funding for a new stadium, Irsay snuck the team out of town in 1983, departing in moving vans in the middle of the night to keep the city of Baltimore from claiming the franchise rights with eminent domain.

The Colts remained mediocre in Indy, only making one playoff appearance in its first ten years there, but made a surprisingly deep postseason run to the AFC Championship Game in Year 11. They almost immediately fell back to the bottom of the league but soon became truly dominant after drafting star quarterback Peyton Manning in 1998 with the #1 pick. Paired with Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy, Manning's Colts were the winningest team of the '00s in the regular season, and even with a playoff-performance issue that made them the Trope Namer for Every Year They Fizzle Out, they still notched a Super Bowl win in XLI over the Bears and appearance in XLIV where they lost to the Saints. However, when Manning went out from a neck injury in 2011, they instantly fell to worst in the league. The Colts recovered somewhat thanks to their #1 draft pick of Andrew Luck as Manning's replacement, reaching the AFC Championship in 2014, but Luck's injury problems and sudden early retirement before the start of the 2019 season has left the team struggling to find its long-term identity ever since.

The Colts were a team of many firsts. In Baltimore, they had the first cheerleading squad and the first official mascot in the NFL and were also the first NFL team to put a logo (a blue horseshoe) on their helmets. The Colts didn't have the first NFL marching band—that honor belongs to the Washington team—but the band is notable for both predating the current Colts franchise (it was created for the first Baltimore Colts, an AAFC team that folded after 1950) and staying in the city after the team's departure, surviving twelve years before becoming the official marching band of the Ravens.^note Its attempts to stay in Baltimore despite the lack of a team were featured in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary.

The Colts played their first three decades in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, nicknamed "The Old Gray Lady of 33rd Street" (or alternatively "The World's Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum" due to their fanatical fans). A small private airplane once crashed into the upper deck of the stadium minutes after a 1976 playoff game; thankfully, because the game was a massive blowout, the stands were almost empty and no one (not even the pilot) was seriously hurt. After the move to Indy, the team played in the Hoosier Dome (later renamed the RCA Dome). Another one of those fabric-roofed stadiums, it was torn down in 2008 and replaced by Lucas Oil Stadium, a red-brick structure featuring massive windows and a retractable roof that has a reputation as one of the more gorgeous venues in the league. Outside of their division, they have a solid rivalry with the Ravens (due to the Baltimore connection) and the Patriots (due to the Manning vs. Brady battles of the '00s).

Jacksonville Jaguars

Year Established: 1995
Overall Win Record: 206-277 (.427, 3rd lowest)
Nicknames: The Jags, Sacksonville (2017 secondary)
Colors: Teal, black, and gold
Abbreviation: JAX
Home Stadium: EverBank Stadium (67,814 capacity, can expand to 82,000) [Since 1995]
Current Owner: Shahid Khan
Current Head Coach: Doug Pederson
Current Starting Quarterback: Trevor Lawrence
Notable Historic Players: Mark Brunell, Tony Boselli, Jimmy Smith, Fred Taylor, Marcus Stroud, John Henderson, Josh Scobee, Marcedes Lewis, Maurice Jones-Drew, Blaine Gabbert, Blake Bortles, Jalen Ramsey, Calais Campbell
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Tom Coughlin, Jack Del Rio, Gene Smith, Gus Bradley, Urban Meyer
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 0

The Jacksonville Jaguars began play in 1995 and started out very promising, making it to the AFC Championship Game in '96 and '99. However, their tiny regional market,^note The smallest in all U.S. professional sports by population; only 1.5 million people live in the Jacksonville metro area, and competition from the longer-established Saints, Falcons, and Bucs ensures that the Jags' dedicated TV market doesn't reach far beyond the thinly-populated North Florida, which barely exceeds two million people. While Green Bay, as noted above, has a much smaller hometown, its regional market encompasses most of Wisconsin, whose population is nearly thrice that. and lack of Super Bowl appearances has made them arguably the least notable team in the NFL. That's not to say the Jags aren't interesting, far from it. Midway into the 2011 season, founder Wayne Weaver fired long-time head coach Jack Del Rio and sold the franchise to Shahid Khan. A billionaire from Pakistan called "The Face of The American Dream" by Forbes, Khan's mustache is as well known as his business skills—fans can be seen wearing "Khanstaches" at home games in support of their owner. However, this also marked the point the Jags declined from general mediocrity to one of the worst teams in the NFL. After a lengthy rebuild, the team made it back to the AFCCG in 2017 with a dominant "Sacksonville" defense, only to immediately slide back to the bottom of the league amidst various on- and off-field controversies. From 2020-21, the Jaguars posted the longest losing streak in the NFL since the Bucs joined the league (20 straight losses), earning back-to-back #1 draft picks; they are currently attempting a rebuild around one of those picks, QB Trevor Lawrence.

Because of Jacksonville's inherent disadvantages for financial growth,^note The NFL had to dock five cruise ships along the St. Johns River just to have enough hotel space to host the Super Bowl there the Jags were often considered for a move to Los Angeles, not helped by a multi-year commitment to play one home game in London, leading to the team sometimes derisively being referred to as the "London Jaguars". Those rumors were largely killed by a series of stadium upgrades and the Rams and Chargers returning to LA. The Jags were to play two of their eight 2020 home games in London, in no small part because they get to keep all the revenue from the international games, but the COVID-19 Pandemic caused these games to be moved back to North Florida for the immediate future. The Jags are technically geographical rivals of Miami and Tampa Bay, though none of the teams in Florida take their rivalries seriously.^note The Dolphins were kept in the AFC East, rather than moved to the South with the Jaguars, because the team and their fans overwhelmingly favored keeping their old AFL rivalries alive; the fact that many transplants from the Northeast live in South Florida helps keep the Dolphins' rivalries with those teams intense and the Florida ones less so.

The Jaguars' uniforms feature a distinctive teal color which extends to their logo, which has a teal tongue, and their mascot, Jaxson de Ville, who hypes up the crowd at the start of each game by bungee jumping and ziplining from the top of the stadium's massive video board, one of the largest in the world. Their home at EverBank Stadium, built upon the footprint of the former Gator Bowl Stadium, also has an end zone club area that features a pair of swimming pools. The team has a degree of crossover with professional wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling, of which Shahid is the lead investor and his son Tony Khan is the founder, president, and CEO (not to mention head booker). AEW's offices are also in the stadium, and cinematic matches called "Stadium Stampedes" have been contested there, with two teams of wrestlers fighting all throughout the grounds, stands, and club area. During the first event, the Jaguars cheerleaders performed for the start, and Jaxson de Ville got knocked out by a Judas Effect after he taunted Chris Jericho, while during the second the Inner Circle entered by ziplining down the video board and their fight with The Pinnacle entered coach Urban Meyer's office, with Meyer handing Jericho a laptop that he proceeded to smash over MJF's head.

Tennessee Titans

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 493-524-6 (.485, 12th lowest)
Prior Names/Locations: Houston Oilers (1960-96), Tennessee Oilers (1997-98)
Colors: Navy, Titans blue, red, silver
Abbreviation: TEN
Home Stadium: Nissan Stadium (69,143 capacity) [1999-NET 2026]
Future Home Stadium: New Nissan Stadium (55,000-65,000 capacity} [NET 2027]
Current Owner: Amy Adams Strunk
Current Head Coach: Brian Callahan
Current Starting Quarterback: Will Levis
Notable Historic Players: George Blanda, Billy Cannon Sr., Charlie Hennigan, Jim Norton, Bill Groman, Ken Houston, Elvin Bethea, Curley Culp, Dan Pastorini, Billy "White Shoes" Johnson, Ken Burrough, Robert Brazile, Earl Campbell, Mike Munchak, Warren Moon, Bruce Matthews, Ray Childress, Al Del Greco, Steve McNair, Eddie George, Derrick Mason, Kevin and Andre Dyson, Jevon Kearse, Albert Haynesworth, Rob Bironas, Vince Young, Chris Johnson, Brett Kern, Marcus Mariota, Derrick Henry, Ryan Tannehill, A.J. Brown, Ryan Stonehouse
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Bud Adams, Lou Rymkus, Bum Phillips, Ed Biles, Hugh Campbell, Jerry Glanville, Jack Pardee, Jeff Fisher, Mike Munchak, Mike Vrabel
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 1; XXXIV (1999)
AFL Championships: 2; 1960-61^note 4 total appearances; 1962, 1967

The Tennessee Titans were first known as the Houston Oilers, one of the original AFL teams created by actual Texas oilman Bud Adams and holder of that league's first two championship titles with the gunslinging George Blanda under center. However, Adams developed a habit of rotating very quickly through head coaches at the first sign of trouble, and the team soon descended into mediocrity.^note Adams fired five HCs that were a year or less removed from a trip to the playoffs; four of these resulted in a sustained collapse. The franchise has had a sub-.500 record since the merger and hasn't won a league title since those first two seasons, though they've had a few good runs at one and have become known as a magnet for generational running back talents.

The Oilers had one of the rudest awakenings of any of the AFL teams after the merger, with some historically bad performances and back-to-back one-win seasons in 1972-73 that resulted in a then-record 18-game losing streak. Literal cowboy coach Bum Phillips and powerful star RB Earl Campbell helped to redeem the team by the end of the decade, visiting two AFC Championship games in the short-but-sweet "Luv Ya Blue" era; Adams' firing of Phillips for not bringing them to the Super Bowl, paired with the regression of Campbell, led to another collapse. In the '80s and early '90s, led by QB Warren Moon, the Oilers adopted an aggressive "Run and Shoot" offense in which two extra wide receivers replace the tight end and fullback. They put together good records in this era but never even made it to a conference championship, once blowing a 32-point lead in the second half of a 1992 Wild Card game to Buffalo (the largest surrendered margin in NFL history). Their 1993 season became an infamous media circus that marked the end of the Moon era and the team's success in Houston; Adams dismantled the whole roster after another early playoff exit, resulting in the steepest season-to-season collapse in league history.

Adams moved the team to Tennessee in 1997 after a dispute over funding for a new stadium, naming the team the "Tennessee Oilers" after the state rather than a specific city so they could play in Memphis while their stadium in Nashville was finished^note a terrible idea in hindsight due to how low the attendance was in those first few years, though the team kept that part of the name after the Nashville move. The year the team dropped the "Run and Shoot" and the "Oilers" name (after two years of folks pointing out that Tennessee is not particularly famous for oil production), they got their revenge on Buffalo in the 1999 Wild Card game thanks to an absolutely ridiculous last-play kickoff return dubbed the "Music City Miracle". This helped bring them to the franchise's sole Super Bowl appearance, which they lost when the game's final play ended just inches short of the goal line. Jeff Fisher and Jeff Fisher's mustache, one of the great underrated coaching duos in the league, successfully capitalized on this single championship appearance to remain the team's HC for another decade. The team struggled after the departure of star QB Steve McNair, often thanks to drafting players with high prospects (QB Vince Young, RB Chris Johnson) that ended up disappointing in high-profile ways. Fisher was eventually let go, and after an eight-year playoff drought, the Titans returned to playoff contention thanks to coach Mike Vrabel and yet another generational RB talent in Derrick Henry. Following Bud Adams' death in 2015, the team has been owned by his daughter, Amy Strunk.

After playing their first few seasons in local college stadiums, the Oilers moved into the Astrodome in 1968, becoming the first football team to play home games in an indoor venue on artificial turf. The Titans currently play at the outdoor Nissan Stadium. The "Titans" name was selected from a fan-submission seemingly just for the Added Alliterative Appeal, resulting in one of the more confusing brand identities in the NFL. After boasting an H-shaped oil rig as their icon for several decades, their current logo is a comet emblazoned with elements of the Tennessee flag. They also draw a lot from mythical Greek iconography: they have an alternate logo of a T-shaped sword, one of their pre-game traditions has a special guest plunge a sword into the 50-yard line, and fans frequently dress up in classical Greek armor.^note The Greek iconography plays off Nashville's longstanding nickname of the "Athens of the South"; one of the city's major landmarks is a full-scale replica of the Parthenon. However, their mascot... is a raccoon.

AFC West

AFC West (Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Las Vegas Raiders, & Los Angeles Chargers): These four teams have been in the same division since the beginning of the AFL, and their enmity for each other is thus especially deep-seated. The Raiders dominated the league in the '70s and '80s, then were supplanted by the Broncos through the '90s. In the '00s, the Chargers had a fairly solid lock on the division, but Denver took back control in the early '10s, first under Tim Tebow and then under Peyton Manning. After Manning's retirement, the division mantle transferred to the Chiefs under Patrick Mahomes. While the Chiefs have held onto the division crown every season since 2016, that is not for a lack of competition, and the division currently stacks up as one of the strongest in the NFL.

Denver Broncos

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 531-484-10 (.523, 12th highest)
Nicknames: Orange Crush (General term for defense, particularly late '70s/early '80s), No Fly Zone ('10s defense)
Colors: Orange and blue
Abbreviation: DEN
Home Stadium: Empower Field at Mile High (76,125 capacity) [Since 2001]
Current Owner: Rob Walton
Current Head Coach: Sean Payton
Current Starting Quarterback: Jarrett Stidham
Notable Historic Players: Frank Tripucka, Lionel Taylor, Goose Gonsoulin, Floyd Little, Marlin Briscoe, Jim Turner, Lyle Alzado, Charley Johnson, Tom Jackson, Randy Gradishar, Rick Upchurch, Craig Morton, John Elway, Steve Atwater, Karl Mecklenburg, Shannon Sharpe, Mike Croel, Jason Elam, Gary Zimmerman, Tom Rouen, Glyn Milburn, Rod Smith, Tom Nalen, Terrell Davis, Ed McCaffrey, Mark Schlereth, Mike Anderson, Elvis Dumervil, Brandon Marshall, Britton Colquitt, Tim Tebow, Matt Prater, Peyton Manning, Von Miller
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Frank Filchock, Lou Saban, John Ralston, Red Miller, Dan Reeves, Mike Shanahan, Josh McDaniels, Nathaniel Hackett
Super Bowl Championships: 3; XXXII (1997), XXXIII (1998), 50 (2015)
Super Bowl Appearances: 8 total; XII (1977), XXI (1986), XXII (1987), XXIV (1989), XLVIII (2013)
AFL Championships: 0

The Denver Broncos were an original AFL team and the league's weakest franchise prior to the NFL merger, being the only charter AFL team to not appear in a single championship game; in fact, they didn't even post a winning record until 1973. After not making a single postseason appearance for their first 17 seasons, the team unexpectedly surged to a Cinderella Super Bowl XII appearance in their 18th, where their "Orange Crush" defense suffered a humiliating loss (which became a trend for the Broncos in the Super Bowl).

Starting in the '80s, under new owner Pat Bowlen, coach Dan Reeves, and star QB John Elway, the Broncos all but erased their prior reputation as an underperformer. Instead, they became known as a consistently strong franchise that just always fizzled out, notably reaching three Super Bowls in four seasons and losing each by wide margins. Elway eventually got over the hill at the tail end of his career, thanks in part to new head coach Mike Shanahan and his ability to consistently find and develop stud 1,000-yard rushers. The pair brought the team back-to-back Super Bowl victories (one against Reeves, now with the Falcons) prior to Elway's retirement after 1998. Shanahan kept the team competitive for another decade before being let go in 2009 after a number of late-season collapses.

Shanahan's successor, Josh McDaniels, alienated the team's QB so badly that they were forced to trade him to Chicago (Chicago made the playoffs in 2010, McDaniels got fired before the season was over). Before leaving Denver, McDaniels drafted Tim Tebow, who led the Broncos through a nail-biting 2011 to a stunning playoff spot that introduced "Tebow Time" and "Tebowing" to the world. However, Tebow was traded away after Elway returned to the franchise as President and signed veteran QB Peyton Manning. In 2013, the Broncos made it to Super Bowl XLVIII with the most productive offense in NFL history but wound up putting up another humiliating Big Game loss to the Seahawks (who had one of the best defenses in NFL history), becoming the first franchise to lose five Super Bowls. In 2015, an aging Manning rode a dominant defense of his own to victory in Super Bowl 50 in what also proved to be his final game. The Broncos regressed after Manning's retirement and have yet to return to the playoffs, giving them the second longest active drought in the league. During that period, the Broncos were involved in one of the most prolonged ownership battles in NFL history, as Bowlen stepped down in 2014 due to Alzheimer's and passed away in 2019. After a long Succession Crisis, the team was purchased by Walmart heir Rob Walton for $4.6 billion. Other notable investors in Walton's group include Formula One great Lewis Hamilton and former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; it remains to be seen whether this investment will return the franchise to its former winning ways.

The Broncos' stadium, Empower Field at Mile High^note the "Mile High" having been added as a Shout-Out to previous home Mile High Stadium in an attempt to calm complaints about the stadium's former and present corporate names, is literally a mile above sea level, just like the rest of Denver, which makes their home games tough on the visiting teams and heavenly for kickers. Some players with certain medical conditions like sickle-cell anemia cannot play there without literally risking their lives and thus must miss the games. The scoreboard at Empower features a giant statue of "Bucky the Bronco", a carry-over from the old Mile High. Their uniforms boast one of the more distinctive color combos in the league, a bright orange and blue, and are a decided improvement over the truly hideous brown and mustard yellow uniforms with vertical striped socks they wore in their first two seasons in the AFL; the team publicly burnt these uniforms before swapping to a much classier orange and royal blue combo they used until just before the late '90s Super Bowl run, when they adopted the modern uniform.

Kansas City Chiefs

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 567-465-12 (.549, 7th highest)
Prior Names/Locations: Dallas Texans (1960-62)
Colors: Red and gold
Abbreviation: KC
Home Stadium: Arrowhead Stadium (76,416 capacity) [Since 1972]
Current Owner: Clark Hunt
Current Head Coach: Andy Reid
Current Starting Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes
Notable Historic Players: Johnny Robinson, Abner Haynes, Len Dawson, Buck Buchanan, Mack Lee Hill, Otis Taylor, Willie Lanier, Bobby Bell, Emmitt Thomas, Jan Stenerud, Curley Culp, Nick Lowery, Joe Delaney, Albert Lewis, Christian Okoye, Derrick Thomas, Marcus Allen, Will Shields, Tony Gonzalez, Dante Hall, Priest Holmes, Trent Green, Dustin Colquitt, Tamba Hali, Jamaal Charles, Alex Smith, Eric Fisher, Eric Berry, Dontari Poe, Travis Kelce, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, Tyreek Hill, Chris Jones, Harrison Butker, Tyrann Mathieu
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Lamar Hunt, Hank Stram, Marty Schottenheimer
Super Bowl Championships: 4; IV (1969), LIV (2019), LVII (2022), LVIII (2023)
Super Bowl Appearances: 6 total; I (1966), LV (2020)
AFL Championships: 3; 1962, 1966*, 1969*

The Kansas City Chiefs, the current Super Bowl champions, started life as an original AFL team called the Dallas Texans, created by that league's founder, Lamar Hunt. The Cowboys started at the same time and played in the same stadium, and while the Texans won the AFL Championship in 1962, the not-very-good-at-the-time Cowboys played in the more established NFL and became the more popular team. They moved to Kansas City after their first title win once it became obvious that Dallas wouldn't support two teams; they kept their pre-Chiefs years in the team history but changed their name, because the "Kansas City Texans" is clearly ridiculous (although there is word Hunt did consider keeping it). Under original coach Hank Stram, Hall of Fame QB Len Dawson, and one of the greatest defenses in pro football history, the Chiefs won two more AFL championships and appeared in the first and fourth Super Bowls, beating the Vikings in the latter.

Unfortunately, their success didn't last, and the Chiefs declined to mediocrity and worse in the mid-'70s, experiencing a 14-year playoff drought and not securing a postseason win for over two decades after their Super Bowl victory. This streak was broken in the '90s by coach Marty Schottenheimer, who finally turned them back into playoff contenders and made it to the 1993 AFC Championship Game with an aging Joe Montana under center. Despite being a major force in the regular season for another decade, the Chiefs again went another twenty years without a win in the playoffs, losing a then-record eight straight postseason games. Following Marty's departure, the team became far less consistent in the regular season, wavering between some fairly impressive highs (such as a scorched-earth 2003 campaign that ended with a first round playoff loss) and devastating lows (most notably a two-win 2012 season where the terrible play was overshadowed by a player murdering his girlfriend before killing himself at the team practice facility in front of the staff).

Fortunately for Kansas City, the hiring of Andy Reid as head coach in 2013 finally turned the Chiefs back into consistent winners and shook off their reputation for postseason futility. The emergence of Patrick Mahomes as arguably the game's best young QB in 2018 took them to a whole new level of success, turning the franchise into one of the greatest dynasties in the history of the league, taking the torch from Tom Brady's Patriots for the NFL's designated villain. The Chiefs have reached the AFCCG every year since Mahomes became starter, advancing to the Super Bowl four times and winning three in five years, including two back-to-back.

The Chiefs have played at Arrowhead Stadium since its opening in 1972, giving them the longest active residence in a single venue of any team save the Packers at Lambeau Field. All that history makes Arrowhead one of the most intimidating environments in sports. The Chiefs have a running rivalry with the Seahawks over who has the loudest fans, and the two fanbases regularly attempt to set new world records for crowd noise (KC has the record for now). Now that Washington has gotten rid of its nickname, Kansas City's is currently the most controversial in the league; while the title "Chief" isn't associated with any particular people group (though it is heavily associated with the Native American tribal leaders) and the team's official mascot has been a wolf since the late '80s, the team's fans have dressed up in stereotypical Native American regalia and used the "tomahawk chop" ever since the move to Missouri. This has earned the organization a fair amount of criticism from indigenous groups, with calls for the team to change its name expected to grow louder as long as they continue to compete in Super Bowls.

Las Vegas Raiders

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 530-487-11 (.521, 14th highest)
Prior Names/Locations: Oakland Raiders (1960-81, 1995-2019), Los Angeles Raiders (1982-94)
Colors: Silver and black
Abbreviation: LV
Home Stadium: Allegiant Stadium (65,000 capacity, expandable to 72,000) [Since 2020]
Current Owner: Mark Davis^note He and his mother Carol inherited the controlling interest of his late father Al. Mark represents the team at owners' meetings.
Current Head Coach: Antonio Pierce
Current Starting Quarterback: Gardner Minshew
Notable Historic Players: Tom Flores, Jim Otto, Clem Daniels, Fred Williamson, Art Powell, Fred Biletnikoff, Gene Upshaw, Daryle Lamonica, Willie Brown, Warren Wells, George Blanda, Ted Hendricks, Art Shell, Ken Stabler, Jack Tatum, Cliff Branch, Ray Guy, Dave Casper, Todd Christensen, John Matuszak, Lester Hayes, Jim Plunkett, Marc Wilson, Marcus Allen, Lyle Alzado, Howie Long, Napoleon McCallum, Bo Jackson, Tim Brown, Steve Wisniewski, Anthony Smith, Darrell Russell, Charles Woodson, Sebastian Janikowski, Shane Lechler, Rich Gannon, Nnamdi Asomugha, JaMarcus Russell, Derek Carr, Khalil Mack, Daniel Carlson, Josh Jacobs, Maxx Crosby
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Al Davis, John Rauch, John Madden, Tom Flores, Art Shell, Amy Trask, Jon Gruden, Bill Callahan
Super Bowl Championships: 3; XI (1976), XV (1980), XVIII (1983)
Super Bowl Appearances: 5 total; II (1967), XXXVII (2002)
AFL Championships: 1; 1967*^note 3 total appearances; 1968-69

The Las Vegas Raiders started life in Oakland as an original AFL team. After a rough few early years, the franchise rose to a dominant force in pro football when maverick coach Al Davis became a permanent part of the team's ownership. From that point on, "The Silver and Black" built up their mystique as the league's heel, a crew of tough bruisers who played by Davis' motto of "Just win, baby." They performed consistently well in this era; from 1966-85, the Raiders won twelve division titles, won the AFL Championship in 1967 on the way to an appearance in Super Bowl II, played in ten more AFL/AFC Championships (though they lost seven of them), and claimed three Super Bowl wins under coaches John Madden and Tom Flores. During this time, they served as the biggest rival to the Steel Curtain Steelers' dominance of the AFC and the entire league; from 1974-76, they faced off in three consecutive AFC Championship games.

In 1982, after a drawn-out fight with the Oakland Coliseum (over improvements) and the NFL itself (over Davis's right to relocate his team), the Raiders moved from Oakland to Los Angeles. They were quite popular in LA, bringing the city its first (and for decades only) Super Bowl win, but had to play in the city's massive and aging Coliseum, which was located in an pretty rough area—the Raiders attracted many gang members as fans due to their attitude, most notably the gangsta rap group N.W.A. The team often failed to sell out games in the venue, resulting in regular TV blackouts. After failing to get a new stadium, Davis moved the team back to Oakland in 1995, where they struggled for a few years before coach Jon Gruden helped to briefly revive the team's fortunes in the early 2000s. Off the field, the team also became known as a pioneer for representation, being the first team in the NFL to hire a black head coach (Art Shell) and a female CEO (Amy Trask).

Unfortunately, Gruden was traded to the Buccaneers in 2002, where he used his knowledge of Raiders' playbook to deliver his old team a 48-21 Super Bowl loss in 2002. The once-dominant team quickly entered a sharp decline it still hasn't recovered from. Since their Super Bowl defeat, they have made the playoffs only twice (in 2016 and 2021) and have yet to make it past the wild card.^note Their Super Bowl hangover is arguably the worst in the history of the league for a number of other reasons. They only won four games the following year, easily the worst record for a defending conference champ. No other franchise has missed the playoffs for five years after a Super Bowl appearance; the Raiders went fourteen before returning to the postseason. The Raiders are now known mostly for a revolving-door coaching staff, picking up players that no one else will touch due to either age or character issues, drafting/signing speedy players who couldn't do much else to outrageous contracts, and Davis massively interfering with the coaches' jobs prior to his death in 2011. Since Al's son Mark took over, the team has improved somewhat but has yet to return to its former glory. Due to their nationwide popularity and outdated stadium, they were long considered the team most likely to move, presumably back to Los Angeles before the NFL approved the Rams and Chargers' moves in 2016. By then, the Raiders were deep in discussions for a move to Vegas, a market long seen as off-limits before the major pro sports leagues took complete about-face on their former anti-gambling stance. The owners approved the move in 2017, which the team finished in 2020 after the completion of their new stadium. More recently, they gained further off-field publicity in 2023 when Tom Brady was announced as a new minority investor (pending approval of the other league owners).

The Raiders' first games in Oakland were played at the temporary Frank Youell Field, which was appropriately named after a local undertaker. Before the move to Vegas in 2020, they were the last team to share its home field with a MLB team, in this case the Athletics; their home games were partially played over dirt during the early part of the season rather than a full grass field. Their new home, Allegiant Stadium, is one of the most expensive sports venues ever built, a massive black structure located right off the Vegas Strip featuring a translucent roof, a massive memorial torch to Al Davis, a roll-out grass field^note with a synthetic turf surface underneath for other events, similar to Tottenham Hotspur's New White Hart Lane in London; the stadium's other main tenant, the NCAA's UNLV Rebels, uses the artificial surface, and plenty of amenities for the various tourists the now-cash-strapped team sought to attract. Raider fans are known for being among the most loyal in sports despite the team's recent record and tendency to move; Raiders merchandise sporting their logo of an old-timey football player with an Eyepatch of Power is a perennial bestseller. Fans are known to dress in elaborate costumes and constitute detractors for every other NFL team in existence (with particular emphasis on the 49ers, Steelers, and their division rivals). The portion of the stands these fans occupy, known as "the Black Hole", is only slightly less dangerous for an away team fan to enter than an actual collapsed star. The team's unofficial anthem is "The Autumn Wind"—have a listen.

Los Angeles Chargers

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 495-508-11 (.494, 14th lowest)
Prior Names/Locations: San Diego Chargers (1961-2016)
Nicknames: The Bolts
Colors: Blue and gold
Abbreviation: LAC
Home Stadium: SoFi Stadium (70,240 capacity, expandable to 100,240) [Since 2020]
Current Owner: Dean Spanos
Current Head Coach: Jim Harbaugh
Current Starting Quarterback: Justin Herbert
Notable Historic Players: Paul Lowe, Lance Alworth, John Hadl, Keith Lincoln, Ron Mix, Tobin Rote, Fred Dean, Charlie Joiner, Dan Fouts, Kellen Winslow Sr., Wes Chandler, John Jefferson, Chuck Muncie, Leslie O'Neal, Junior Seau, John Carney, Rodney Harrison, David Binn, Darren Bennett, Ryan Leaf, Drew Brees, LaDainian Tomlinson, Antonio Gates, Mike Scifres, Lorenzo Neal, Philip Rivers, Nate Kaeding, Darren Sproles, Keenan Allen, Joey Bosa, Austin Ekeler
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Barron Hilton, Sid Gillman, Don Coryell, Bobby Ross, A.J. Smith, Marty Schottenheimer, Norv Turner
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 1; XXIX (1994)
AFL Championships: 1; 1963^note 5 total appearances; 1960-61, 1964-65

The Los Angeles Chargers were an original AFL franchise first based in Los Angeles, where they played for only one season before moving south to San Diego. They officially got their nickname from a fan submission, with founder Barron Hilton (yes, Paris's grandfather) liking the idea of fans yelling "CHARGE!" at games, but many suspect Barron's fondness from the name came from him also owning the Carte Blanche credit card (though because of their lightning bolt logo, these roots have been all but forgotten). The Chargers immediately established an identity that persisted throughout the franchise's history of putting up excellent, even revolutionary offenses that never had enough juice in the postseason. Under head coach Sid Gillman's game-changing passing offense that moved through generational receiver Lance Alworth, the Chargers appeared in five of the first six AFL Championships and lost all but one, which remains the team's sole championship title to this day and the only one ever claimed by a San Diego sports franchise.^note That season had some questionable aspects, including a preseason Training from Hell at a remote desert ranch and a mandatory prescription of steroid pills.

The Chargers' spark dimmed greatly in the years after the merger, with the team languishing until the late '70s, which marked the arrival of another passing game innovator, Don Coryell. QB Dan Fouts set records with the "Air Coryell" offense, only to suffer two heartbreaking AFC Championship losses in the early '80s. The Chargers subsequently regressed, but coach Bobby Ross and an underrated defense revived their prospects in the '90s, even reaching a Super Bowl after an unexpected 1994 Cinderella season only to suffer a humiliating blowout at the hands of the 49ers. The team was best known in this era for having a very nasty rivalry with the Raiders that traced back to them snubbing Raiders' owner Al Davis for a head coaching job; when Raiders fans only had to drive two hours from L.A. to Charger games, this sometimes resulted in violence in the stands, leading the San Diego Police Department to have a standing tactical alert for all their matchups.

The team again regressed after Ross's departure and truly cratered in the late '90s, becoming most well known for their drafting of all-time bust Ryan Leaf. Their GM in the early '00s, A.J. Smith, was dubbed "The Lord of No Rings" for his inability to put together a Super Bowl-winning team, which led to their 2004 #1 draft pick Eli Manning refusing to sign with them. Sure enough, even with big talents like Drew Brees, LaDainian Tomlinson, Antonio Gates, and Philip Rivers who revived their prospects throughout the decade, the Chargers found often spectacular ways to fizzle out, never getting further in the playoffs than a sole AFCCG appearance after 2007. Numerous analysts have attributed this choking to a persistent franchise Achilles' Heel for special team blunders; the 2010 team put up one of the best offensive and defensive performances in modern NFL history, leading the entire league in both categories for the season, but their special teams committed so many game-losing gaffes that the team missed the playoffs.

The Chargers made noise about moving back to Los Angeles for years, largely as a bargaining chip to get the city of San Diego to pay for a replacement of the aging Jack Murphy Stadium, but didn't follow through on it for years because the absence of any other teams in L.A. essentially gave that massive market to them by default. In 2017, a year after the Rams returned to L.A., the Bolts' ownership exercised their option to join them, earning the Spanos family the eternal enmity of San Diego fans. While their new home at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood was being built, the team played in the MLS-specific Dignity Health Sports Park; at 30,000 seats, DHSP was the smallest stadium used in the post-merger era.^note And was in fact in violation of NFL rules on the Chargers' part, since it's been required that even temporary home stadiums must have a minimum 50,000 seat capacity since the AFL-NFL merger. Hardly anyone in LA actually wants the Chargers, with the city vastly preferring the Rams, other local sports teams, and even other NFL teams (especially the division rival Raiders), and Spanos' abandonment of San Diego fans ensured few old fans would make the long drive north for games. As a result, the tiny DHSP regularly failed to fill seats, and fans that did show up usually wore the other team's jerseys. Even the league and the other owners, despite previously approving the move, reportedly want the Chargers to go back to San Diego, though SoFi's massive price tag and a 20-year lease will likely incentivize keeping the second team in town for years to come no matter how much they struggle to establish a home crowd.

NFC Divisions and Teams

NFC East

NFC East (Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, & Washington Commanders): A slight Artifact Title because Dallas is west of the Mississippi, but it was structured this way to preserve the intense rivalries among its four teams. The three Northeast cities in the division happen to be the capital (Washington), birthplace (Philadelphia), and largest city (New York City) of the United States; their proximity and long shared histories in the Northeast megalopolis gives their rivalries at least some degree of respect, a feeling none of them have for the young upstart in Dallas, which they despise. The NFC East is historically one of the league's stronger divisions and is its most decorated, holding 13 Super Bowl wins and being the only division whose teams have all won at least one. Since the realignment, the winner has rotated among the Giants, the Eagles, or the 'Boys, with Washington left holding the bag. In 2006, it became the first division since the 2002 realignment to send 3 teams to the playoffs. However, the luster of "The Glamour Division" faded for several years because all four teams developed a tendency to generate hype and excitement in the offseason that they usually fail to live up to, culminating when all four failed to put up a single winning record in 2020, winning them the derisive nickname "The NFC Least". However, the '22 season marked a seeming return to form, with three making the playoffs and the Eagles ultimately reaching the Super Bowl.

Dallas Cowboys

Year Established: 1960
Overall Win Record: 598-444-6 (.573, highest)
Nicknames: America's Team, Doomsday Defense, The 'Boys
Colors: Blue and silver
Abbreviation: DAL
Home Stadium: AT&T Stadium (80,000 capacity, can be expanded to 105,000) [Since 2009]
Current Owner: Jerry Jones
Current Head Coach: Mike McCarthy
Current Starting Quarterback: Dak Prescott
Notable Historic Players: Don Meredith, Eddie LeBaron, Don Perkins, Billy Howton, Bob Lilly, Chuck Howley, Cornell Green, George Andrie, Lee Roy Jordan, Mel Renfro, Bob Hayes, Calvin Hill, Jethro Pugh, Rayfield Wright, Lance Rentzel, Roger Staubach, Cliff Harris, Robert Newhouse, Drew Pearson, Harvey Martin, Ed "Too Tall" Jones, Randy White, Tony Dorsett, Danny White, Everson Walls, Herschel Walker, Nate Newton, Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, Daryl Johnston, Mark Stepnoski, Emmitt Smith, Jay Novacek, Russell Maryland, Charles Haley, Larry Allen, Darren Woodson, Roy Williams, Tony Romo, Jason Witten, DeMarcus Ware, L.P. Ladouceur, Dez Bryant, Tyron Smith, DeMarco Murray, Zack Martin, Ezekiel Elliott, CeeDee Lamb, DaRon Bland
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Tom Landry, Tex Schramm, Gil Brandt, Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer, Dave Campo, Jason Garrett
Super Bowl Championships: 5; VI (1971), XII (1977), XXVII (1992), XXVIII (1993), XXX (1995)
Super Bowl Appearances: 8 total; V (1970), X (1975), XIII (1978)
Pre-Merger Championships: 0^note 2 total appearances; 1966-67

The Dallas Cowboys, known as "America's Team" since at least the '70s^note Also known as "Mexico's Team", since the Cowboys are phenomenally popular south of the border, being the only NFL team whose games are consistently available on Mexican television, are the most highly valued franchise in all professional sports and have the highest all-time winning percentage in the NFL. Conversely, they are likely the most hated franchise in the NFL (they barely edged the Patriots for that last dubious honor in an ESPN poll), for reasons that will be more clear later. They were created as an expansion team in 1960 to prevent the AFL's Dallas Texans from edging out the NFL in Texas, potentially the most football-crazed state in the country, a key contributor to their almost immediate popularity.^note Little-known fact: The team was founded in January 1960 as the Dallas Steers before the GM pointed out that the mascot set the team up for jokes about neutering. By the time they played their first game, they had changed their name twice: first to the Rangers (which would be later given the eventual baseball team when they relocated from Washington) and finally the Cowboys.

The Cowboys were long known as the team of the legendary Tom Landry, who coached them for their first 29 years of existence. Their last-minute entry into the league resulted in them missing the 1960 Draft, resulting in a winless 0-11-1 record in their first year. Despite not putting up a winning record for another five years after this, the Cowboys won the popularity contest against the Texans and drove the AFL team north to Kansas City. Starting in 1966, Landry's Cowboys put up 20 consecutive winning seasons, still an NFL record. After several years of being known as "Next Year's Champions" following two nail-biting appearances in pre-merger NFL Championship Games, the Cowboys ascended to a true force in the '70s with QB Roger Staubach, appearing in five Super Bowls and winning two of them.^note In the first 13 years of the conference playoff format, the Cowboys appeared in 10 NFC Championships. Since 1989, the Cowboys have been owned by Jerry Jones, one of the more divisive executives in the league due to his extensive involvement in team operations—he infamously fired Landry and replaced him with Jimmy Johnson. However, he proceeded to Win Back the Crowd by making the Cowboys the Team of the '90s, winning three more titles and tying for second-most Super Bowl wins and appearances with a star-studded roster that included "The Triplets"—star QB Troy Aikman, notoriously volatile WR Michael Irvin, and the all-time rushing leader Emmitt Smith.

Since then, however, the 'Boys have been unable to return to the Big Game, generally putting up decent performances but always fizzling out in the playoffs, tying the Vikings for the franchise with the most playoff losses and not even reaching the NFC Championship game since their last title win over a quarter-century ago, something that Cowboy fans continue to blame on Jones as the memory of the dynasty increasingly fades. This failure is emphasized by their status as the league's Spotlight-Stealing Squad—enough Texans grew up watching one of the two dynasties to make them lifelong fans, so the Cowboys still draw in the most viewers in the regular season during primetime games, ensuring that they receive more of those slots (including always playing at home on Thanksgiving) and more media attention than any other team. In part because of this hogging of the spotlight, all three other teams in the NFC East especially hate the Cowboys; the Eagles would claim to be their biggest rival, but the distinction really goes to the Commanders, which is a much more heated and historic rivalry. Though they play in different conferences, the Cowboys are also noted rivals of the Steelers, thanks to some classic Super Bowl matchups in the '70s (of which the Steelers would win both in famous nail-biting fashion) and finally getting revenge against them in Super Bowl XXX. Within the NFC, they have notable rivalries with the Packers and the 49ers thanks to several key playoff battles over the decades.^note Their rivarly with the 49ers is actually notable (seen in the What Could Have Been section) for the fact that Dallas had a legitimate chance to draft Joe Montana (Dallas had the 76th pick via a trade with Seattle, San Francisco had the 82nd pick), who would go on to be the primary tormentor for the Cowboys throughout the '80s..

The team's wealth also means they play in the league's largest stadium, which is known for having a retractable roof and one of the largest television displays in the world above the field. In addition to various names mocking Jones ("Jerry World" and "Six Flags Over Jerry" being the most popular), the stadium's external appearance (and the team's iconic star logo, unchanged since 1964) has also led to it being nicknamed "the Death Star".^note Also contributing to the nickname is the stadium's corporate affiliation with AT&T, whose logo vaguely resembles the Death Star. Prior to its completion in 2009, the team played its first 12 seasons in the Cotton Bowl before moving to the now-demolished Texas Stadium, which was the bane of many players and TV cameramen due to the bizarre shadows cast by the hole in its roof, a leftover of a failed attempt to build a retractable one—Cowboys players and fans joked the hole was so God could watch His favorite team play. The franchise is also home to likely the most famous dedicated cheerleading squad for any pro sports team, which codified many of the tropes for the profession in the '70s.

New York Giants

Year Established: 1925
Overall Win Record: 746-675-34 (.524, 11th highest)
Nicknames: G-Men, Big Blue Wrecking Crew
Colors: Blue with red accents
Abbreviation: NYG
Home Stadium: MetLife Stadium (82,500 capacity) [Since 2010]
Current Owners: John Mara, Steve Tisch
Current Head Coach: Brian Daboll
Current Starting Quarterback: Daniel Jones
Notable Historic Players: Hinkey Haines, Joe Guyon, Benny Friedman, Red Badgro, Mel Hein, Ken Strong, Ed Danowski, Frank Filchock, Tuffy Leemans, Al Blozis, Charlie Conerly, Arnie Weinmester, Emlen Tunnell, Kyle Rote, Frank Gifford, Rosey Brown, Sam Huff, Rosey Grier, Y.A. Tittle, Del Shofner, Andy Robustelli, Homer Jones, Dave Jennings, Harry Carson, Phil Simms, Lawrence Taylor, Joe Morris, Carl Banks, Jeff Hostetler, Sean Landeta, Bart Oates, Ottis Anderson, Michael Strahan, Amani Toomer, Tiki Barber, Kerry Collins, Eli Manning, Justin Tuck, Brandon Jacobs, Shaun O'Hara, Jason Pierre-Paul, Victor Cruz, Odell Beckham Jr., Saquon Barkley
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Tim Mara, Steve Owen, Wellington Mara, Tim J. Mara, Bill Parcells, Bob Tisch, Ernie Accorsi, Jim Fassel, Tom Coughlin
Super Bowl Championships: 4; XXI (1986), XXV (1990), XLII (2007), XLVI (2011)
Super Bowl Appearances: 5 total; XXXV (2000)
Pre-Merger Championships: 4; 1927, 1934, 1938, 1956^note 15 total appearances; 1933, 1935, 1939, 1941, 1944, 1946, 1958-59, 1961-63

The New York Giants, nicknamed "the G-Men", are historically the better of the two teams that play in New Jersey^note For clarification, East Rutherford, New Jersey is part of the New York City metro area and thus the one that receives the greater share of attention in the nation's largest media market. One of the oldest teams in the NFL, dating back to 1925, they have been owned by the Mara family for three generations. They are officially named the "New York Football Giants", even though there hasn't been baseball New York Giants since 1957.

The Giants have a storied history, having appeared in more championship games than any other franchise. Prior to the Super Bowl era, the Giants played in fifteen NFL Championship games but only won four. Coaching legend Steve Owen coached the team for 23 seasons through the '30s and '40s, experiencing great regular season success but going 2-6 in the title game. From 1958-63, the Giants made it to five of the six championship games, losing each one; the first of those losses against the Colts is widely considered one of the greatest games ever played, an affair that went into overtime and helped to popularize the sport nationwide. Any fans who resented that Every Year They Fizzle Out reputation soon viewed those decades of success as the Glory Days, as that second-place streak was followed up with a 17-year playoff drought, due in part to the constantly-feuding Mara family insisting on managing operations. Once they finally hired a GM, the G-Men experienced a revival; the "Big Blue Wrecking Crew" defense of the '80s, led by coach Bill Parcells and the legendary LB Lawrence Taylor, took the team to two Super Bowl victories.

The Giants remained fairly competitive in the following years, continuing their '80s reputation as a defensive power and even appearing in Super Bowl XXXV, but were generally not considered among the elite NFL squads until they won a miracle Super Bowl XLII against the then-undefeated Patriots. Coach Tom Coughlin and QB Eli Manning repeated this upset over the dominant Patriots again four years later in XLVI, becoming the only 9-7 team to win the Super Bowl and further building their strong cross-conference rivalry with the Pats. This era of the team was known for being "road warriors" who perform better in hostile stadiums than in their own, which was certainly the case in '07, in which their six losses included only one on the road and their playoff run to win the Super Bowl was entirely on the road, defeating three teams that they'd lost to during the regular season. Since their last Super Bowl win, however, the Giants have slid into mediocrity and worse, earning only two playoff berths in that span.

The football Giants started out playing in the Polo Grounds (aka "the Bathtub") in Manhattan, which they shared with the baseball Giants. They moved to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx in the '50s, shortly before the baseball Giants left for San Francisco. When they did eventually get their own stadium in 1976, it was built outside of New York in neighboring East Rutherford, New Jersey. Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands (aka "the Swamp") lasted until the "New Meadowlands" stadium was built right next to it in 2010 (now called MetLife Stadium). The Giants have shared their venue with their AFC counterpart, the Jets, since 1984.

Philadelphia Eagles

Year Established: 1933
Overall Win Record: 649-662-27 (.495, 15th lowest)
Prior Names/Locations: Phil-Pitt Combine/"Steagles" (1943 only)
Nicknames: The Iggles, the Birds
Colors: Midnight green and black
Abbreviation: PHI
Home Stadium: Lincoln Financial Field (69,796 capacity) [Since 2003]
Current Owner: Jeffrey Lurie
Current Head Coach: Nick Sirianni
Current Starting Quarterback: Jalen Hurts
Notable Historic Players: Tommy Thompson, Steve Van Buren, Pete Pihos, Chuck Bednarik, Tom Brookshier, Pete Retzlaff, Tommy McDonald, Norm Van Brocklin, Bob Brown, Harold Jackson, Bill Bradley, Harold Carmichael, Vince Papale, Ron Jaworski, Randall Cunningham, Andre Waters, Reggie White, Jerome Brown, Eric Allen, Ricky Watters, Mark McMillian, Brian Dawkins, Troy Vincent, Donovan McNabb, David Akers, Brian Westbrook, Terrell Owens, DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, Jason Peters, Brandon Graham, Jason Kelce, Nick Foles, Lane Johnson, Zach Ertz, Carson Wentz, A.J. Brown
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Bert Bell, Greasy Neale, Buck Shaw, Leonard Tose, Dick Vermeil, Susan Tose Fletcher, Buddy Ryan, Andy Reid, Jim Johnson, Howie Roseman, Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson
Super Bowl Championships: 1; LII (2017)
Super Bowl Appearances: 4 total; XV (1980), XXXIX (2004), LVII (2022)
Pre-Merger Championships: 3; 1948-49, 1960^note 4 total appearances; 1947

Supplanting the bankrupt and defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets, the Philadelphia Eagles (known as dee Iggles to locals, especially when reading about them in da 'Quirer) were founded in 1933 by Bert Bell, who appointed himself the team's coach after three losing seasons. With no one able to fire him, he put up the worst coaching record in league history before handing the reigns to Hall of Fame coach Greasy Neale, who led the Eagles to back-to-back championships in the late '40s; Bell would go on to a much more successful career as the NFL's commissioner. The Eagles have gone through many different majority owners since Bell. In the '50s, they were owned by a group of one hundred different investors, an arrangement that is currently banned by NFL bylaws; they have been owned by Jeffrey Lurie, a film producer, since 1994.

Though the team won a third championship in 1960, they were very bad through most of the '60s and '70s, putting up one winning season in a 16-year span where they failed to make the playoffs. Coach Dick Vermeil turned the franchise back into contenders in the late '70s, leading them to their first Super Bowl appearance in XV. However, even when the Eagles began to figure out how to consistently win during the regular season, they continued to fall short of winning the Lombardi Trophy for decades, first with the exciting dual-threat QB Randall Cunningham and a historically dominant defense in the late '80s and early '90s, then during the 13-year tenure of coach Andy Reid in the 2000s. Under Reid, Philly reached and narrowly lost Super Bowl XXXIX after three straight NFC Championship losses, but locker room drama fragmented that team. Reid protégé Doug Pederson later took the reins, and after their promising 2017 season was widely written off as done after an injury to starting QB Carson Wentz, Philly being... well, Philly, fully embraced their underdog label all the way to their first title, getting revenge against the very same Patriots who beat them back in 2004 under backup QB Nick Foles. That roster and coaching staff likewise fell apart due to locker room drama and a disastrous 2020, but they quickly rebuilt back to strength and were back to the Super Bowl after 2022 with a historically dominant rushing offense led by HC Nick Sirianni and QB Jalen Hurts.

More than their on-field play (especially during the team's years of mediocrity), the Eagles are known mostly for their rowdy, unpleasable fan base, depicted in multiple works set in Philly like Invincible, Silver Linings Playbook, and Abbott Elementary. The Guardian has has compared Eagle fans to British football hooligans^note Unfavorably, but a typical Eagles fan looks at an English soccer hooligan and goes, "Oh, how cute; does he know any other tricks?", and they are known to pick fights with the opposing team and players, especially if they recently faced off in the playoffs. They are particularly notorious for throwing things onto the field, usually at other people, whenever they are upset; the most famous example of this being an incident in which they heckled Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs at halftime^note This is not recent history; the incident occurred in 1968. The full story can be found here and here.. They also once cheered a career-ending neck injury to an opposing player^note Hall of Famer Michael Irvin, who was a jerk off the field and the poster boy for everything fans of other teams hated about the Cowboys of the 1990s. They even hate their own players, should they fail to live up to their expectations—Eagles fans infamously booed quarterback Donovan McNabb when he was drafted and never let up even while he was leading them on deep playoff runs. However, it should be noted that they have never killed or maimed fans of opposing teams (unlike certain other sports fans). They genuinely love their team; home games always sell out, and to them the only thing needed for players to earn the city's love (yes, it really does exist) is that they play with all their heart. Outside their fierce division rivalries, they have a (slightly) more respectful one outside of their conference with the Steelers—during World War II, the two Pennsylvania teams briefly merged into the "Steagles" due to the wartime player shortage (see below).

Veterans Stadium, before its demolition to make way for "The Linc" (Lincoln Financial Field), had a courthouse in the basement (Seamus P. McCaffery of the Philadelphia County Municipal Court, presiding; he was later elected to the PA Supreme Court), because of the number of fans that were arrested during games, although things have calmed down considerably in the past few years and "Eagles Court" was abolished in 2003 when the old stadium closed. The 700 Level of Veterans Stadium was particularly infamous for containing the worst of the worst; quite intentionally, no equivalent exists in The Linc. Every score in the stadium is met with the singing of what is probably the NFL's most well known fight song, "Fly, Eagles, Fly", which the Philly faithful all know by heart.

Washington Commanders

Year Established: 1932
Overall Win Record: 652-663-29 (.496, 16th lowest)
Prior Names/Locations: Boston Braves (1932), Boston Redskins (1933-36), Washington Redskins (1937-2019), Washington Football Team (2020–21)
Nicknames: The Hogs
Colors: Burgundy and gold
Abbreviation: WSH
Home Stadium: Commanders Field (62,000 capacity) [Since 1997]
Current Owner: Josh Harris^note Lead investor, who represents the Commanders in owners' meetings.
Current Head Coach: Dan Quinn
Current Starting Quarterback: Jayden Daniels
Notable Historic Players: Cliff Battles, Turk Edwards, Wayne Millner, Sammy Baugh, Frank Filchock, Al Lolotai, Bones Taylor, Gene Brito, Eddie LeBaron, Bobby Mitchell, Sonny Jurgensen, Charley Taylor, Chris Hanburger, Jerry Smith, Billy Kilmer, Larry Brown, Ken Houston, Dave Butz, John Riggins, Joe Theismann, Monte Coleman, Art Monk, Russ Grimm, Dexter Manley, Charles Mann, Darrell Green, Mark Moseley, Doug Williams, Mark Rypien, Earnest Byner, Ray Brown, Brian Mitchell, Chris Samuels, Clinton Portis, Sean Taylor, London Fletcher, DeAngelo Hall, Trent Williams, Robert Griffin III, Kirk Cousins, Alex Smith
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: George Preston Marshall, Jack Kent Cooke, George Allen, Bobby Beathard, Charley Casserly, Joe Gibbs, Bruce Allen, Ron Rivera
Super Bowl Championships: 3; XVII (1982), XXII (1987), XXVI (1991)
Super Bowl Appearances: 5 total; VII (1972), XVIII (1983)
Pre-Merger Championships: 2; 1937, 1942^note 6 total appearances; 1936, 1940, 1943, 1945

The Washington Commanders (formerly known as the "Redskins" and then for two seasons as "Washington Football Team") have an extensive and decorated history that has mostly been Overshadowed by Controversy involving ownership and their mascot name. Founded in 1932 as the Boston Braves, founder George Preston Marshall adopted the "Redskins" moniker (more on that below) the following year, moved to the nation's capital in 1937, and immediately won a championship. Another title and years of winning seasons with superstar QB Sammy Baugh, Marshall's marketing savvy and showmanship^note He introduced the NFL's first marching band and advocated for rule changes to make the game more exciting, and the team's two-decade monopoly of the American South made them extremely popular and wealthy, even as they followed this run of success with a record 25-year playoff drought. The franchise finally broke this streak in the '70s under new owner Jack Kent Cooke and head coach George Allen, who took the team to an appearance in Super Bowl VII; Allen's team became known as the "Over the Hill Gang" for his dependence on veteran players. In the '80s and early '90s, Washington dominated the league under HC Joe Gibbs, who brought the team their first three Super Bowl victories with three different starting QBs: Joe Theismann in XVII (who also appeared in a loss to the Raiders the next year), Doug Williams in XXII (the first black starting QB to win a Super Bowl), and Mark Rypien in XXVI. During this era, they had one of the strongest offensive lines in league history, nicknamed "The Hogs". Fans frequently dress up as pigs to this day in their honor, and the name was even suggested as a possible replacement mascot (more on that later).

Since their last Super Bowl win, however, the team has fallen back into the bottom of the league's hierarchy and yet to even return to their conference championship game. This is due in part to former owner Daniel Snyder; since he purchased the team in 1999, it has only made the postseason six times and only won two playoff games, a far fall from its former glory. Snyder became notorious for frequently picking up overpriced free agents who flame out quickly and causing fan-hate by charging fans to watch training camp and making HD broadcasts of preseason games cable-only. More significantly, his franchise developed a workplace culture that generated so many instances of bullying and sexual harassment that Congress got involved in investigating the team's operations. In response, the NFL fined the team $10 million and removed Snyder from day-to-day operations. Further controversies with his ownership eventually led to Snyder selling the team in 2023 to a group led by Josh Harris (owner of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers).^note Among the 19 other members in the group is NBA great Magic Johnson.

Snyder's ownership was hardly the only source of controversy in the team's long history. Infamously, the franchise long held likely the most politically incorrect team name in all of sports, especially given that Native American-derived team names and mascots have been falling out of favor for years and "Redskin" was once just about the most offensive thing you could call a Native American. The team's association with racial prejudice was further strengthened by original owner Marshall being infamously racist even by 1930s standards.^note Marshall claimed to have chosen the team name in honor of the team's first head coach, who was actually a white man who pretended to be Sioux in order to dodge the draft during World War I. Until the early '60s, he made sure the Redskins were the last NFL team to hire black players, only integrating when the federal government threatened to kick them out of their (government-owned) stadium if they didn't integrate like the rest of the league.^note This pick of the Villain Ball likely played a factor in the team's lengthy stretch of mid-century mediocrity. In 2020, under pressure from the workplace culture investigation and public pressure and threatened boycotts from social justice advocates and team sponsors in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Washington retired their team name, Unperson-ed Marshall from their Ring of Fame, and played as the mascot-less "Washington Football Team" for two seasons before adopting their current name.^ReasoningSnyder had spent years fighting tooth and nail to avoid changing the team name, despite the growing public sentiment against it. When circumstances forced the change, they discovered that a handful of Washington businessmen had, over the past several years, quietly trademarked all of the most popular alternative team names from fan polls in anticipation of just such an inevitability. Rather than try to work out a new name or negotiate with the stakeholders while also managing the demands of the COVID-19 Pandemic, it was decided to just go with a placeholder name, which fans disgruntled by the name change seem to prefer over a new one. Coincidentally, the Washington Commandos was the name of one of the 1987 charter teams of the Arena Football League.

Ironically, the "Washington" name, much like their NFC division rivals the Dallas Cowboys (who play in Arlington, Texas) and the New York Giants (who actually play in suburban New Jersey), isn't even accurate—they have played in FedExField in nearby Landover, Maryland, since 1997, and the team's offices and training facility have been in Ashburn, Virginia since 1992. Despite not being anywhere close to the oldest stadium in the league, the venue's suboptimal location and the comparably poor maintenance of both the playing surface and the structure itself have earned ownership even more widespread criticism. The team are the bitter rivals of the Cowboys, dating at least back to the early 1970s, intentionally invoking the imagery of Cowboys and Indians prior to the name change. The team has also been jokingly used as bellwethers for presidential elections: if they won their game before Election Day, it meant the incumbent's party candidate would win.^note They got it right every election cycle until 2012, when their loss "predicted" a Mitt Romney victory. Since they also failed to predict the 2016 and 2020 elections, some have suggested that the rule has been reversed, and now a Washington loss predicts the incumbent's party will win.

NFC North

NFC North (Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, & Minnesota Vikings): AKA, "The Black & Blue Division" and the "NFC Norris".^note Norris is a former (1974-93) division of the National Hockey League; the nickname was coined by Chris Berman of ESPN because the chilly-ranging-to-frigid fall and winter weather of the Midwestern member cities seems amenable to hockey and all of them but Green Bay had NHL teams in the Norris. It was known as the NFC Central Division prior to 2002 and was the only NFL division to remain intact after the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. Thus, it is considered the oldest division in professional football, with the youngest team in the division is the Vikings (established in 1961); the Lions (1930), Bears (1920), and Packers (1919) were some of the first NFL teams established, and the rivalry between the Bears and Packers is considered the most storied in the entire NFL.^note Technically, the Bears have been facing off against the Cardinals for another year, but that "rivalry" hasn't been considered truly significant since the Cards left Chicago decades ago. The NFC North is also one of the league's strongest, with the highest average win record among the divisions. Green Bay won the first division crown en route to its eleventh NFL Championship and second Super Bowl victory in 1967. The next two were won by Minnesota, which went on to dominate the division in the '70s, followed by Chicago in the '80s and Green Bay in the '90s. The division crown rotated between the three of them in the '00s, with Green Bay returning to mostly dominate through the '10s. Detroit has been left the odd team out, largely struggling since their last dynasty way back in the '50s and having not won the division since winning two titles in three years in the early '90s before winning their first post-realignment title in 2023.

Chicago Bears

Year Established: 1920
Overall Win Record: 810-654-42 (.552, 5th highest)
Prior Names/Locations: Decatur Staleys (1920), Chicago Staleys (1921)
Nicknames: Da Bears, The Monsters of the Midway
Colors: Navy blue, burnt orange
Abbreviation: CHI
Home Stadium: Soldier Field (61,500 capacity) [1971-2001, Since 2003]^note The stadium was renovated in 2002, and the Bears played that season in Urbana-Champaign.
Current Owner: Virginia Halas McCaskey
Current Head Coach: Matt Eberflus
Current Starting Quarterback: Caleb Williams
Notable Historic Players: George Halas, Dutch Sternaman, George Trafton, Ed Healey, Red Grange, Link Lyman, Bronko Nagurski, Bill Hewitt, George Musso, Jack Manders, Beattie Feathers, Dan Fortmann, Joe Stydahar, Sid Luckman, George McAfee, Clyde "Bulldog" Turner, Ed Sprinkle, Johnny Lujack, George Connor, Bill George, Stan Jones, Harlon Hill, Ed Brown, Rick Casares, Doug Atkins, Willie Galimore, Johnny Morris, Mike Ditka, Bill Wade, Gale Sayers, Brian Piccolo, Dick Butkus, Bobby Douglass, Walter Payton, Gary Fencik, Doug Plank, Dan Hampton, Jim McMahon, Richard Dent, Jim Covert, Steve "Mongo" McMichael, Mike Singletary, William "The Refrigerator" Perry, Patrick Mannelly, Olin Kreutz, Brian Urlacher, Charles Tillman, Lance Briggs, Thomas Jones, Robbie Gould, Devin Hester, Jay Cutler, Kyle Long, Khalil Mack
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: George Halas, Dutch Sternaman, Abe Gibron, Jim Finks, Mike Ditka, Lovie Smith
Super Bowl Championships: 1; XX (1985)
Super Bowl Appearances: 2 total; XLI (2006)
Pre-Merger Championships: 8; 1921, 1932-33, 1940-41, 1943, 1946, 1963^note 12 total appearances; 1934, 1937, 1942, 1956

The Chicago Bears are one of the original NFL franchises, formed as the Decatur Staleys in 1920. What's a Staley, you ask? Why, it's the name of the food starch company that sponsored them! Staley Co. dumped the team after a year, and they were moved to Chicago the next year by founder, player-coach, and NFL legend George Halas, who dropped the Artifact Title name the next season in lieu of one that honored the Chicago Cubs, which loaned them their stadium at Wrigley Field for nearly fifty years. Halas coached the Bears himself for over four decades and left a big impact on the team and the city; his daughter Virginia Halas McCaskey is the current owner, and the team uniforms bear his initials on the sleeves.

The franchise is one of the most storied in the NFL, having played and won more games and produced more Hall of Famers than any other NFL team.^note 38, with 32 playing most or a significant part of their career in Chicago For much of the NFL's history, the Bears were the most decorated and winningest team in the league. They won eight pre-Super Bowl championships: highlights include 1921 (the first title for a still-running team, earned through standings rather than a postseason victory^note ...sorta; see the "Buffalo All-Americans" under "Defunct Teams" for more), 1932 (the first true postseason championship, won in the first ever indoor NFL game, which was played in Chicago Stadium due to subzero conditions), and 1940 (a record-setting 73-0 Curb-Stomp Battle against Washington that launched the "Monsters of the Midway" dynasty, which won three more championships in the '40s). They also put up "perfect" regular seasons in 1934 (13-0) and 1942 (11-0), though both ended in championship defeats.

As with most Chicago sports franchises, however, their best days are far in the past; Halas retired early in the Super Bowl era, and the team was mediocre to bad for a better part of a decade and developed an infamous recurring issue with the quarterback position they still have yet to shake.^note The Bears have had five total Pro Bowl QBs, none of which have earned the selection more than twice with the team; they likewise are the only franchise to have never had a QB put up 4,000+ passing yards in a single season. Hall of Famer Sid Luckman, their signal caller in the '40s, was a record-breaking passer before the Pro Bowl's inception and arguably the last great QB the franchise has had; while the great George Blanda followed him up in the '50s, he had most of his success for other teams. The late '70s and '80s saw the team rebound thanks to some of the most famous characters from NFL lore, including Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers from Brian's Song, tough guy linebacker Dick Butkus, Nice Guy Walter "Sweetness" Payton, and The Big Guy William "Refrigerator" Perry. The Bears won their only Super Bowl in 1985 under beloved coach Mike Ditka (who also played on the Bears' prior Championship team in 1963). That team is generally considered to be in the running for "best of all time", especially on the defensive side of the ball; they went 15-1 in the regular season, completely shut out both their playoff opponents, and capped it off with an epic 46-10 dismantling of the Patriots in one of the most statistically lopsided Super Bowls ever (though non-football fans probably know that team more for their ill-advised "Super Bowl Shuffle" music video). The team has mostly regressed to the middle of the pack since Ditka's firing in 1992, having only made the playoffs seven times in that thirty-year span, though their 2006 team appeared in Super Bowl XLI and their 2010 squad was right on the cusp before being bested by the Bears' oldest rival, the Packers, in the NFC Championship.

The Bears have played in Soldier Field since 1971, though the neoclassical structure dates back to the 1920s and is technically the oldest stadium in the NFL. However, its extensive 2002 renovation, which many criticized as "looking like a spaceship landed on the stadium", caused it to lose its national landmark status. Even with the renovation, it has the lowest seating capacity of any NFL venue, and its location next to Lake Michigan has made it one of the roughest fields to play from a weather standpoint, with freezing winds and storms common. In late September 2021, the Bears entered into a preliminary purchase agreement with Churchill Downs Inc. to buy Arlington Park, a racetrack in suburban Arlington Heights that had been rezoned and permanently closed days earlier, with rumors rampant that the team will build a new stadium there. The SNL "Superfans" sketches ("Da Bears!") are based on stereotypical Bears fans and their blind love for Coach Ditka; they are only a slight exaggeration on the real thing. While Chicago is the most suitable remaining market in the U.S. that potentially could host two teams, no one would be foolish enough to try: even with their mixed record in recent years, the Windy City is firmly Bears country (just ask the Cardinals, who the Bears already ran out of town decades ago).^note Their first official logo was an adorable bear holding a football◊.

Detroit Lions

Year Established: 1930
Overall Win Record: 600-721-34 (.455, 8th lowest)
Prior Names/Locations: Portsmouth Spartans (1930-33)
Colors: Honolulu blue, silver
Abbreviation: DET
Home Stadium: Ford Field (65,000 capacity, expandable to 70,000) [Since 2002]
Current Owner: Sheila Ford Hamp
Current Head Coach: Dan Campbell
Current Starting Quarterback: Jared Goff
Notable Historic Players: Dutch Clark, Ox Emerson, Ernie Caddel, Alex Wojciechowicz, Frank Sinkwich, Bob Mann, Bobby Layne, Doak Walker, Leon Hart, Jack Christiansen, Pat Harder, Dick Stanfel, Yale Lary, Joe Schmidt, Lou Creekmur, Tobin Rote, Dick "Night Train" Lane, Alex Karras, Dick LeBeau, Pat Studstill, Lem Barney, Charlie Sanders, Chuck Hughes, Gary Danielson, Al "Bubba" Baker, Billy Sims, Eddie Murray, Lomas Brown, Chris Spielman, Barry Sanders, Mel Gray, Herman Moore, Jason Hanson, Robert Porcher, Scott Mitchell, Don Muhlbach, Calvin Johnson, Matthew Stafford, Ndamukong Suh, Matt Prater, Darius Slay, Jamaal Williams, Amon-Ra St. Brown
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Buddy Parker, George Wilson, Wayne Fontes, Matt Millen, Rod Marinelli, Matt Patricia
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 0
Pre-Merger Championships: 4; 1935, 1952-53, 1957^note 5 total appearances; 1954

The Detroit Lions started out in 1930 in the small town of Portsmouth, Ohio, where they were known as the Spartans. They moved to the much bigger Detroit market in 1934, taking the name "Lions" in reference to the Detroit Tigers, which loaned them their stadium for many years. Owned by the Ford family (yeah, that one) since 1963, they're the other, original team that always plays on Thanksgiving Day, having done so every year since the move to the Motor City. For a time, they were fairly respectable. They won their first championship in 1935, then had a 16-year playoff drought (including a winless season in 1942), only to snap back and become arguably the team of the '50s when they won three championships.

Since then, however, the Lions have mightily struggled. They've been really bad for a really long time, not just failing to win a championship but not even appearing in another title game (the longest such drought in the league), making fewer playoff appearances than many teams half their age, and putting up the worst overall win record of any team during the Super Bowl era. In NFL lore, this has been attributed to "The Curse of Bobby Layne", the '50s team's superstar quarterback that they traded away after their last championship. Over the next three decades, the team only saw the playoffs thrice. They finally became playoff contenders in the '90s thanks to generational RB Barry Sanders; he brought them to a postseason victory and NFC Championship Game appearance after the 1991 season, the only such appearance the Lions had in the half-century after the merger.

Things fell apart once again after Sanders quit the NFL rather than continue carrying such an abysmal squad on his shoulders. The team got so bad in the 2000s under the tenure of general manager Matt Millen that fans organized protest marches and put up billboards demanding he be fired, some of them appearing at sporting events in other cities; his firing wasn't enough to save the Lions from becoming the first team to go 0-16 in 2008. An early '10s rebuild seemed to have paid off with a few playoff appearances, but the team continued to flounder; Calvin Johnson, a wide receiver of comparable skill and promise to Sanders, likewise quit football entirely rather than keep playing for them, and their former #1 pick "won" by the winless season, QB Matthew Stafford, negotiated a trade out of town after years of being unable to carry an otherwise unremarkable team and immediately won a Super Bowl with the Rams. However, the QB the Lions received in that trade, Jared Goff, quickly rebounded under new head coach Dan Campbell; the two led the Lions to their their first NFC North title (and first division title in three decades) in 2023, which then led to their first playoff win in over three decades after a record nine straight playoff losses and a return to the NFCCG, only to blow a 24-7 lead against the 49ers in typical Lions fashion. Still, of the four teams to have never visited the Super Bowl, the Lions remain the only one from the NFC and the only one that has existed throughout the entire Super Bowl era.^note The Browns were inactive from 1996-98.

The Lions played most of their first four decades in Detroit in Tiger Stadium. They departed the city proper in 1975, moving to the northern suburb of Pontiac to play in the Silverdome, which got its name from its distinctive roof: a fiberglass fabric tarp held up by air pressure, the first of its kind in any sporting venue. While this technology allowed the Lions to shelter themselves from the elements and caught on in a few other stadiums, it also required frequent maintenance and repairs from specialists and could tear under the weight of sufficient snowfall. This, coupled with a desire to return to the city proper, led the team to relocate in 2002 to Ford Field in downtown Detroit, a facility with a permanent roof that boasts architecture evoking old Motor City factories. The city of Pontiac tried to keep the old stadium in use with new tenants for several years, but it sat mostly abandoned and in extreme disrepair for 16 years, becoming a favorite site of post-apocalyptic film shoots and urban explorers until it was finally destroyed in 2017 to make room for another Amazon warehouse.^note Amusingly, multiple attempts were required to demolish the building due to some of the explosives not going off, leading to jokes that even when getting rid of their property, the Lions were still on the losing side of things.

Green Bay Packers

Year Established: 1919
Overall Win Record: 836-624-38 (.571, 2nd highest)^note 19-2-1 (.886) prior to joining NFL, 855-626-39 (.575) total
Nicknames: The Pack, The Green and Gold
Colors: Green and gold
Abbreviation: GB
Home Stadium: Lambeau Field (81,441 capacity) [Since 1957]
Current President/CEO: Mark H. Murphy
Current Head Coach: Matt LaFleur
Current Starting Quarterback: Jordan Love
Notable Historic Players: Curly Lambeau, John McNally, LaVern Dilweg, Cal Hubbard, Mike Michalske, Arnie Herber, Clarke Hinkle, Don Hutson, Cecil Isbell, Tony Canadeo, Tobin Rote, Bob Mann, Billy Howton, Bobby Dillon, Jim Ringo, Bart Starr, Henry Jordan, Forrest Gregg, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor, Jerry Kramer, Ray Nitschke, Willie Davis, Dave Robinson, Willie Wood, Herb Adderley, John Brockington, Chester Marcol, Lynn Dickey, Don Majkowski, James Lofton, Brett Favre, Sterling Sharpe, LeRoy Butler, Reggie White, Darren Sharper, Ahman Green, Donald Driver, Aaron Rodgers, Nick Collins, A.J. Hawk, Mason Crosby, Jordy Nelson, B.J. Raji, Clay Matthews III, John Kuhn, David Bakhtiari, Davante Adams, Jaire Alexander
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Curly Lambeau, George Whitney Calhoun, Ray McLean, Vince Lombardi, Dan Devine, Bart Starr, Ron Wolf, Mike Holmgren, Mike McCarthy
Super Bowl Championships: 4; I (1966), II (1967), XXXI (1996), XLV (2010)
Super Bowl Appearances: 5 total; XXXII (1997)
Pre-Merger Championships: 11; 1929-31, 1936, 1939, 1944, 1961-62, 1965, 1966*-67*^note 13 total appearances; 1938, 1960

The Green Bay Packers have the best win-loss differential and hold more championship titles than any franchise in the NFL. They are also the last of the NFL's "small town teams". With a population of just over 100,000, Green Bay, Wisconsin is microscopic by American major league sports standards.^note Although this is somewhat misleading as they also draw heavily from the remainder of Wisconsin (especially Milwaukee, which is subject to the same blackout rules as Green Bay despite lying outside the normal 75-mile radius of the stadium to be considered "local", largely on account of the Packers having played at least one home game per season in Milwaukee from 1933 to 1994) and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Nonetheless, their on-field success and unique public ownership model has helped them to not only survive but prosper. Unlike every other team that has a majority owner, the Packers have their ownership shares (approximately 5,200,000) spread among more than than 530,000 investors from throughout Wisconsin (and elsewhere in the US). This setup is banned for other teams under current league rules but grandfathered in for the Packers, thereby virtually guaranteeing that they'll never have to move to a larger market while allowing them to cultivate a large and rabid fan base that extends throughout the whole world, which results in a presence of "cheeseheads" at every road game that sometimes even drowns out the home crowd.

Founded in 1919 by George Whitney Calhoun and legendary coach Earl "Curly" Lambeau, the Packers joined the NFL two years later. While other small market teams folded early in the NFL's history, the Pack survived by winning. In their first thirty years, the Packers had one losing season and and won six championships (three of them consecutively from 1929-31 due to having the best record in the league, the others from title game wins). In the late '40s, after a slump in performance, Lambeau was unfortunately run out of town in an effort to preserve public ownership and save the team from folding, and "The Pack" struggled mightily through the '50s in his absence. They then somehow became an even more dominant team in the '60s when they won five more championships and the first two Super Bowls with legendary head coach Vince Lombardi and a team full of Hall of Famers including QB Bart Starr. This earned the city of Green Bay the nickname of "Titletown USA" and secured the only true "threepeat" championship run in NFL history.

After Lombardi, the Packers went through another Audience-Alienating Era that lasted over two decades, making only two playoffs in that span while hiring several former players from the '60s dynasty as head coach, making the name "Titletown" seem more and more like a sad callback to foregone Glory Days; the more common nickname for the cold and relatively isolated Green Bay in this era was "NFL Siberia". However, the team has seen sustained success since the early '90s thanks to the generational quarterback talents of Brett Favre and his successor Aaron Rodgers, who have brought the small city a Lombardi Trophy apiece and helped the Packers maintain the league lead in total championships. However, both QBs developed a reputation for coming up short in getting the Pack over the hump in NFC Championship bouts; Rodgers' teams alone have reached five conference finals and only made it to the Super Bowl once. The 49ers have been a major roadblock to them as of late, with the Packers having a five game losing streak against them in the playoffs.

The Packers were the first NFL team to play in a venue specifically built for football, City Stadium, which was built in 1925 and still operates as the local high school field. However, their home stadium since 1957, Lambeau Field, is far more famous, being the longest-serving venue in the league by a sizable margin.^note The Bears' Soldier Field is technically older, having opened in 1924, but the Bears played in Wrigley Field until 1971, and the 2002 renovation was so extensive that it cost Soldier its national landmark status. Lambeau is subject to some absolutely terrible weather late in the season, leading to it being nicknamed "The Frozen Tundra". Countless games have been played (and watched) in ridiculous conditions such as -15° Fahrenheit (-26° Celsius) plus wind, including the notorious 1967 "Ice Bowl" which they won to get to Super Bowl II. You might think this means the grass is absolutely terrible to play on by the time January comes around, but thanks to a highly esteemed and obsessive grounds crew, a marquee field heating system, and the team's aversion to lease out the stadium to concerts and other teams to ruin the turf, the Tundra has been termed one of the best sports surfaces in the world by the players and sports media.^note Also, Green Bay's weather tends to get overstated; while it often is very, very cold in the winter, Buffalo typically receives far more snow, and locales like Cincinnati have hosted games in colder conditions than anything recorded in Green Bay; tellingly, the Packers haven't won a game in Buffalo since 1938. It is also home to a tradition known as the "Lambeau Leap", where players are expected to leap into the stands after scoring a touchdown.^note For over a decade, NFL rules on touchdown celebrations penalized anyone who wasn't a Packer for doing this.

Minnesota Vikings

Year Established: 1961
Overall Win Record: 544-466-11 (.534, 10th highest)
Nicknames: The Purple People Eaters
Colors: Purple and gold
Abbreviation: MIN
Home Stadium: U.S. Bank Stadium (66,860 capacity, expandable to 73,000) [Since 2016]
Current Owner: Zygi Wilf
Current Head Coach: Kevin O'Connell
Current Starting Quarterback: Sam Darnold
Notable Historic Players: Fran Tarkenton, Jim Marshall, Mick Tingelhoff, Carl Eller, Fred Cox, Alan Page, Paul Krause, Joe Kapp, Gene Washington, Ron Yary, Chuck Foreman, Ahmad Rashād, Tommy Kramer, Steve Jordan, Chris Doleman, Keith Millard, Gary Zimmerman, Randall McDaniel, John Randle, Cris Carter, Korey Stringer, Randy Moss, Gary Anderson, Matt Birk, Daunte Culpepper, Kevin Williams, Chris Kluwe, Adrian Peterson, Jared Allen, Harrison Smith, Adam Thilen, Stefon Diggs, Dalvin Cook, Kirk Cousins, Justin Jefferson
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Bud Grant, Jim Finks, Dennis Green, Mike Tice
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 4; IV (1969), VIII (1973), IX (1974), XI (1976)
Pre-Merger Championships: 1; 1969*

The Minnesota Vikings^note who represent the state rather than their home city of Minneapolis due to its proximity to St. Paul were created in 1961 as an expansion team. Their owners had originally signed on to be an original AFL team before the NFL pulled them away with promises of greater stability than what the upstart league could provide. This Franchise Original Sin has been (sometimes less than) jokingly identified as the root cause of a Curse that has robbed them of winning a single true championship despite being one of the NFL's most consistently winning teams in the regular season, giving them a record for the most playoff losses of any franchise and making them the only current franchise with an all-time winning record to never bring home a Lombardi.

After a rough early start, coach Bud Grant turned the Vikings into perennial contenders led by prototype scrambling QB Fran Tarkenton and a ferocious "Purple People Eaters" defense featuring the likes of Alan Page and Jim Marshall. This squad was the winningest team in the NFL in the first decade of the Super Bowl era and even won the final NFL Championship prior to the 1970 NFL-AFL merger. However, that title came a few weeks before the Vikings were humiliated by their AFL competitor in Super Bowl IV, the first of four appearances in the Big Game in that decade. In each, the Vikings were shut out from scoring a single point in the games' first half on the way to embarrassing blowout losses that largely obscured their prior successes and seemed to prove they had chosen the wrong league. Since 1976, the team has yet to even return to the Super Bowl, though it has come close several times by reaching (and losing) six NFC Championship games, the first coming right after the Super Bowl run and the rest listed below. This is the fourth-longest drought from a championship appearance in the entire league, behind only perennial losers like the Lions, Jets, and Browns.

In the following decades, the Vikings generally hovered around the middle of the pack, with a few moments of true excellence propelled by notable stars. DT John Randle helped lead another Purple People Eaters era in the '90s, star WRs Cris Carter and Randy Moss put up a record-setting offense in 1998 on the way to a 15-1 record, and RB Adrian Peterson dominated the league in the late '00s/early '10s. However, the Vikings' postseason story has only gotten worse thanks to more major collapses, the most notable coming in their NFCCG appearances: In 1987, an 8-7 squad took advantage of a strike-shortened season to make a deep playoff run only to be defeated by the eventual Super Bowl champs. Their miracle '98 run ended when their kicker (who hadn't missed a single kick all season) shanked an easy game-winning FG against the Falcons. Two years later, they were blown out 41-0 in the biggest Curb-Stomp Battle in NFCCG history. In 2009, despite dominating the eventual Super Bowl champion Saints in nearly every statistic, they gave up 8 turnovers in the NFCCG and painfully lost in overtime (the Vikings and Saints have had a strong rivalry ever since). The brightest postseason highlight for the team in recent years was easily the "Minneapolis Miracle", a game-winning TD against the Saints in the 2017 playoffs that launched the team to another NFCCG with a chance to win a Super Bowl appearance at home; this single week of hope was promptly quashed by the Eagles. The Vikings have gotten no closer to returning to the Big Game in the years since, though in 2022 the potent offensive combination of QB Kirk Cousins and WR Justin Jefferson helped the Vikings remains competitive and mount the largest comeback in NFL history, a 33-point rally against the Colts.

After operating for decades under a shared ownership model, the NFL pressured a sale to Clear Channel Communications founder Red McCombs in 1998. He sold the team in 2005 to Zygi Wilf, a billionaire real estate developer and the first non-American-born owner in NFL history.^note His parents are Holocaust survivors from Germany; Wilf's family immigrated to the States when he was a young child. The team shared Minneapolis' Metropolitan Stadium with the Minnesota Twins for their first two decades before moving to the new Metrodome in 1982 to escape from the harsh elements. One problem: the dome used a fiberglass fabric roof supported by air pressure, a popular option at the time that turned out to be a real problem in the Minnesota climate, as heavy snow storms caused multiple costly ruptures and even a complete collapse in the roof that got harder and more expensive to fix as fewer specialists became available to perform repairs.^note Said collapse requiring the Vikings' last two home games of the 2010 season to be relocated while the roof was repaired and the first of the two to be postponed by a day. The Vikings abandoned the old "Thunderdome" in 2014 and spent a few years playing outdoors at the University of Minnesota's stadium until their new digs at the U.S. Bank Stadium were completed. The indoor stadium sports distinct angular architecture, massive windows, a life-size Viking ship at its entrance, and a huge "Gjallarhorn" inside the stadium that is blown at the start of each game. The Vikings are another entrant in the "ridiculous fans" department; some dress in elaborate purple-and-gold Horny Vikings costumes for games and take part in loud chants of "SKOL!" throughout games.

NFC South

NFC South (Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, New Orleans Saints, & Tampa Bay Buccaneers): Originally thought of as the castoffs when the NFL went to four divisions, the NFC South is historically the weakest of all eight divisions in terms of win record. All four teams also were predated by the creation of the AFL, making them the division with the least overall history to speak of; the Panthers are a '90s expansion team, and the other three had spent decades competing with each other for the title of "worst team in the NFL". That said, since the realignment, all of its teams have had moments where they've played pretty well, albeit inconsistently (good one year, terrible the next). All four teams have won the division at least four times, and the division was also the first since the 2002 realignment to have all four of its members appear in the Super Bowl. In 2014, the South regained its "weakest division" crown when all four teams finished the season with losing records and its champion, Carolina, becoming the second team to enter the playoffs with a losing record in a non-strike season. However, three years later, it became one of the most competitive divisions, with New Orleans, Carolina, and Atlanta comprising half of NFC playoff race. The Saints then reigned over the division for four straight seasons before ceding their crown to the Bucs, though in 2022 they only won it thanks to the whole division again posting losing records. Unlike its AFC counterpart, the NFC South is actually comprised exclusively of teams in the Southern United States.

Atlanta Falcons

Year Established: 1966
Overall Win Record: 400-517-6 (.437, 5th lowest)
Nicknames: The Dirty Birds, The Grtiz Blitz (late '70s defense)
Colors: Red and black
Abbreviation: ATL
Home Stadium: Mercedes-Benz Stadium (71,000 capacity, can be expanded to 75,000) [Since 2017]
Current Owner: Arthur Blank
Current Head Coach: Raheem Morris
Current Starting Quarterback: Kirk Cousins
Notable Historic Players: Tommy Nobis, Claude Humphrey, John James, Rolland Lawrence, Kim McQuilken, Steve Bartkowski, Jeff van Note, Mike Kenn, William Andrews, Gerald Riggs, Jessie Tuggle, Craig "Ironhead" Heyward, Deion Sanders, Andre Rison, Jamal Anderson, Morten Andersen, Chris Chandler, Warrick Dunn, Michael Vick, Allen Rossum, Roddy White, Matt Ryan, Michael Turner, Matt Bryant, Julio Jones, Jake Matthews, Grady Jarrett, Younghoe Koo
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Marion Campbell, Jerry Glanville, June Jones, Dan Reeves, Bobby Petrino, Mike Smith
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 2; XXXIII (1998), LI (2016)
Pre-Merger Championships: 0

The Atlanta Falcons were rushed into the NFL in 1966 when the league gave a franchise to local businessman Rankin Smith just when it looked like the AFL was going to put a team in the rapidly growing Southern city. They really haven't gotten over that birthright, seeming to always fall just short of credibility. It took over a decade for the team to even make the playoffs, and they didn't post consecutive winning seasons from their inception until 2009.^note One reason for these troubles may be that the Falcons' second ever draft class in 1967 is in the running for the worst ever, and decidedly the worst in the common draft era, as none of the sixteen players they picked played a single game in Atlanta (despite four future Hall of Famers being available even without a theoretical trade up). The Falcons' overall attitude towards the draft remained nonchalant for several years, including wasting a late rounder in 1971 on a 64-year-old John Wayne. In that time, however, the team also had several bizarre breakout successes that they were unable to follow up on. In 1977, their "Grits Blitz" defense established itself as the #1 defense of the modern era in several statistical categories, though their offense was so poor they only went 7-7. After a few scattered playoff runs, the team cratered in the '80s, only to rise back to prominence as the home of Deion Sanders and the chosen team of MC Hammer in the early '90s. In 1998, a Cinderella squad nicknamed the "Dirty Birds" for their physical playing style and being comprised mostly of washouts made it all the way to Super Bowl XXXIII under coach Dan Reeves only to be shut down by the Broncos.

Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank purchased the team from Rankin's son in 2002. The team rose to prominence and an NFC Championship appearance due to the electric play of star QB Michael Vick, only to lose him when his cruel hobby was exposed in 2007 and he was sent to prison. The Falcons next had a run as perennial Super Bowl contenders with QB Matt Ryan from 2008-12, reaching the NFCCG again in the final year, but came away with a reputation as a playoff choker. In 2016, they bounced back and made their second Super Bowl appearance, only to blow a 28-3 lead against Tom Brady's Patriots by allowing the Super Bowl to go into overtime for the first time, where they ultimately lost and soon returned to total mediocrity; since that fateful game, the Falcons have gained a reputation for blowing leads. As Jon Bois points out in his 7-part documentary on the team, this constant losing forms a pretty good facsimile of the team's own logo when charted out; make of that what you will.

After playing their first 26 seasons in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, the team moved to the Georgia Dome in 1992, a popular venue that hosted events in the '96 Olympics. The Falcons closed out their time in the outdated fabric-roofed structure with a home victory in the NFC Championship in 2016, then moved right next door to the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which features a distinctive and advanced eight-panel retractable roof, which operates similarly to a giant camera aperture. Embedded within the stadium's retractable roof opening is a 360-degree "Halo Board", which was the largest screen in the NFL before being surpassed by SoFi Stadium's "Infinity Screen" three years later.

Carolina Panthers

Year Established: 1995
Overall Win Record: 223-260-1 (.462, 9th lowest)
Colors: Panther blue, black, and silver
Abbreviation: CAR
Home Stadium: Bank of America Stadium (74,867 capacity) [Since 1996]
Current Owner: David Tepper
Current Head Coach: Dave Canales
Current Starting Quarterback: Bryce Young
Notable Historic Players: Sam Mills, Frank Reich, John Kasay, Steve Beuerlein, Muhsin Muhammad II, Michael Bates, Steve Smith Sr., Julius Peppers, Jake Delhomme, Thomas Davis, DeAngelo Williams, Jonathan Stewart, J.J. Jansen, Cam Newton, Greg Olsen, Luke Kuechly, Christian McCaffrey
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Jerry Richardson, Mike McCormack, Sam Mills, Ron Rivera, Frank Reich
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 2; XXXVIII (2003), 50 (2015)

The Carolina Panthers^note who play out of Charlotte, North Carolina, close to the shared border of the two states were created in 1995 alongside the Jaguars. They made it to the conference championship in 1996 and all the way to the Super Bowl in 2003, where they lost to the Patriots by a field goal (though it was later revealed that numerous members of that team had been using steroids). After a slow erosion to non-contender status, the drafting of college superstar Cam Newton helped revitalize fan interest in the team. They became the second team to make the playoffs with a losing record (7-8-1) in 2014, breaking the long-reviled "NFC South Curse" in the process by winning their Wild Card matchup. The next season, behind a powerful offense and underrated defense, they walked away with the NFC South title with a 15-1 record and dominated the NFC playoffs.^note In their two playoff games prior to the Super Bowl, they trailed for only 8 minutes out of a possible 120 and had a double-digit lead for over 100 of those minutes. However, the offense fizzled out against the Broncos in Super Bowl 50, and injury issues quickly sent the team back to mediocrity. Despite the franchise's various peaks, the Panthers have never strung together consecutive winning seasons, making them the only NFL team yet to do so.

After playing their first season at Clemson University's stadium, the Panthers moved into their own home in Charlotte (now called Bank of America Stadium). Prior to every game, the team pounds a drum, a reference to their "Keep pounding" slogan coined by Sam Mills, a Panthers player-turned-assistant coach who delivered a memorable Rousing Speech during their first Super Bowl run while battling cancer. The team's founder Jerry Richardson, a former NFL player who became a billionaire after investing in the Hardee's fast food franchise, was pushed out of team ownership by the league in 2018 due to workplace sexual harassment and racism; the team was bought out by hedge fund manager David Tepper.

New Orleans Saints

Year Established: 1967
Overall Win Record: 422-481-5 (.468, 10th lowest)
Nicknames: The Dome Patrol ('80s/'90s defensive squad), The 'Aints
Colors: Black and gold
Abbreviation: NO
Home Stadium: Caesars Superdome (73,208 capacity, expandable to 76,468) [Since 1975]
Current Owner: Gayle Benson
Current Head Coach: Dennis Allen
Current Starting Quarterback: Derek Carr
Notable Historic Players: Billy Kilmer, Tom Dempsey, Archie Manning, Dave Waymer, Chuck Muncie, George Rogers, Rickey Jackson, Sam Mills, Morten Andersen, Bobby Hebert, Pat Swilling, Willie Roaf, Joe Horn, Steve Gleason, Michael Lewis, Deuce McAllister, John Carney, Drew Brees, Marques Colston, Thomas Morstead, Jimmy Graham, Cam Jordan, Mark Ingram Jr., Alvin Kamara, Taysom Hill, Michael Thomas
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Tom Fears, Jim Mora, Jim Finks, Mickey Loomis, Sean Payton, Gregg Williams
Super Bowl Championships: 1; XLIV (2009)
Super Bowl Appearances: 1
Pre-Merger Championships: 0

The New Orleans Saints were historically one of the worst teams in the NFL. After being formed in 1967 as an expansion franchise sold to oil man John Mecom, the Saints were unable to put up a winning season for the first twenty years of the franchise, earning them the derisive nickname "The Ain'ts". Saints fans started the practice of wearing paper bags over their heads to protest a poorly performing team. The team infamously killed Archie Manning's once-promising pro career, as he was their only good player (and arguably their only even decent one) and they refused to trade him for over a decade in the era before free agency. Mecom sold the team to Tom Benson in 1984, who helped turn things around somewhat. Coach Jim Mora brought the Saints their first few winning seasons with a powerful "Dome Patrol" defense, though they remained known through the '90s as "the only team that has never won a playoff game", a label they eventually shed in 2000.

The Saints finally became regular contenders in the late '00s after hiring coach Sean Payton and signing QB Drew Brees in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. They immediately turned the team around and even won Super Bowl XLIV a few years later against the favored Colts in their first ever Big Game appearance, bringing the region a much-needed morale boost. Unfortunately, the Saints were also subject to one of the biggest controversies in NFL history in "Bountygate", where it was revealed that the team's defense had been dealing out under-the-table bonuses for deliberately injuring other players at around the same time football was coming under scrutiny for its long-term physical effects, resulting in a year-long suspension for Payton. This was one of many factors that contributed to the team failing to return to the Big Game in the following decade (coming closest in the 2018 NFCCG, which they lost after a particularly infamous officiating gaffe). After Benson's passing in 2018, ownership passed to his wife Gayle. Brees and Payton retired not long after, leaving the future of the franchise somewhat up in the air.

The team takes its name from the hymn-turned-jazz staple "When the Saints Go Marching In", an unofficial anthem of their home city. Said city also has a nasty tendency to get ravaged by hurricanes, so they've played many "home" games elsewhere. After Katrina, they played in Baton Rouge, New York, and, most notably, San Antonio, a market that many viewed as the most prime for a new NFL franchise. Worries that the Saints might move to Texas all but dissipated after their Super Bowl victory, to the relief of their fans, who, after so many years as the league's step-stool, are some of the loudest and most unique in the NFL, prone to dressing up in elaborate Mardi Gras-style costumes and screaming their "WHO DAT?" fight song to anyone who will listen. The "Who Dat Nation"'s team first resided in the stadium of Tulane University before the creation of their current home, the Superdome, in 1975. The largest fixed-dome stadium in the world, the Superdome has hosted a record seven Super Bowls (with an eighth scheduled for the 2024 season); the most recent in 2013 featured a power outage that brought the game to a lengthy halt. Outside of football, the dome is most famous for being the largest shelter for displaced citizens after Katrina.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Year Established: 1976
Overall Win Record: 320-462-1 (.409, lowest)
Nicknames: The Bucs, The Pewter Pirates
Colors: Buccaneer red, pewter, orange, and black
Abbreviation: TB
Home Stadium: Raymond James Stadium (69,218 capacity, expandable to 75,000) [Since 1998]
Current Owners: The Glazer Brothers
Current Head Coach: Todd Bowles
Current Starting Quarterback: Baker Mayfield
Notable Historic Players: Lee Roy Selmon, Steve Spurrier, Ricky Bell, Randy Hedberg, Doug Williams, James Wilder, Vinny Testaverde, Hardy Nickerson, John Lynch, Derrick Brooks, Warren Sapp, Mike Alstott, Warrick Dunn, Ronde Barber, Martín Gramática, Lavonte David, Mike Evans, Jameis Winston, Tom Brady
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Hugh Culverhouse, John McKay, Tony Dungy, Jon Gruden, Bruce Arians
Super Bowl Championships: 2; XXXVII (2002), LV (2020)
Super Bowl Appearances: 2

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers^note Their name refers to the body of water that touches not only the city of Tampa, but also the nearby, equally large cities of Clearwater and St. Petersburg as well as many smaller ones. started out their first season in 1976 perfectly... perfectly awful, as they lost all 14 games they played in the only completely winless season in the 14-game era. Just how bad was that debut season? It took the Tampa offense three games to even score a point and four to score a touchdown, and they wound up being shut out of five games, setting a record for the worst single-season point differential that remains unbroken.^note One reporter asked then head coach John McKay, "What do you think of the offense's execution?" He replied, "I'm in favor of it." The next year, they improved somewhat: they only lost their first 12 matchups (being shut out of six), then won their last two, ending what is still the longest winless streak in NFL history for a single team^note The Cardinals lost four more games from 1943-45 if one counts their time merged with the Steelers. while still scoring the fewest points in a season of any modern team. (Notably, after their first win, the opposing team's head coach and starting quarterback got fired). The reasons for this failure? Owner Hugh Culverhouse was openly more interested in profit than product, the 1976 Draft was one of the weakest classes ever, and the expansion draft was a poorly handled mess that left Tampa with multiple players who were too old or injured to take the field.

Incredibly, McKay managed to rally the team, taking them to the cusp of a Super Bowl with an NFC Championship appearance just over two years after the end of the losing streak. After a short period of playoff contention, however, things declined once again; the team didn't post a winning record for 14 years after 1982 (another negative record). Things didn't improve until after the death of Culverhouse in 1994, when the team was sold to Malcolm Glazer and underwent a full rebrand that involved bringing in defensive guru Tony Dungy as head coach. Dungy and his "Tampa 2" defense completely turned around the team's prospects, bringing them to the NFCCG in 1999. Following Dungy's firing after 2001, coach Jon "Chucky" Gruden led the team to a victory in Super Bowl XXXVII in his very first year. Soon after, however, the Bucs slid back into sub-mediocrity, not winning another playoff game after their first Super Bowl victory and enduring a 13-year playoff drought starting in 2008. Both droughts dramatically ended in 2020 after the hiring of the legendary Tom Brady, who led the team all the way to its second Super Bowl win the year Tampa hosted the Big Game, making them the first team to play in a Super Bowl in their own stadium. Despite having a much better championship tally than many NFL teams, the Bucs have a long way to go to truly step out of franchise poverty, especially since they only made the playoffs in 2022 with a losing record. Statistically, the team holds the worst lifetime winning percentage not only within in the NFL but across all four major American sports leagues.^note At least in the regular season; counting playoffs, the Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association edge them out.

Glazer and his sons (who now run the team after his death) are mildly disliked in Tampa; don't ask English soccer fans about the Glazers, especially around Manchester.^note They own Manchester United and are commonly held up as starting the trend of American sports owners interfering in European clubs, which have very different structures, traditions, and cultures than their American counterparts. Their '90s rebrand of the Bucs involved more than just changing their on-field performance. Culverhouse was a notorious miser, and the Tampa Stadium (nicknamed "The Big Sombrero" for its distinctive curvature) had struggled to sell out for nearly two decades due not just to its size and the poor on-field product but the aluminum-and-concrete stadium's complete lack of coverage from the Florida sun. The new Raymond James Stadium is much nicer and famously features a pirate ship replica behind its end zone that fans can board during games; it fires its cannons whenever the team scores. Glazer also changed their uniforms from garish "creamsicle" orange-and-white to the current pewter-red-black scheme and their logo from a winking Errol Flynn-style swashbuckler to a skull flag (though some fans miss that old design).

NFC West

NFC West (Arizona Cardinals, Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, & Seattle Seahawks): For most of the 2000s, this was one of the league's weakest divisions, consisting of two perennial underachievers (the Cards and Hawks) and two former giants (the Rams and Niners) whose best players had long since retired; their collective win percentage in 2008 was .344, the weakest division record since the realignment^note Ironically, its strongest team, the Cardinals, went to the Super Bowl that year, and in 2010 they became the first division to fail to put up a single winning record. However, all four teams experienced notable turnarounds in the 2010s, and the NFC West is now considered by many to be among the toughest divisions. With the Rams' return to the Super Bowl in 2018, the NFC West became the second division (following the NFC South) to send all four of its members to at least one Super Bowl since the 2002 realignment. It is the only NFL division located entirely in the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones (which was far from true prior to 2002); its AFC counterpart has one Central Time Zone team.

Arizona Cardinals

Year Established: 1898
Overall Win Record: 592-812-41 (.424, 2nd lowest)
Prior Names/Locations: Morgan Athletic Club/Racine Normals (1898-1900), Racine Street Cardinals (1901-19), Racine Cardinals (1920-21), Chicago Cardinals (1922-43, 1945-59), Card-Pitt (1944 combination with Pittsburgh Steelers), St. Louis Cardinals (1960-87), Phoenix Cardinals (1988-93)
Nicknames: The Cards, The Gridbirds, Big Red
Colors: Cardinal red
Abbreviation: ARI, AZ
Home Stadium: State Farm Stadium (63,400 capacity, expandable to 78,600 with standing room) [Since 2006]
Current Owner: Michael Bidwill
Current Head Coach: Jonathan Gannon
Current Starting Quarterback: Kyler Murray
Notable Historic Players: Paddy Driscoll, Ernie Nevers, Duke Slater, Gaynell Tinsley, Marshall Goldberg, Stan Mauldin, Pat Harder, Charley Trippi, Ollie Matson, Dick "Night Train" Lane, Larry Wilson, Charley Johnson, Jim Bakken, Jackie Smith, Roger Wehrli, Jim Hart, Dan Dierdorf, Terry Metcalf, Conrad Dobler, J.V. Cain, Ottis Anderson, Roy Green, Larry Centers, Aeneas Williams, Eric Swann, Jake Plummer, Pat Tillman, Anquan Boldin, Larry Fitzgerald, Kurt Warner, Calais Campbell, Patrick Peterson, Chandler Jones, Carson Palmer, DeAndre Hopkins
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Chris O'Brien, Charles Bidwill, Violet Bidwill, Jimmy Conzelman, Phil Handler, Bill Bidwill, Don Coryell, Ken Whisenhunt, Kliff Kingsbury
Super Bowl Championships: 0
Super Bowl Appearances: 1; XLIII (2008)
Pre-Merger Championships: 2; 1925^note Awarded by default; see below, 1947^note 3 total appearances; 1948

The Arizona Cardinals are the NFL's oldest franchise, one of its most traveled, and, historically, one of its least successful, with the most losses of any NFL team. Additionally, as of the Chicago Cubs finally breaking their championship drought in 2016, the Cardinals now have the longest championship drought in professional sports, having last won an NFL Championship in 1947. Prior to that win, their only other title was a Disqualification-Induced Victory that some believe permanently Cursed the team (see The Other Wiki's article on the 1925 NFL Championship controversy). The Cards also put up a record-tying playoff drought of 25 seasons (1949-73), only made the postseason six total times in the first 75 years of the NFL having playoffs, and went over half a century without winning a single playoff game.^note Cards fans will argue that none of those streaks were actually that long or terrible, as the "postseason" in most of that era was just the Championship game. The Birds did play in the runner-up Playoff Bowl in 1964, in which they beat Vince Lombardi's legendary Packers squad for "third place" in the league. However, the Playoff Bowl was a quasi-exhibition charity match for a ceremonial title, or, as Lombardi put it before the game, "a Shit Bowl, a Loser's Bowl for losers." We'll let you write your own joke about what it meant for the Cardinals to win it.

The Cards' miserable history stretches back to 1898—14 years before their current home in Arizona was even a state. They were Chicago's original NFL team, originally forming as the amateur "Morgan Athletic Club"—the franchise that became the Bears weren't formed until two decades later and played their first season in Decatur.^note The Bears did, however, take the name "Chicago" first—the Cards played their first two seasons in the NFL as the "Racine Cardinals", representing a Chicago neighborhood. However, the Cardinals were generally mediocre-to-terrible in the Windy City, always playing second fiddle to their dominant crosstown rivals, to the point that their owner openly rooted for the Bears. Said owner, Charles Bidwill, purchased the Cards in 1932 and his family has owned them ever since, though their team's mediocrity and unwillingness to stick around means they don't have the same reputation as other old football families. The team almost dissolved during the mid-'40s and had to merge with the Steelers for the '44 season to make it through WWII; if that era is counted as part of their history, the team lost 29 straight games across 1943-45, the worst streak in NFL history and in major North American sports period. Remarkably, they bounced back just two years later to win the franchise's sole (earned) league title, only to fall back to Earth soon after. The Cardinals finally flew south in 1960 for St. Louis; since the city already had a longstanding and more esteemed baseball team of the same name, they soon became known as the "Gridbirds" or the "Football Cardinals". Those names followed them out of Missouri when low attendance caused by an aging stadium and generally middling play led the Bidwills to once again leave town in 1988, this time for Phoenix.

The Cardinals remained an afterthought in Arizona for years, with the most notable event on the field being a 1998 playoff win that broke the half-century victory drought (it was the team's only winning season in their first two decades in the desert, and they still only were a game over .500) and the most notable event off it being the tragic and well-publicized death of former player Pat Tillman while serving in The War on Terror. In 2008, however, the decades of disappointment finally started to turn around when the 9-7 "Cinderella Cards" won more playoff games in three weeks than they had in the last sixty futile years and came within a minute of winning Super Bowl XLIII. One of the stars of that game, all-time great receiver Larry Fitzgerald, won the eternal admiration of Arizona fans for sticking with the team for well over a decade despite its continuing struggles, and they were a much more consistent contender in the '10s than any other part of their long history at least in part due to his steady presence. After reaching the NFC Championship Game in 2015, the Cards entered a rebuilding period, compiling a core of veteran players around their 2019 #1 pick, QB Kyler Murray.

The Cards played most of their time in Chicago at the White Sox's stadium at Comiskey Park, then stayed with the "Baseball Cardinals" their entire tenure in St. Louis. After playing their first 18 seasons in Phoenix at Arizona State's home venue, they finally got their own home in 2006, a stadium that either looks like a giant steel rattlesnake curled up in the desert or a barrel cactus depending on what team promo material you read. In addition to its retractable roof, the stadium is notable for being the first to feature a retractable field that is rolled outside to get sunlight between games. Their colors, as one might expect, are cardinal red; the team actually gets its name from the color of the faded red jerseys the original club borrowed from the University of Chicago, not from the bird that is currently their mascot and logo.

Los Angeles Rams

Year Established: 1936
Overall Win Record: 640-627-21 (.505, 16th highest)^note 5-2-2 in the AFL, 645-629-23 (.506) total
Prior Names/Locations: Cleveland Rams (1936-42, 1944-45), St. Louis Rams (1995-2015)
Nicknames: Fearsome Foursome ('60s defensive line), The Greatest Show on Turf ('99-'01 offense)
Colors: Royal blue and gold
Abbreviation: LAR
Home Stadium: SoFi Stadium (70,240 capacity, expandable to 100,240) [Since 2020]
Current Owner: Stan Kroenke
Current Head Coach: Sean McVay
Current Starting Quarterback: Matthew Stafford
Notable Historic Players: Jim Benton, Parker Hall, Bob Waterfield, Tom Fears, Norm Van Brocklin, Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch, Dan Towler, Les Richter, Ed Meador, Deacon Jones, Merlin and Phil Olsen, Rosey Grier, Roman Gabriel, Tom Mack, Jack Youngblood, Harold Jackson, Fred Dryer, James Harris, Jackie Slater, Vince Ferragamo, Eric Dickerson, Dieter Brock, Jim Everett, Henry Ellard, Willie "Flipper" Anderson, Kevin Greene, Greg Bell, Isaac Bruce, Orlando Pace, Jeff Wilkins, Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Torry Holt, Marc Bulger, Steven Jackson, Chris Long, Sam Bradford, Johnny Hekker, Aaron Donald, Todd Gurley, Jared Goff, Cooper Kupp, Andrew Whitworth, Jalen Ramsey, Puka Nacua
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Dan Reeves, Joe Stydahar, Chuck Knox, Carroll Rosenbloom, Georgia Frontiere, John Robinson, Dick Vermeil, Steve Spagnuolo
Super Bowl Championships: 2; XXXIV (1999), LVI (2021)
Super Bowl Appearances: 5 total; XIV (1979), XXXVI (2001), LIII (2018)
Pre-Merger Championships: 2; 1945, 1951^note 5 total appearances; 1949-50, 1955

The Los Angeles Rams are among the most traveled teams, being the only one to win a championship in three different cities. They started out in Cleveland in 1936 as part of the obscure second incarnation of the AFL; they jumped ship to the NFL after winning that league's championship in their first season^note by Disqualification-Induced Victory; their would-be competitors in the AFL Championship Game, the Boston Shamrocks, had the better record but folded after the team couldn't pay their players.. Though the Rams struggled financially through WWII, even suspending operations in 1943, they bounced back in dramatic fashion in 1945, winning their first championship in their first winning season in the NFL with rookie QB Bob Waterfield under center. Immediately after, owner Dan Reeves moved the team to Los Angeles to capitalize on a larger market, becoming the first NFL team based on the West Coast and opening the door for the new AAFC's Browns to take their spot in Cleveland.^note This kicked off a fairly intense rivalry for the next decade, as the Browns became one of the NFL's dominant teams when they joined it a few years later. The Rams and Browns met in the NFL Championship three times between 1950-55, though these Battles for Cleveland are mostly forgotten now after all the subsequent relocations experienced by both organizations, and the "rivalry" is recognized more by hardcore football nerds than either franchise's fans.

The Rams put up several great years in L.A., first with the dominant three-end passing offense of the late '40s/early '50s. This iteration of the team set a still-standing single-season points-per-game record (38.8) in 1950, won another Championship the following year, and appeared in three more. After a few down years, the team re-emerged as a defensive force with the "Fearsome Foursome" defensive line of the late '60s. The Rams garnered a reputation as a glamorous "Hollywood" franchise; it was the first NFL team to have all its games televised, and many of its great players went into acting careers. Detractors often accused the team of being more concerned with fame than on-field success, especially in the postseason. Their playoff woes were most apparent in the '70s—the Rams made it to the NFC Championship five times in six seasons and only translated it into one Super Bowl appearance, which they lost.^note Said Super Bowl team is also a regular contender for the worst/most forgettable to ever make the Big Game, having gone just 9-7 in the regular season, a worse record than any other Rams squad during that stretch. The record-setting rushing offense of Eric Dickerson helped keep them contenders in the '80s, but their performance dipped severely in the '90s. The team struggled to attract fans in the crowded L.A. market, competing not only with the Super Bowl-champion Raiders but also two teams from each of the other major American sports, all while playing in an increasingly outdated stadium. Owner Georgia "Lady Ram" Frontiere saw the chance to win more fans in her hometown St. Louis, which had lost the Cardinals several years prior, and moved the team there in 1995. (The same year, the Raiders sorted out a deal to return to Oakland, which left the second-largest American media market without a football team for nearly two decades.)

The Rams dramatically bounced back in 1999 when QB Kurt Warner rose from obscurity to lead a high-flying offense known as the Greatest Show on Turf to win Super Bowl XXXIV in one of the NFL's greatest Cinderella stories. Warner and RB Marshall Faulk monopolized the MVP from 1999-2001, and the 2001 team looked like an all-time great until the Patriots upset them in Super Bowl XXXVI under the leadership of some kid named Tom Brady. The Rams' seemingly assured dynasty evaporated just as quickly as it had appeared, and the team declined to near-insignificance for a full decade until new owner Stan Kroenke moved the team back to Los Angeles in 2016. The next year, under young wunderkind HC Sean McVay and generational DT Aaron Donald, they posted their first winning record and playoff berth in over a decade. The very next season, they made it to Super Bowl LIII before again losing to the Patriots. In 2021, the team went all in on free agent veteran talent and succeeded in winning a Lombardi in their own stadium; said move came back to bite them the following year when they experienced the worst post-championship season since the merger.

The Rams' helmets have sported a distinctive design of curved ram horns since the '40s, being the first team in the NFL to not just paint their helmets a solid color. They spent their first 34 years in California playing in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a national historic landmark built in 1923 that hosted two Olympics, with a third on the way in 2028. This tenure also contributed to the racial reintegration of the NFL—due to the Coliseum being partially funded by state and local taxes, the Rams were pressured to desegregate their football team as part of their lease agreement, leading the team to hire the league's first Black players in over a decade. The team played their last 15 years in California outside of L.A. at the much smaller Anaheim Stadium to get around the league's blackout rules and get closer to the growing Orange County suburbs. After their stay in St. Louis, the Rams returned to the Coliseum while their current home was completed in Inglewood. In contrast to the shoddy reputation of the team's former "Battle Dome" in Missouri, SoFi Stadium is the most expensive sports venue ever built, costing an estimated $5 billion and featuring a tremendous two-sided circular video screen, a 6,000-seat performing arts theater sponsored by YouTube, and a sweeping translucent roof. Despite said roof covering the field and seating bowl, SoFi Stadium is considered an outdoor stadium with a canopy, as its sides are open to the elements, subjecting the stadium to weather delays.

San Francisco 49ers

Year Established: 1946
Overall Win Record: 624-524-14 (.543, 8th highest)^note 47-14-3 (.758) in the AAFC, 671-538-17 (.554) total
Nicknames: The Niners
Colors: Red and gold
Abbreviation: SF
Home Stadium: Levi's Stadium (68,500 capacity) [Since 2014]
Current Owners: Denise DeBartolo York and John York^note Their son Jed serves as president and representative in owners' meetings.
Current Head Coach: Kyle Shanahan
Current Starting Quarterback: Brock Purdy
Notable Historic Players: Frankie Albert, Alyn Beals, Joe "The Jet" Perry, Leo Nomellini, Billy Wilson, Y.A. Tittle, Hugh McElhenny, Bob St. Clair, Abe Woodson, John Brodie, Jimmy Johnson, Dave Wilcox, Dave Parks, Gene Washington, Cedrick Hardman, Joe Montana, Fred Dean, Ronnie Lott, Dwight Clark, Roger Craig, Jesse Sapolu, Jerry Rice, Bill Romanowski, Steve Young, Dana Stubblefield, Bryant Young, Ken Norton Jr., Ray Brown, Garrison Hearst, Terrell Owens, Jeff Garcia, Andy Lee, Alex Smith, Frank Gore, Vernon Davis, Patrick Willis, Colin Kaepernick, Aldon Smith, George Kittle, Kyle Juszczyk, Nick Bosa, Jimmy Garoppolo, Deebo Samuel, Christian McCaffrey
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Tony Morabito, Buck Shaw, Frankie Albert, Dick Nolan, Edward DeBartolo Jr., Bill Walsh, George Seifert, Steve Mariucci, Jim Harbaugh
Super Bowl Championships: 5; XVI (1981), XIX (1984), XXIII (1988), XXIV (1989), XXIX (1994)
Super Bowl Appearances: 8 total; XLVII (2012), LIV (2019), LVIII (2023)
Pre-Merger Championships: 0^note Appeared in the 1949 AAFC Championship

The San Francisco 49ers (named after the Forty Niners of the California Gold Rush) got their start in the All-America Football Conference in the '40s, where they saw a great deal of success under coach Buck Shaw, set a pro football record 3,653 rushing yards in 1948 that no team has come close to matching, and finished as runner-up to the Browns before joining the NFL after that league folded. Despite boasting a "Million Dollar Backfield" of future Hall of Famers in the '50s, the Niners generally just a decent team that struggled to carve out a spot in the small postseason field of the era, with four total playoff appearances in their first 30 years in the NFL (though two of those in the early '70s ended with NFC Championship losses to the Cowboys). The brief but disastrous tenure of GM Joe Thomas in the late '70s led to nearly unprecedented instability on and off the field: the squad went through four head coaches in three seasons and posted an NFL record 63 turnovers in 1978.

That unremarkable record all changed in the '80s, soon after the Niners' purchase by the billionaire DeBartolo family, who hired coach Bill Walsh to lead and manage the team. Walsh's innovative "West Coast Offense" transformed the team into the most dominant force in the NFL that persisted even after his retirement and replacement George Seifert. Led by back-to-back Hall of Fame quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young, legendary defensive back Ronnie Lott, and all-time leading wide receiver Jerry Rice, they notched fifteen playoff appearances, ten NFCCG appearances, and five Super Bowl wins from 1981-98 in one of the most successful dynasties in NFL history, briefly giving the franchise the record for most Super Bowl victories. These iconic characters, championships, and memorable moments like "The Catch" in the 1981 NFCCG made the 49ers one of America's most popular teams in an era when greats like the Steelers and Cowboys had started to slump.

At the end of that extended run, however, a corruption scandal led owner Edward DeBartolo Jr. to cede ownership to his sister; Steve Young retired soon after, and the team faded from relevance for most of the '00s while their title records were all tied or surpassed. Though the once-legendary team still has yet to secure a championship in the 21st century, they have not dropped out of contention to the degree of some other former greats. The 2011 hiring of Jim Harbaugh as head coach, paired with a powerful running game and implacable defense, took the new-look 49ers to three straight NFCCGs and an appearance in Super Bowl XLVII which the 49ers lost their first Super Bowl (breaking an undefeated streak of going 5-0 in the big game). When Harbaugh was ousted from the team due to clashes with management, the Niners again struggled to find an identity, becoming better known for a time as the host team in the Colin Kaepernick controversy. Eventually, new head coach Kyle Shanahan turned the team back around, leading them to four NFCCGs (giving them the most conference championship appearances of any franchise at 19) and losses in two Super Bowls against the Chiefs.

The 49ers spent their first 25 seasons in Kezar Stadium, then relocated to Candlestick Park, where they played for over four decades. After failed negotiations for a new stadium in their namesake city, the Niners settled on building a new home field, Levi's Stadium, next to their corporate headquarters in Santa Clara, forty miles from the city itself but closer to the suburbs from which they draw most of their fans. Levi's was completed and opened in 2014; it is located right next the Cedar Fair theme park California's Great America and features an organic farm on its roof that produces crops used in the stadium's concessions. Outside of their division, they once had a strong rivalry with the Cowboys that began in the early '70s that lasted until the early '80s^note The Catch that sent the Niners into a Super Bowl dynasty was against Dallas and thrown by Joe Montana, who the Cowboys themselves very nearly drafted (Dallas had the 76th pick via a trade with Seattle, where as the Niners had the 82nd pick)., then truly peaked with three straight NFCCG battles in the early '90s that decided the eventual Super Bowl winner, and somewhat reignited in The New '20s, with the Niners prevailing over the Cowboys in both meetings. The Niners also have a very strong rivarly with the Packers; they have faced off in the playoffs more than any other pair of teams, with San Francisco having mostly dominated Green Bay through the 21st century. They also have a rivalry with the Giants due to their gritty playoff battles in the '80s and '10s in which both Giants squads would go on to win the Super Bowl^note Joe Montana's eventual trade to Kansas City that cost the 49ers a legitimate chance to threepeat and paved the way for Steve Young to replace him was due to a dangerous hit from a Giants defender. and have an emerging one with the Chiefs due to their Super Bowl matchups.

Seattle Seahawks

Year Established: 1976
Overall Win Record: 409-385-1 (.515, 15th highest)
Nicknames: The Hawks, The Legion of Boom (defensive secondary of the early '10s)
Colors: College navy, "action" (bright neon) green, wolf grey
Abbreviation: SEA
Home Stadium: Lumen Field (68,740 capacity, expandable to 72,000) [Since 2002]
Current Owner: Jody Allen
Current Head Coach: Mike MacDonald
Current Starting Quarterback: Geno Smith
Notable Historic Players: Steve Largent, Jim Zorn, Dave Brown, Jacob Green, Kenny Easley, Dave Krieg, Joe Nash, Curt Warner, Brian Bosworth, Cortez Kennedy, Shaun Alexander, Matt Hasselbeck, Steve Hutchinson, Walter Jones, Marshawn Lynch, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, Richard Sherman, Brandon Browner, Russell Wilson, Bobby Wagner, Tyler Lockett, Shaquill and Shaquem Griffin, DK Metcalf
Notable Historic Coaches and Personnel: Jack Patera, Chuck Knox, Paul Allen, Mike Holmgren, Pete Carroll
Super Bowl Championships: 1; XLVIII (2013)
Super Bowl Appearances: 3 total; XL (2005), XLIX (2014)

The Seattle Seahawks are a historically not-very-good team that rose to strength in the 2010s. An expansion team in 1976 originally playing in the AFC West, tragedy struck before they even played their first game when founding owner Lloyd Nordstrom (of the Nordstrom department store family) passed away suddenly. They managed to be a decent competitor in the '80s, making an AFC Championship in 1983. However, after a division round loss the following year, the Hawks went two decades without a single playoff win. Through the '90s, they were the benchmark of forgetfully average, with a majority of their seasons being at or within one game of a .500 record, and they gained a reputation as a place for future Hall of Famers to play the year before they retire. The team was almost moved out of Seattle to Los Angeles in 1997 before Microsoft exec Paul Allen swooped in and purchased them to keep them in the Pacific Northwest.

Now with the then-wealthiest owner in the league, the Hawks eventually turned their fortunes around. In 2005, they not only broke their playoff win drought but made it all the way to Super Bowl XL under coach Mike Holmgren before coming up short in one of the most controversial championship games in history, with many questionable referee calls in the opponent Steelers' favor. Following a leadership change to the duo of former USC coach Pete Carroll and former Green Bay executive John Schneider in 2010, the Seahawks became the first team in 28 years to make the playoffs with a losing record (7-9). Critics were soon silenced with a shocking first-round win over the defending champion Saints, after Seattle RB Marshawn Lynch went "Beast Mode" with a 60+ yard touchdown run that sealed the deal for Seattle, causing the crowd to cheer so loudly that the rumbling registered on nearby seismographs as an earthquake.^note No, it did not have anything to do with Lynch stomping the turf so hard it shook the ground. After assembling a historic defensive backfield nicknamed "the Legion of Boom" and a generational talent in QB Russell Wilson, the Seahawks became an unexpected powerhouse. In the 2013 season, the Seahawks finally won their first Super Bowl in franchise history by surprisingly blowing out the Broncos in XLVIII, their defense completely shutting down what had been the most productive offense in NFL history. They suffered a heartbreaking defeat against the Patriots in the Super Bowl the following year and have since failed to get back to the NFCCG, but they have remained one of the league's most consistent teams.

The Seahawks are known for having some of the loudest and most dedicated fans in the league; they retired the #12 in their honor as the team's "12th man"^note a concept originated by and licensed from Texas A&M, which still holds the rights to that name. Their volume is at least partially due to their current home at Lumen Field being deliberately designed to amplify the sound from the stands (though their former home at the Kingdome was also one of the loudest in the league before it was demolished in 2000). Their stadium understandably has more false starts than any other in the league.^note It is so loud that the Seahawks were once accused of piping artificial crowd noise through the stadium speakers, but an investigation proved these claims untrue; the fans really are just that loud. That home field advantage is much appreciated since the Seahawks, like most sports teams from their geographically isolated city, do a lot of flying for their away games, regularly ranking as the most traveled team.^note Their nearest opponents are the 49ers, who play nearly 700 miles away.

The team logo has always been a side view of an osprey head designed in homage to the traditional art of the Puget Sound region's Native population. The original version, while more true to said art, often provoked comments about how the bird looked stoned, despite this, it proved to be very popular with the Seattle faithful as a throwback. In 2002, coinciding with their new stadium's opening and the Hawks' conference realignment back into the NFC ^note their inaugural season was spent in the NFC, it was finally updated to have a more aggressive and focused expression. This was paired with a dramatic redesign of the team's uniforms, adopting a slightly Darker and Edgier navy color scheme that would eventually fully evolve into their current darker navy uniforms that they now wear; the team evolved into consistent winners soon afterwards. They are rumored to be getting a new set of uniforms in time for the 2024-25 season.

Defunct Teams

Defunct Teams

Though many cities have lost their NFL teams to moves and rebrandings^note with the most notable examples in the modern era being San Diego, St. Louis (twice), and Oakland, no NFL team has outright folded since before the creation of the AFL. In the first decade of its history, however, the league saw 36 teams, including all but two of its founding members, come and go; a third of those teams folded after the 1926 season, when league president Joseph Carr decided to cut out the least profitable teams to ensure the league's survival, and 13 lasted only a single season. Eight more collapsed in the '30s, two more in the '40s, and another two in the '50s before the last collapse, that of the Dallas Texans in 1952 (whose meager assets went to Baltimore). Overall, 49 teams have officially been defunct from the league, with 10 of them being charter teams. That makes the NFL the largest holders of defunct teams in the Big Four of professional sports in the U.S.A. Below is an incomplete list of some of the more interesting defunct teams.

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• The Akron Pros were an original team of the APFA and the league's first ever champions. Formerly a semi-pro team in the Ohio League dating back to 1908, then playing under the "Akron Indians" name, the Pros won the inaugural APFA season by boasting the league's best record, 8-0-3 (at the time considered a "perfect" season, as ties weren't counted against one's record). This caused a good deal of controversy among both the Decatur Staleys and Buffalo All-Americans, who both actually won more games (and, in the Staleys' case, played more) and never lost to the Pros—if you ever question the value of playoffs, that first controversy is one place to start.^note Under the modern method of counting ties as half-wins/half-losses, the All-Americans would have been co-champs; the Staleys would outlive both of them anyways, becoming the Chicago Bears. The 1920 Pros featured Hall of Fame running back Fritz Pollard, one of the first African-American players in the league; he was made player-coach the following year, becoming the first African-American coach as well (and the only one until Art Shell over 60 years later). The Pros soon slid into mediocrity and folded after 1926.
• The Baltimore Colts were the third AAFC team to join the NFL after the merger along with the San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns. Hall of Fame QB Y.A. Tittle started out playing for this team before garnering much greater success with the 49ers and New York Giants. However, while the other two teams became storied franchises, the Colts put up a single win in their inaugural 1950 season in the NFL and struggled financially as a result, leading the team to fold. However, a dedicated core fanbase and even more dedicated marching band (the second ever official one in pro football) survived. Three years later, Carroll Rosenbloom used the franchise and assets of the defunct Dallas Texans to revive the team name and reclaim its marching band, though he used the Texans' uniforms rather than the old Colts' green attire. The NFL doesn't recognize this team (now located in Indianapolis) as a true successor to the former AAFC franchise.
• The Brooklyn Dodgers were created in 1930 after an ownership group in New York purchased the Dayton Triangles and moved their franchise to New York City.^note Along the way, they dropped most of the Triangles roster and instead brought in players from one of the owners' prior team, the Orange Tornadoes, which led to that team's collapse the following year. Although they were a below average team throughout their existence, they were one of the core clubs of the NFL when it began to stabilize during the '30s—they were the only franchise to fold after making it more than a decade in the league. They showed considerable improvement at the turn of the decade, drafting Hall of Famers Ace Parker and Bruiser Kinard while signing Pitt legend Jock Sutherland as their head coach. Most of this success, unfortunately, was undone in 1942 when the U.S. entered World War II and several players, including Parker and coach Sutherland, left to join the military. As the team continued its rapid decline, they changed their name to the Tigers in 1944, only to finish the season 0-10. They merged with the Boston Yanks for the following season, but team owner Dan Topping announced that he would start a new team, the New York Yankees, in the upstart AAFC. This resulted in the NFL revoking the Tigers franchise and assigning their players to the Yanks.
• The Buffalo All-Americans, as they were known in their first season in the league, were a founding member of the APFA and an early power, though they never secured a championship despite arguably deserving the title in both of the league's first two seasons. Originally a semi-pro team coached by Tommy Hughitt that had played in local and state leagues since 1915 as the "All-Stars", "Niagaras", and "Prospects", the All-Americans secured a 9-1-1 record in the inaugural season that would have tied them with the Akron Pros for the best record in the league under current rules for counting ties as half-wins but resigned them to third behind Akron and the Chicago Staleys under the old method of discounting them entirely. The next year, Buffalo went undefeated and claimed the title, only for owner Frank McNeil to agree to two "postseason exhibition matches" against Akron and Chicago. After the All-Americans lost their last match against the Staleys, the league decided to count both those games. With their records now tied, the APFA awarded the title to Chicago, arguing that the last match mattered more, inadvertently creating the first NFL championship game. "The Staley Swindle" is believed by many to have left a Curse on Buffalo sports to this day. The Buffalo team changed its name a few times in subsequent years to the "Bisons" and "Rangers" before finally folding after 1929 thanks to the Great Depression; if one counts the Dayton Triangles as still surviving in some form, Buffalo was the last of the original NFL teams to fold.
• The Canton Bulldogs were essentially the home team of the APFA and a critical component for the NFL's early survival and eventual success. Originally founded in 1904 as part of the Ohio League, superstar running back Jim Thorpe turned the Bulldogs into the most financially secure pro football team in the country. This led representatives from some of the country's biggest teams to meet in Canton to form the APFA and Thorpe to become the league's first president. However, Thorpe left the team after that season, and the Bulldogs began to financially struggle even as they won back-to-back championships in 1922-3, becoming the first team ever to win multiple titles. They merged with the short-lived Cleveland Indians in 1924, won another championship as the Cleveland Bulldogs, moved back to Canton the next year, and put up two dreadful seasons. The team was jettisoned from the league after 1926 as part of the NFL's effort to purge weaker teams to ensure its survival. The Bulldogs folded, but their legacy ensured that the Pro Football Hall of Fame was built in Canton.
• The Chicago Tigers never officially joined the NFL, but because most of their games were played against NFL teams, they’re generally considered a charter franchise of the league. By extension, this also makes them the first team to ever fold, as they were the only inaugural team that didn’t return for the 1921 season. Legend has it that the Tigers played the Cardinals for the right to be the hosting team for Chicago, and that the Tigers folded after losing the game. This story has been mostly debunked, however; not only is there no evidence to suggest this bet took place, but the Cardinals allowed the Decatur Staleys to move to Chicago the following season.
• The Columbus Panhandles were a club founded by railroad workers working the Panhandle route of the Pennsylvania railroad^note The name comes from the Panhandle region of West Virginia, which the route crossed through in 1901. Future NFL president Joseph Carr purchased the team in 1904 and took advantage of their railroad association to make them a traveling team. The Panhandles were a original member of the NFL, but they were never very good. As league president, Carr dissolved his former team as part of the 1926 purge.
• The Dallas Texans were the final NFL team to fold. In 1952, two young sibling millionaires, the Miller brothers, bought the old roster of the newly-defunct New York Yanks and set out to become the first ever major league sports franchise in Texas, an investment that made sense on paper considering the huge popularity of college football in the state for many decades. They couldn't even finish the season—after starting off with seven straight losses, terrible attendance, and a lack of sponsors, the Millers sold the team back to the league, who let it operate out of Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the rest of the year as its final traveling team. The NFL sold the players and other assets to Carroll Rosenbloom the next year, including their blue-and-white uniforms, which he used to make the Baltimore Colts. The Texans' collapse was such a disaster that the NFL didn't make any further expansions or team moves for seven years, the longest stretch of stability in the league's history at that point, only breaking and giving another franchise (the Cowboys; see entry under NFC East) to Dallas when the AFL emerged with their own Dallas team, also named the Texans.^note The AFL's Dallas Texans team moved to Kansas City in 1963, three years after the NFL founded the competing Cowboys franchise; see Kansas City Chiefs entry under AFC West.
• The Dayton Triangles were an original NFL team founded in 1913 as part of the Ohio League. No, they weren't named after a polygon; their Unfortunate Name was derived from their "home" stadium, Triangle Park, though they never actually played in it much, instead operating mostly as a traveling team. They were largely as big a joke as their name on the field, though they survived the 1926 purge and lasted until 1929, when they were dissolved after losing 17 straight games. However, some argue that the Dayton Triangles never truly left the NFL due to numerous convoluted sales of teams, players, and rights across two decades, five cities, and seven teams that can be traced all the way to both the New York Giants and Indianapolis Colts, a fitting legacy for a strange traveling team even if the NFL doesn't recognize any of it.^note The Triangles' franchise was bought by the founders of the Brooklyn Dodgers, though they released almost all of the players. The Dodgers spent one year merged with the Boston Yanks before the owner brought the players to the AAFC as the New York Yankees, then merged with that league's Brooklyn Dodgers to become the New York-Brooklyn Yankees. The team's assets were later split between the New York Giants and Bulldogs (formerly the Boston Yanks) after the NFL-AAFC merger. The Bulldogs renamed themselves the Yanks, who folded a few years later. Their rights and players were bought by the Dallas Texans, which also immediately folded. Their rights and players were then purchased by the new Baltimore Colts, which now reside in Indianapolis. Got all that?
• The Frankford Yellow Jackets were the first Philadelphia-based team in the NFL (Frankford being a neighborhood in the city). Established in 1899, they didn't join the NFL until 1924. They won the league championship in 1926, but the Great Depression and the lack of broad support in their home city (which housed a number of independent neighborhood-based teams) caused them to fold in 1931. The NFL returned to the city in 1933 with the Eagles expansion franchise; though the NFL does not recognize the Yellow Jackets as part of the team's history, the Eagles did use the Yellow Jackets powder-blue and gold uniforms for their first few seasons.
• The Los Angeles Buccaneers were technically the NFL's first West Coast team, save for the fact that they never played a regular season game in their home city. These Bucs were created in 1926, well before transcontinental travel was at the point where it would have been feasible to play games against teams based over 1,000 miles away. This meant that they played as a traveling team of players mainly from California that primarily operated out of Chicago. They did play two exhibition games in Los Angeles after the season ended, which is why the NFL recognizes them as their first team to play in LA. They put up a 6-3-1 record before folding in the offseason during the league's cost-cutting purge. The NFL didn't place another franchise along the West Coast until twenty years later when commercial air travel permitted the Rams' move from Cleveland to Los Angeles.
• The New York Yanks were one of the longer lasting defunct teams, starting life as the Boston Yanks in 1944. From the start, owner Ted Collins wanted to place the team in New York and play in Yankee Stadium to drive up ticket sales, but Giants' owner Tim Mara was fiercely protective of his territory and refused to let the league sell another franchise in his market. They merged with Mara's closest neighbor, the Brooklyn Tigers, in 1945 during the tail-end of the WWII player shortage, staying in Boston but going simply as "The Yanks". Collins never stopped desiring a New York team, and he got his wish when the AAFC began talks to merge with the NFL in 1949. He successfully bought a new New York franchise and dissolved the Boston team rather than agree to a move so he could write it off on his taxes; for this reason, the NFL considers them two separate teams. Once in New York, Collins had to call his team the "Bulldogs" for a year until the AAFC's Yanks dissolved and he could take their place. All this effort turned out to be for naught, however. Sharing a stadium with the Yankees turned out to be a curse, as the far more popular baseball team largely dictated their schedule and forced them to mainly play away games to preserve their turf. This took away the Yanks' revenue and chance to build a local fanbase, and the team folded after 1951, having lasted twice as long in Boston than in Collins' initial desired destination.
• The Oorang Indians were a truly unique team in NFL history, not because of their name—there were five teams in the early NFL that called themselves the Indians—but because they actually were Exactly What It Says on the Tin: a group of Native American football players. This novelty team was put together in 1922 to promote owner Walter Lingo's dog kennel and breeding business (seriously). Led by Lingo's superstar friend (and former APFA president) Jim Thorpe, whose role as player-coach gave the team the "in" to join the NFL, the Indians were more of a traveling circus than a football team, with Lingo seeking to attract attendance by having his dogs and players put on a show with tricks, dances, and feats of strength (including wrestling a bear) at halftime—yes, this team is credited with inventing the halftime show. One more thing: "Oorang" is not a town, but the name of Lingo's most popular dog breed; the Indians' registered hometown was LaRue, Ohio, a city of less than 1,000 people, easily the smallest hometown in NFL history (and likely any professional sport)^note It was so small, in fact, that the team never actually played there, instead mostly traveling and sometimes playing games in neighboring Marion. As you might expect, the team wasn't very good or popular and dissolved after just two seasons when the novelty wore off.
• The Phil-Pitt Combine, unofficially known as the Steagles, was the temporary merger between the Eagles and Steelers in 1943 after both teams lost a significant amount of players to military service during World War II. Some owners were opposed to the merger because they felt the combined roster would have an unfair advantage, never mind that the Eagles and Steelers were two of the worst teams in the league at the time. Eagles tackle Al Wistert put it best when he said "...all it meant was that we had twice as many lousy players." Most of the players on the Steagles (and most NFL teams during the war) were classified IV-F by the military, deeming them "unfit" to fight, with the reasons for deferment including blindness, deafness, ulcers, bad knees, and even flat feet. Additionally, all players were required to work full-time jobs off the field to help support the war effort.^note Notably, Steelers tackle Ted Doyle worked for Westinghouse Electric, where he later discovered that his contributions were used to help with the Manhattan Project. The team was co-coached by the Eagles' Greasy Neale and the Steelers' Walt Kiesling, but the two famously didn't get along. They wound up splitting coaching duties for the season, with Neale handling the offense and Kiesling the defense, inadvertently creating the idea of having dedicated coordinators call plays for offense and defense. Despite these setbacks, the Steagles managed a 5-4-1 record, a game away from first place in the East Division.^note Notable highlights include a Week 2 win against the Giants where they fumbled an NFL record 10 times, and a Week 9 upset against Washington, who were the defending champions that year. The merger ended following the conclusion of the regular season, with the Eagles having enough players to go back on being their own team again. The Steelers, however, still didn't have enough players, and they merged with the Chicago Cardinals the following season to create Card-Pitt for that season only. This merger didn't go as well; they went 0-10 and were nicknamed the "Carpets" due to their opponents walking all over them. Neither team were ever officially considered their own teams for obvious reasons, but we figured their interesting histories should be mentioned anyway.
• The Pottsville Maroons^note Pottsville is a coal mining town in Eastern Pennsylvania with a population just under 14,000. started their existence as an independent team in 1920. They were a consistently strong team who remained popular with local audiences, even starting their own league consisting of teams in Eastern Pennsylvania in 1924. After that league folded, the Maroons joined the NFL a year later and were the frontrunners to win the league championship following a 21-7 victory against the second place Chicago Cardinals late in the season. However, a week later, the Maroons played an exhibition game against a college all-star team in Philadelphia, which violated the territorial rights of the Frankford Yellow Jackets. While the Maroons claimed that they received permission from the NFL to host the game, league president Joe Carr suspended the Maroons for the rest of the season, with the Cardinals being awarded the championship instead. Their suspension was quickly lifted, however, when the NFL feared that they would jump to the upstart AFL the following season. While they continued to play well at first, financial difficulties caused their performance to decline over the next few seasons, with new ownership buying the team after 1928 and moving them to Boston as the Bulldogs. They folded the next year.
• The Providence Steam Rollers^*also rendered as Steam Roller, Steamroller, and Steamrollers; The Other Wiki goes with "Steamrollers" were founded in 1916, joined the NFL in 1925, and won the league championship in 1928, the last title claimed by a now-defunct team. They folded three seasons later because of the Great Depression. Their mascot was an adorable huskie◊.
• The St. Louis Gunners were an independent football team founded in 1931 and based out of the St. Louis National Guard Armory. They are potentially the only example of a team pulling a Put Me In, Coach! in NFL history; after the short-lived Cincinnati Reds folded mid-season in their second year of operation, the NFL permitted the Gunners to purchase their franchise and play out the last three games of the Reds' 1934 season. This "gift" turned out more of a curse—the cost of purchasing the franchise drove the team's owners deep into debt, and a fragment of a season was not enough for the team to recoup the cost. Their franchise was revoked and the team folded.
• The Tonawanda Kardex^note Tonawanda is a suburb of Buffalo, and Kardex was a local business conglomerate responsible for pioneering the use of index cards and the team's sponsor were founded in 1916 as the "Tonawanda All-Stars", later playing as the "Lumberjacks" and "Lumbermen". They played well against several APFA teams in the league's inaugural season and were permitted to join in their second year, where they became notorious as the shortest-lived team in league history. How short? One game, a 45-0 blowout loss against the Rochester Jeffersons, after which the Kardex seem to have literally faded from existence.

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NFL Scheduling and Games

NFL Scheduling and Games

Each team plays a 3-game preseason, except for the two teams involved in the Hall of Fame Game,^*held in Canton, Ohio on the weekend of the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony which get four. This is followed by a 17-game regular season, and then by a postseason involving 14 teams.

The 17 games are determined as follows:

• 6 games against the team's three divisional rivals (2 each; 1 home, 1 away)
• 4 games against every team in another division in your conference (2 home, 2 away)
• 4 games against every team in a division in another conference (2 home, 2 away)
• 2 games against two other conference teams that finished in the same position in their division (1 home, 1 away)
• 1 game against one cross-conference team that finished in the same position in their division (alternating home/away)

Basically, let's say we have the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs, who won their division, the AFC West, in 2022. In 2023, the AFC West is playing the AFC East and NFC North. That means that 6 of Kansas City's games will be against their 3 divisional rivals (Denver Broncos, Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Chargers), 4 will be against all 4 AFC East teams (Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, New York Jets), 4 will be against all 4 NFC North teams (Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings), 2 will be against the teams that came in first place of the AFC North (Cincinnati Bengals) and AFC South (Jacksonville Jaguars), and the last will come against the first place team in the NFC East (Philadelphia Eagles). That's how a 17-game schedule is generated.

The 17-game schedule was introduced in 2021; the league had previously played 16-game regular seasons with 4 preseason games since 1978. For years, owners have been pushing to extend the regular season to up to 18 games and reduce the preseason to two. Preseason games are sparsely attended and generally ignored by fans, since coaches rarely want to risk the health of their starting players and give away their strategies for a meaningless game. However, they're important for giving newly-signed players some time on the field, for determining who should start and who needs more time to develop, and potentially for giving starters time to acclimate to game conditions.^note During the 2020 season, when the preseason was cut entirely due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the early weeks of the season were marked with a rash of high-profile injuries. Proposals to lengthen the regular season are also controversial because they would require that starters play more, thus increasing the risk of injuries in an already risky game. These changes have to be agreed upon during the labor contract talks the league has with the NFLPA; the most recent collective bargaining agreement was a compromise between the two camps, hence the odd number of games.

As of 2020, postseason qualification involves 14 teams which qualify for the playoffs. Each division sends the team with the best winning percentage^note It is important to distinguish this from the "best record"; a tie in the NFL counts as a half-win and half-loss, meaning that a team with a record of 8-6-2 has the same right of winning the division as a team with a 9-7-0 record; in fact, if the 8-6-2 team swept the 9-7 team in the regular season, they are the division champions despite having one fewer win. Incidentally, the NFL ignored tie games when calculating winning percentage until 1972.—this is the division champion. However, there are also six "wild-card" spots (three per conference) that are up for grabs. These go to the remaining teams with the best win percentages in the conference. There are some fantastically complicated tiebreaker rules to go along with that, but an average football fan should be fine with just this knowledge.

Each team also gets some seeding based on how they performed during the regular season. Each conference has seven seeds. Seeds #1-4 go to the division champions in order of win percentage, while seeds #5-7 go to the wild cards in the same order. The top seeds in each conference get a first-round bye week during the playoffs. The remaining teams all face off in the Wild Card round, (#2 playing #7, #3 playing #6, and #4 playing #5). The lower-ranking of the teams that win those contests faces the #1 seed, with the remaining two teams playing each other. Playoff games are single-elimination. Each game is held in the home stadium of the higher-ranking team, so the #1 seed gets home advantage their entire time in the playoffs before the Super Bowl, which is always held at a predetermined "neutral" site (though some teams have played their way into one that was already scheduled at their home stadium).

There have also been calls to modify the playoff format, usually by changing qualification/seeding to be based purely on record. This usually gets called for when a division winner with a mediocre or even losing record makes it to the playoffs and ends up hosting a wild card team with a much stronger record. A losing team has made the playoffs six times, the first two (the Browns and the Lions) during a strike-shortened 1982 season. The next two, the 2010 Seahawks and 2014 Panthers, capitalized on the home field advantage to win their first playoff games against winning teams, adding to the call for such teams to at least lose their home field privileges. The fifth and sixth, the 2020 Washington Football Team and 2022 Buccaneers, lost their first-round playoff games.

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Roster Construction

A key draw of the NFL is parity, the idea that any team can win "on any given Sunday". The NFL has a couple of rules about how teams can assemble their teams that are meant to keep the wealthiest or winningest franchises from (completely) dominating year after year and give smaller markets a shot at going on title runs. These guidelines have the added side effect of making the offseason a competition in its own right, giving sports media plenty to talk about when the athletes are more concerned with getting paid than getting play time.

The NFL Draft

The NFL Draft was the first major draft in professional sports, invented in 1936 as a way of improving parity by giving the lower performing teams exclusive dibs to sign the most promising young talent who would otherwise just sign with either the wealthiest or most successful franchise. The Draft occurs each year in late April or early May, but following it is a year-round pastime in and of itself, with many journalists and commentators making a career out of being "draftniks" who explain, investigate, and predict team's draft decisions. Though the event itself sounds fairly dull on paper—essentially just reading a couple hundred names of college athletes, many of which will never be heard of again by even the most devout fans—the Draft is now a primetime television event in the U.S., with various networks doing their best to make mundane awesome by highlighting the scrambling of the teams to secure last minute trades and the live reactions of the players and their loved ones, capturing their emotions at becoming millionaires after a lifetime of hard work. It's wound up making good enough drama that the NFL sponsored a whole movie just about the men and women who scout and draft talent.

As it currently stands, college football programs provide almost all new NFL prospects. The NFL is unique among the Big Four American pro sports leagues in that it requires players to be at least three years out of high school before they are drafted—while some of the biggest stars in other sports are drafted right out of high school, the NFL lacks a developmental league of its own to train young prospects (though NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has shown interest in establishing such a league). Due to how popular college football is in the United States, a change in that policy seems unlikely in the near future. Teams also keep an eye out for standout players in the Canadian Football League and smaller NFL competitors, but most players in those leagues either come from the college level as well or were dropouts from NFL teams.

Draft scouting goes on throughout the college football season but really begins to ramp up during Bowl Season in college football (mid-December to early January), where many of the best players will play their final collegiate game before declaring for the NFL Draft. There have been plenty of great Bowl performances that elevate players into first-round consideration, and vice versa—plenty of projected first-rounders have given shoddy performances and seen their draft stock plummet. Starting in 2016 with future top-10 picks Leonard Fournette and Christian McCaffery, it has become en vogue for top prospects whose teams aren't competing for a national championship to skip their teams' bowl games entirely, rather than risk injury or poor performance.

Following the end of college Bowl Season come the collegiate All-Star games. Typically coached by NFL coaching staffs (or free agent coaches with NFL experience in a few cases), these games invite college football's best players to compete against one another in a pro-style game. Most prominent is the Senior Bowl, held every year in Mobile, Alabama since 1951. From then until 2023, as the name suggests, only players who completed their full college eligibility were invited to attend. Starting in 2024, underclassmen who have declared for the draft are now eligible as well. Other All-Star games include the East-West Shrine Game (the oldest of the All-Star games), the HBCU Legacy Bowl (which invites players from historically black colleges), the Dream Bowl (which invites players from FCS, D-II, and D-III schools), and the Tropical Bowl (which invites the best players not invited to any of the other games). It is also common for players to attend multiple games as schedules allow (particularly the Senior Bowl and the East-West Shrine Game). NFL scouts attend all of these games, in addition to their practices, in order to study the prospects.

The next portion of draft scouting comes during the NFL Scouting Combine, which has been held every February in Indianapolis since 1987 (save for 2021, when it was canceled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic). In a typical year, 335 of the top college players who have declared for the draft will be invited. There are a few traditional drills (the 40-yard dash, the cone drill, the 225-lb bench press, among others) that almost every prospect participates in. However, plenty of prospects decline to work out at (or even attend) the Combine for various reasons. While declining usually hurts their draft stock, it rarely effects the top prospects and doesn't hurt as badly as a poor Combine performance would. Conversely, there are always a few unheralded prospects every year who turn in exceptional performances in the Combine drills. These "workout warriors" typically see their draft stock skyrocket, to fairly mixed results. (In the latter years of former owner Al Davis' life, his Raiders became something of a running joke for consistently drafting these types of players.) The Combine also used to include the (in)famous Wonderlic, a basic intelligence test, but the NFL ended its use in 2022.

Next is a college's Pro Day, where pro scouts come to the prospect's college to watch him work out in his own facility. Prospects who declined or performed poorly at the Combine can rehabilitate their draft stock with a good Pro Day. Additionally, since all of the draft-eligible prospects of a given school will participate, lower-end prospects (who often weren't invited to the Combine or an All-Star Game) who have good performances may be able to catch the eye of pro scouts there to see their higher profile teammates.

In the final months leading up to the Draft, teams may bring up to 30 prospects to their team headquarters for individual meetings and interviews. This is a time for the team decision makers to get to know the prospects on a more personal level, to potentially determine how that prospect would fit within the team's environment. Teams will also often invite players they have no intention of drafting (or the opposite, not inviting players they do want to draft) in order to prevent other teams from figuring out their draft strategy.

Finally, the Draft itself occurs. The first pick of each round goes to the team that had the worst record in the league in the previous year, and each selection goes up until the team that won the Super Bowl makes their pick and the order resets for the next round. (Ties are broken via strength of schedule and then, if needed, a coin flip.) This system frequently leads to middling teams attempting to "tank" in the back half of the season, a sort of "race to the bottom" scenario in which teams with no shot of making the Super Bowl sell off or bench good/decent players in order to lose more games and ensure a better chance to improve in the future.^note This philosophy only applies to ownership. Save for the rarest of individual circumstances, coaches and players do not intentionally tank games, partly due to pride, partly because the league would ban them for life if they found out about it, but mainly because they don't want film of themselves playing like garbage to come up next time they're negotiating a contract. Athletes absolutely hate losing, and even if it would be for the greater good long term, there's little guarantee they'll still be playing for the same team by then. This is a controversial practice that can make the back half of the season tough for fans to watch and hard for players to swallow, since their livelihoods and futures are dependent on them playing well, not helping a team that will probably cut them prep for the future. Some have suggested that the NFL get around this problem by reconfiguring the draft to have a lottery system like the NBA and NHL, where the worst team is not guaranteed the best pick, but that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.^note The Draft did feature a lottery system from 1947-58, but it was only for the #1 pick and included all the teams regardless of record, discarding teams after each award in order to give each team a chance at a #1 pick every decade or so. In 1949, this resulted in the Philadelphia Eagles winning the "bonus" pick immediately after they had won the league championship; they picked a future Hall of Famer in Chuck Bednarik and repeated their title win. Most of the other bonus picks turned out to be major busts, and the system was thrown out after every team got their turn. This system's unpopularity is often cited as the reason the NFL never reintroduced a lottery, even though no lottery proponent suggests this bizarre model as the way to go.

Draft picks can be traded just like players—and they often are (the Ricky Williams trade, in which New Orleans traded eight draft picks for the #5 overall pick with which they selected Williams, is an especially notable one). Prior to the 2011 CBA putting a rookie contract salary structure in place (see below), it was almost always speculated that the teams holding the highest draft picks would try to trade down to avoid giving a giant contract to a guy who hadn't even played in an NFL game, but that rarely happened. With rookie contracts being significantly reduced since then, teams with lower picks have been much more willing to trade up, especially for elite quarterback prospects. (For example, each of the top two picks of the 2016 NFL Draft were traded to teams moving up for the top QB prospects.)

Since 1994, the draft has consisted of seven rounds, but the number of total picks adds up to slightly more than eight rounds. Most of the extra picks are 32 "compensatory picks", introduced in that same 1994 draft and distributed at the ends of rounds 3-7. These picks are awarded to teams that suffer a net loss of high-caliber free agents during the lead-in to each draft. A second and much smaller group of picks, known as "Resolution JC-2A picks", was introduced in 2021 to reward teams for developing minority candidates for head coaching and general manager positions and are awarded after the third-round compensatory picks.^{More details}If a team has a qualifying candidate hired as either a HC or GM by any different NFL team, it receives one JC-2A pick in each of the next two drafts. Should a team have qualifying candidates hired away for both positions, it receives one such pick in each of the next three drafts. The candidate must have been with his previous club for at least two seasons. Picks are not awarded to teams that have a head coach or GM hired away by another team in the same role (picks are awarded if a head coach is hired as GM, or vice versa). They are also not awarded to teams that internally hire otherwise qualifying candidates. Finally, there can be no break in employment between clubs. The draft had additional rounds in the past back when there were fewer teams (with as many as 30 as recently as the 1960s).

Each team has representatives present during the draft who are responsible for turning in their team's picks during a strictly enforced time limit, referred to as the team in question being "on the clock". Since 2008, the time limits are set at 10 minutes for a first-round pick, seven minutes for a second-round pick, and five minutes for all other rounds. If a team has not made their pick by the end of their allotted time (as happened to the Vikings in 2003 and Ravens in 2011, both in the first round), they may be skipped by the teams picking after them. (The Vikings were skipped by two teams before finally making their selection, while the Ravens were skipped by one.) The last overall draft pick is called "Mr. Irrelevant" and receives the distinctive Lowsman Trophy (which looks like the Heisman, except the player is fumbling the ball); QB Brock Purdy is easily the most well-known player taken with this pick, as most players drafted late struggle to even make final rosters.

During the summer after the draft, the NFL typically holds what is known as the "Supplemental Draft". This draft is for players who did not declare for the main NFL Draft but have had various circumstances (kicked off the team, ruled academically ineligible, early graduation, etc.) affect their college eligibility since. The order is the same one used in the main draft, and any team who selects a player in a given round will forfeit a pick in the equivalent round of the next year's draft. (Hall of Fame WR Cris Carter and infamous bust Brian Bosworth were each selected in the Supplemental Draft.)

A player who is highly-drafted but, for whatever reason (injury, underperformance, off-field issues), fails to have a distinguished career is known as a "draft bust". Since "bust" players are usually let go to save face and team reputation if no one else will take them in a trade, the drafting team may literally have nothing to show on-field for their drafting effort. This is especially painful if the team is consistently bad enough to be awarded high picks for consecutive years. Some fanbases in particular seem perpetually haunted by their team suffering either years of draft futility or instances of drafting a merely passable player ahead of one who became a legitimate star. Ryan Leaf, a quarterback drafted #2 overall in 1998 by the San Diego Chargers who was out of the league by 2001, is known as the biggest bust in NFL history (and arguably in professional sports overall). "Workout warriors" from the Combine are seen as particularly high risks of being draft busts. Detailed lists of specific examples can be found on the National Football League Notorious Figures page.

Conversely, a player whose retrospective performance is greater than one would expect given their draft position is known as a "draft steal" (best example: Tom Brady, picked 199th in 2000, in the sixth round). While the biggest examples of draft steals are low-round picks that turn out to be top-tier players, players drafted in the second, third, or even low in the first rounds can be considered steals depending on their talent and the interest on draft day (Aaron Rodgers, for example, was projected to be drafted #1 overall by the 49ers in 2005 but instead fell all the way to the Green Bay Packers at 24th after the 49ers selected Alex Smith instead).^note See the listing for the "Tedford Five" in the "Quarterback Draft Busts, P–Z" folder in the "Notorious Figures" page for a likely reason Rodgers slipped.

After the draft, players who were eligible to be drafted but who were not selected in the seven rounds may sign with any team as "undrafted free agents". Very few ever make a team's final roster right away; they are frequently signed to the practice squad, are re-signed the following offseason for another chance to make the team, or move on to play in the CFL or Arena League. While it is not especially common, undrafted players can and have gone on to be highly successful players in the NFL. Some of the most famous examples from recent history are Tony Romo, Wes Welker, Antonio Gates (who played basketball instead of football in college), and Arian Foster. Hall of Famers John Randle, Warren Moon, Dick "Night Train" Lane, and Kurt Warner also started their careers as undrafted free agents.

Prior to 2011, the contracts awarded to highly drafted rookies were ludicrously out of control. Frequently, players drafted in the top 10 picks were given total contracts and guaranteed money higher than all but the most elite veteran players at their respective positions. (For example, quarterback Sam Bradford, selected #1 overall by the Rams in 2010 received a contract worth $78 million, which had $50 million in guarantees and had a maximum value of $86 million. This placed him in the top 5 highest earning quarterbacks in the NFL before taking his first snap in the pros.) In the 2011 CBA, the NFL instituted a "rookie salary structure" which greatly restricted the money that could be given to rookies, intending to leave more money available to spend on veteran players. (Cam Newton, the #1 overall pick in 2011 to the Carolina Panthers, received a much more modest $22 million total deal.) This, along with increased minimum veteran salary floors, has led to an unintended consequence of many teams going with a youth movement of rookies and other first-contract players rather than mid-level veterans at many of their positions, preferring to look more often for rookie sleeper hits than pay higher salaries for a fair-to-middling veteran placeholder. This means that many teams have rookie and first-contract players at a majority of positions with a handful of superstar contracts but a decreasing amount of veteran depth. (In 2007, for example, 11 teams had a starting lineup with an average player age under 27. In 2017, 24 teams had starting lineups averaging under 27.)

Trades, Free Agency, and the Salary Cap

Of course, the draft is not the only, or even the main, way that NFL teams assemble their rosters. The last team to win a Super Bowl exclusively with "homegrown" players they drafted were the Pittsburgh Steelers' Steel Curtain dynasty of the 1970s (a key reason that roster remains so iconic).

For most of its history, NFL teams have had the ability to literally trade their players' contracts to other teams in exchange for either other players or draft picks. For decades, a trade was the only hope a player who was on a poorly performing team or had lost their starting position had of continuing their career somewhere else; once drafted, franchises usually held their exclusive NFL rights for their entire career, even if their contract expired. While trades were preferable to purgatory on a bench, they also meant that NFL players had (and often still have) little say about who they work for or where they work (unless they had a contract with an explicit no-trade clause that requires their consent, a relative rarity). It is not uncommon at all for an NFL player to have to pick up their family and their entire life to move across the country and play for a whole new team and system the very next week without any prior warning. This can happen all the way up to the middle of the season, at which point trades are cut off.

Players have never been very happy about this arrangement and long campaigned to have greater choice in where they play (and, as a direct result, more leverage with negotiating their salaries). This lack of agency was one cause of the two player strikes of the 1980s, the first of which cancelled half of the 1982 season and the second of which required the hiring of replacement players for a stretch of 1987. This resulted in the league slightly softening some of its rules in 1989 to allow a handful of players to enter free agency and sign with other teams. Antitrust suits against the league by the NFL Players Association (the union that represents players) resulted in the creation of free agency in its modern form in 1993.

Under the current free agency system, teams sign rookie contracts with their draft picks for four seasons, with first round picks also having a fifth-year extension option. Their front offices are then responsible for getting star players to sign contracts with them before that rookie contract expires. If they fail to negotiate one, teams have a few options under the current agreement with the NFLPA. The most prominent is the franchise tag, which allows teams to extend a single player on their roster for one more year, with their salary being a predetermined number that is competitive with the highest annual amount for their position. If players aren't tagged or extended, they are then free to sign with another team.

As one might guess, this has led to an increase in player salaries and movement: far fewer players stick with the same team for their entire careers than did so prior to the current free agency model. However, free agency immediately posed an obvious challenge to the draft's goal of parity: What was to keep the wealthiest owner in the league from outbidding all the other billionaires at every position and build an enduring superteam? The NFL's response was a salary cap. Introduced in 1994, the NFL and NFLPA negotiates and adjusts this cap every few years to match the revenues of the league and ensure players are getting their fair cut. This cap limits the number and quality of free agent acquisitions teams can make in a given offseason, requiring them to still draft wisely at positions of need due to not being able to afford elite veteran talent for every position. It also adds to the amount of player movement, as championship teams often struggle to bring back all of their free agent talent once their value goes up from winning a ring. Tracking exactly how much space teams have under or over the cap is complicated and arguably sketchy. "Cap gymnastics" has emerged as a sports form of Hollywood Accounting in which some front offices free up millions in cap space every offseason by renegotiating contracts and delaying payments.

The Pro Bowl

The Pro Bowl

Most North American leagues have All-Star games, and the NFL is no exception, having played the Pro Bowl near the end of the season since 1951 (with a few other "All-Star" predecessors dating back to the 1930s). However, the NFL's All-Star game is notable because of how irrelevant it is. The NBA and NHL have big to-dos, with the league's best and brightest coming out to play with giant concerts, festivities, and fun times for all. The MLB All-Star Game, from 2004-16, determined whether the American or National League had the home-field advantage in the World Series (few baseball fans actually liked this, and in 2017 MLB switched back to awarding home field based on regular season record). The Pro Bowl... is now a flag-football game, as of 2022.

Late in the season, players are named to Pro Bowl teams. Fan ballots account for a full third of the votes, with coaches and players making up the remaining two-thirds. It's (supposed to be) considered a huge honor to get sent, but many players will pull out, sometimes leading to headscratching choices of mediocre players as Pro Bowl alternates. This is especially true for the league's championship-caliber players; ever since the Pro Bowl was moved to the week before the Super Bowl, none of the players from the season's two best teams have played in the game, even further limiting the star power of the event.

If you're wondering why players would pull out of being in such a prestigious game and why it is scheduled so late rather than around the middle of the season like the MLB, NBA, and NHL All-Star Games, we've got one word: injuries. Since football has higher risk of injury than baseball, basketball, and ice hockey, holding the Pro Bowl after the season ends means that if an injury does occur the player will have the whole offseason to recover. The fact that those other leagues hold All-Star Games as part of their mid-season celebrations results in more universal participation by the top players, because nobody is missing out on key preparation for a championship game by participating (and because fewer players are injured by that part of the season). However, even though a mid-season placement would probably make Pro Bowls more fun and exciting, there's essentially no chance of them being moved to mid-season in line with other leagues.

All All-Star games are generally relaxed affairs, but the injury fears meant the Pro Bowl had always been a much less engaged game, with numerous rules meant to limit risking players' futures on a meaningless contest. For several decades, the game was treated as a glorified vacation, being hosted in Hawaii the week before the Super Bowl. The NFL ended this practice in 2010 (in part due to the rapid decay of Aloha Stadium) and moved to a rotating group of host cities on the continent. Failing ratings and lack of popularity persisted, and the NFL continued to tinker with the product, from briefly moving to a draft format rather than a conference matchup to canceling it altogether in 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic and replaced with a Madden NFL tournament. After attempting to bring the game back the following season, the NFL finally threw in the towel; starting in 2022, the Pro Bowl will be replaced with the "Pro Bowl Games", purely focusing on skill challenges and a flag football game (but still, for some reason, taking place at the end of the season). For anyone thinking that this would improve participation, it did not. Notably, two of the AFC QBs pulled out due to injury, leading to replacements in Tyler Huntley (the Raven's backup who started just four games) and Derek Carr (who was benched and essentially released by the Raiders late in the season).

From 1961-70 the Pro Bowl was paired with the "Playoff Bowl", a match between conference playoff losers to determine third place in the league overall (which is relevant for draft purposes, but can just as easily be handled on the basis of overall record). It was never very popular (Vince Lombardi called it "a loser's bowl for losers" among other, less printable things), so it was discontinued after the AFL-NFL merger.

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NFL Awards

NFL Awards

Like any other sports league, the National Football League offers a variety of annual awards to exceptional players and coaches. There are actually several bodies that give awards, but the ones from the Associated Press are the most widely recognized. For many years, they were awarded in press releases and conferences, but since 2012 the NFL has opted to take the Award Show route and announce all winners the week before the Super Bowl in a show called the NFL Honors. They are as follows:

• Most Valuable Player: The award given to the player who is "considered the most valuable" during the NFL regular season since 1961.^note The history of the MVP award is a little fuzzy; the AP issued a "Most Outstanding Player" award starting in 1957 that some publications treat as official despite the AP now only listing the "Valuable"-era. Historians have a few other options prior to that, the most official being the Joe F. Carr Trophy issued by the league itself from 1938-46. Sporting News, United Press International, and the Newspaper Enterprise Association all named MVPs at various points between those eras that are generally treated as semi-official. It has almost exclusively gone to offensive players, specifically quarterbacks (with the occasional, increasingly-rare running back), to the point that some have mockingly suggested renaming it the "Most Valuable Quarterback" award.^note The three exceptions to this in the AP-era are defensive tackle Alan Page ('71), placekicker Mark Moseley ('82), and linebacker Lawrence Taylor ('86). Prior to that, the first Carr Trophy went to two-way lineman Mel Hein ('38), and game-breaking receiver Don Hutson earned two ('41-'42); tackle/kicker Lou Groza won the first from Sporting News ('54). Peyton Manning has a record five of them^note one shared with Steve McNair. No wide receiver has ever won this award and likely never will, as you'd need an MVP winning QB to put up those kind of numbers. Since the start of the 21st century, some have considered this award "cursed", much like the cover of Madden NFL—between Kurt Warner in 1999 and Patrick Mahomes in 2023, no MVP managed to actually win the Super Bowl in the same season.
  • Most Recent Winner: Lamar Jackson, QB, Baltimore Ravens^note His second MVP award, earned after he took the Ravens to the #1 seed while leading his team in rushing yards and still posting top level passing stats.
• Offensive Player of the Year: Given to the best offensive player of the year... kinda. Many view the award as the unofficial runner-up to MVP, given that those who fill out the ballots typically give their vote to someone not expected to win the top award in order to spread the love around (though sometimes it will just go to the MVP anyway). Again, quarterbacks and running backs are almost universally favored here, with the total tally leaning towards RBs (though receivers are starting to catch up). If a RB has a great season for a team that's otherwise terrible (which happens more often than you'd think) he'll have a good shot at winning this. Marshall Faulk and Earl Campbell are tied for the most, with three each. (Each won all three in consecutive seasons.) WR Jerry Rice has two and was the only non-QB or RB to win one in the first 47 years of the award's existence. Offensive linemen? Who're they?
  • Most Recent Winner: Christian McCaffrey, RB, San Francisco 49ers^note Led the league in rushing yards, yards from scrimmage, and total touchdowns, playing a major role in the Niners reaching the Super Bowl.
• Defensive Player of the Year: Given to the best defensive player in the league in a given year. Linebackers, cornerbacks, and defensive linemen can be counted on to usually win the award. Safeties get the short end of the stick—only five have won the award since its inception (1971), but three of those have won since 2000, so maybe opinions are changing. Lawrence Taylor, J.J. Watt, and Aaron Donald are tied for the most, with three each.
  • Most Recent Winner: Myles Garrett, DE, Cleveland Browns^note Led the league's #1 defense, though somewhat controversially trailed most other candidates in major statistical categories.
• Offensive Rookie of the Year: Best rookie on offense. Shockingly, for many years, this one didn't go to many quarterbacks. There was a 34-year period between QBs winning this award (Dennis Shaw in 1970 and Ben Roethlisberger in 2004), during which running backs and wide receivers tended to dominate. Since Roethlisberger won in 2004, however, there has been a major increase in quarterbacks winning the award.^note For many years, standard NFL practice for teams that were in the position to draft a skilled quarterback was to not make him starter right away, accepting a couple of years of losing so that they can build the team they want around that guy and keep him healthy. Though innovations in offenses and improved training at the college level have made starting rookie QBs far more common, OROTY winners tend not to be the ones taken at the top of the draft order who are tasked with learning the pro game while playing for the very worst teams. (Future 5-time MVP Peyton Manning started all 16 games his rookie season and went 3-13.) (Offensive linemen are still left out in the cold.) Only six players selected #1 overall have won the award in its history^note Earl Campbell (1978), Billy Sims (1980), George Rogers (1981), Sam Bradford (2010), Cam Newton (2011), and Kyler Murray (2019) and the award is developing a "cursed" reputation of its own, as only one winner this century has gone on to win a Super Bowl for the team who drafted him^note Ben Roethlisberger. The lowest drafted player to win the award is Denver RB Mike Anderson, the 189th pick (6th round) in the 2000 draft.^note You're reading that right, he was selected ten picks ahead of Tom Brady. However, Anderson’s story is unique, as he had spent 4 years in the Marines before coming into the NFL at 27 years old.
  • Most Recent Winner: C.J. Stroud, QB, Houston Texans^note Brought the Texans back to the postseason and won a playoff game while leading all QBs in average passing yards per game
• Defensive Rookie of the Year: Best defensive rookie. Most commonly goes to linebackers or defensive linemen, though this is another award where opinions may be changing in favor of cornerbacks. No defensive player selected #1 overall has ever won the award, though six #2 picks have.^note Lawrence Taylor (1981), Julius Peppers (2002), Ndamukong Suh (2010), Von Miller (2011), Nick Bosa (2019), Chase Young (2020) The lowest drafted player to win the award is Atlanta linebacker Al Richardson, the 201st (8th round) pick in the 1980 draft.^note The draft now has only 7 rounds, although league expansion since 1980 and the addition of compensatory picks in 1994 mean that the 201st pick is now in the middle of the 6th round.
  • Most Recent Winner: Will Anderson Jr., DE, Houston Texans
• Comeback Player of the Year: The Red-Headed Stepchild of the awards. The AP issued it for a few seasons (1963-66), ditched it for decades, and brought it back in 1998 after CFL legend Doug Flutie returned to the States to great success. (Most publications recognize the Pro Football Weekly version of the award as the most "official" one issued during this hiatus.) "Comeback" has many definitions in sports—a comeback player could be one who came back from a massive injury (Peyton Manning, 2012^note A curious year in which both he and Adrian Peterson were the main contenders for Comeback Player and MVP (Peyton missed the entire previous year due to a career-threatening neck injury, while Peterson recovered in miraculous fashion from a torn ACL in only 260 days, and both had phenomenal seasons); they ultimately split the awards between them.), a non-injury absence (Michael Vick, 2010^note For Vick's case, when we say "absence" we mean "prison sentence and Unperson status due to animal abuse".), a couple of down years (Jon Kitna, 2003^note Kitna took the Seahawks to the playoffs as a starting QB before going to Cincinnati as a free agent. His play dropped off significantly, culminating with the Bengals "earning" the #1 overall pick in 2003, but he managed to beat out #1 pick Carson Palmer for the starting job and had a very respectable season.), or maybe just finally had a good year when he had never had one before (Tommy Maddox, 2002^note His one good NFL season followed an excellent season in the first iteration of the XFL). Due to these different interpretations, this one often creates the most arguments among fans. Chad Pennington has two, the only player to win more than once.
  • Most Recent Winner: Joe Flacco, QB, Cleveland Browns^note The 39-year-old former Super Bowl MVP started the season on the couch before getting picked up by the Browns, who had lost their starter to injury and struggled with two different backups. Flacco put up some of his best numbers in years and took the Browns to a playoff berth. However, as is typical for this award, their was a great deal of controversy with this selection, as Flacco had only played five games (Baker Mayfield had a similar story to Flacco but had played the full season) and was not returning from injury (Bills safety Damar Hamlin had returned to playing after suffering massive cardiac arrest on the field the year prior). Not helping matters was that Flacco himself said before the award was given out that he thought it should go to Hamlin, who actually received more first place votes than Flacco.
• Coach of the Year: Surprisingly, this one isn't automatically given out to the coach who has the league's best record. Rather, it's usually given to a one who has experienced an epic turnaround, especially one who was just hired to a new team and turns them from losers to playoff contenders. Partially because of its emphasis on improvement over dominance, this award, like the MVP, is "cursed"; no coach has won it and gone on to win the Super Bowl that year since Bill Belichick first won it in 2003, and many have downright struggled not long after receiving it. The late Don Shula, coach of the league's only "perfect" season (the 1972 Dolphins), has a record four of them.^note Despite coaching the Dolphins for 25 years, three of those awards came during his much shorter first tenure with the Baltimore Colts, another example of how bizarre this award can often be in hindsight.
  • Most Recent Winner: Kevin Stefanski, Cleveland Browns^note Led the Browns to a playoff berth despite a very injured roster and massive instability at the QB position. His second time winning the award. He beat runner-up DeMeco Ryans of the Houston Texans by a single vote, though the Texans beat the Browns in the playoffs (it's worth noting that the award only takes into account the regular season; if the postseason were included; Ryans' victory over Stefanski in the playoffs would have likely given him the edge).
• Assistant Coach of the Year: The most recent addition to the list of AP awards (first awarded in 2014), it is given to the top assistant coach in the NFL, typically an offensive or defensive coordinator.
  • Most Recent Winner: Jim Schwartz, DC, Cleveland Browns^note Organized the league's #1 defense, which carried the Browns to a playoff berth despite the team starting five different QBs throughout the season.

There are several other awards worth noting which aren't voted on by the Associated Press:

• Walter Payton Man of the Year: Formerly known simply as the "NFL Man of the Year" award, it took on the name of legendary running back Walter Payton in 1999 (himself the winner of the award in 1977). This award celebrates not only a player's excellence on the field but his charity work off the field. Each team nominates one of their own players, bringing the total nominees to 32. A panel of judges including Connie Payton (Walter's widow), the commissioner of the NFL, the previous year's winner, and a group of former players vote on the winner. It is considered one of the biggest honors in the NFL to win this award or even to be nominated for it, and recipients are given a large patch of the trophy to wear on their uniform for the rest of their playing career. While there are no restrictions on which players can be nominated, the award has primarily gone to older players, with only two under the age of 30^note J.J. Watt in 2017, Dak Prescott in 2023 winning since 2010 while nearly half of the winners in that span have retired within two years of winning the award.
  • Most Recent Winner: Cam Heyward, DL, Pittsburgh Steelers^note His Heyward House charity seeks to combat childhood hunger, support students and teachers, and fight cancer; Heyward lost his father, NFL player Craig "Ironhead" Heyward, to brain cancer.
• Super Bowl MVP: For the most valuable player of the NFL's championship game. The winner is selected by combination vote of a media panel and an online fan poll (with the media panel being weighted much more heavily). The winner receives the Pete Rozelle Trophy (and, before 2015, a new car). Since they have to name the winner during the broadcast, voting opens a few minutes before the end of the game, meaning there have been a few instances of players who made key last-minute contributions being overlooked. As you'd expect, the winning QB wins it just over half the time, though being for a specific game leaves more room for it to be distributed to other positions (o-linemen still need not apply). There has been one tie, with DE Harvey Martin and DT Randy White winning in Super Bowl XII (though only because the voters couldn't give it to the whole Cowboys D-line). Even members of the losing team are eligible, though only one has actually won (Cowboys LB Chuck Howley in V). Tom Brady has won a record five.
  • Most Recent Winner: Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs^note In winning the award for the second straight year, Mahomes became only the third player to win back-to-back Super Bowl MVP awards (Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw) and the first to do it since 1980.
• Art Rooney Sportsmanship Award: Named for the founding owner of the Steelers, this award goes to the player viewed as "most sportsmanlike", typically someone known as a Nice Guy on and off the field. As with the Walter Payton Man of the Year award, each team nominates one player. A panel of former players then reduces the field to four finalists from each conference, and all NFL players then vote for the winner.
  • Most Recent Winner: Calais Campbell, DE, Baltimore Ravens
• Deacon Jones Player of the Year: Named for the legendary defensive lineman, this award automatically goes to the player who records the most sacks in an NFL season.
  • Most Recent Winner: T.J. Watt, LB, Pittsburgh Steelers^note Second consecutive year as sack leader and first player to lead in the category thrice; somewhat controversially was not named Defensive Player of the Year
• Jim Brown Award: Named for the legendary running back, automatically goes to the league leader in rushing yards.
  • Most Recent Winner: McCaffrey
• Play of the Year: Presented at the NFL Honors since 2011, honoring the most exciting play of the year.
  • Most Recent Winner: CeeDee Lamb's 92-yard TD catch^note The longest play of the season.
• Executive of the Year: One award category not covered by the Associated Press, the Sporting News "Executive of the Year" award recognizes the non-coach team employee (usually a General Manager or sometimes a Team President) who did the most to contribute to his team's success. Bill Polian has a record five of them, winning at least one in each of his stops as General Manager (Buffalo, Carolina, Indianapolis).
  • Most Recent Winner: Brad Holmes, Detroit Lions^note Thanks to effective drafting and key free agent acquisitions, built the team that won Detroit's first division title since 1993 and reached the NFC Championship Game.
• NFL Top 100: Not a formal "award" but still an honor held in high regard among players as it's actually selected by them. Since 2011, NFL Network tallies active players for their rankings of their peers every year and unveils the list over multiple specials in the weeks before the season starts back up. This methodology means that defensive and position players are a little more likely to get their shine and even reach the very top spot (J.J. Watt in 2015, Aaron Donald in 2019). Like any ranked list, its criteria inevitably get questioned by fans. Since the lists are meant to rank the players for the upcoming season, those who retire are not eligible regardless of their performance the year prior. Additionally, popularity still greatly influences the order, and since the list begins accepting ballots before the end of the postseason, rankings can often seem somewhat outdated by the time they're finally revealed.
  • Most Recent #1: Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs^note Second time winning the honor.

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Names to Know in the NFL

There have been many, many great, terrible, inspiring, despicable, and interesting players, coaches, and staff in the NFL's century-long history. There are 346 people enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame alone, and those are only the ones who have broken records or changed how the game of football is played; over 25,000 players have taken the field in the league's 100+ year history, and many of them have playing careers and life stories that are even more fascinating than those in the Hall. All of these players were well-known stars in their day; many spun that stardom off into roles in other works, and even those that were more camera-shy are still likely to be referenced in works released during and after their playing careers, so it's worth knowing why they were famous to begin with.

Due to length, the National Football League Names to Know page had to be split off into multiple pages (though it still contains an entry on Jim Thorpe, a legendary founding player whose life and career defy categorization). Information about other individual NFL figures can now be found on:

• National Football League Quarterbacks: Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• NFL Running Backs: Also exactly what it says.
• NFL Offensive Players: Wide receivers, tight ends, and offensive linemen.
• NFL Defensive and Special Teams Players: Defensive linemen, linebackers, defensive backs, kickers, punters, return specialists, and gunners.
• National Football League Non-Player Figures: Notable coaches, commissioners, owners, and broadcasters.
• National Football League Notorious Figures: Draft busts, on-field or front-office failures, and controversial figures.

Additionally, the names of players and coaches who were part of the league but are better known for their college accomplishments can be found on the Collegiate American Football Names To Know page.

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Notable Non-Super Bowl Games

Notable Non-Super Bowl Games

The Super Bowl has its own recap page, so here's a list of some of the other notable games in NFL history.

• 1932 NFL Playoff Game: From its inaugural season of 1920 until 1932, the NFL championship was awarded to the team with the best regular season record, with a tiebreaker playoff game if there was a tie for best record. The only time that happened was in 1932 when the Chicago Bears and Portsmouth Spartans (who became the Detroit Lions in 1934) ended the season tied for first place at 6-1, necessitating they meet for the NFL's first ever playoff game and the unofficial first title game. The game was scoreless until the fourth quarter, when Bears QB Carl Brumbaugh handed off to Bronco Nagurski, who threw to Red Grange for a touchdown. Some claimed Nagurski wasn't at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage, as was required for a forward pass at the time, but the call stood and the rules were changed for the next season so forward passes were legal from any point behind the line of scrimmage. The Bears won 9-0.
• 1933 NFL Championship Game: The popularity of the previous year's unofficial title game prompted the NFL to create an official annual title game by splitting the league into divisions and having the division winners meet for the title. The Western Division-winning Chicago Bears played the Eastern Division-winning New York Giants in a game that featured six lead changes, the last being a Bears touchdown with less than two minutes left when Bill Karr took a lateral from Bill Hewitt and ran it 31 yards into the end zone. The Bears won 23-21 and successfully defended their title from the previous year.
• 1958 NFL Championship Game: Often considered the greatest game in NFL history, this title game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants entered the history books when the Colts' Steve Myhra kicked a field goal with seven seconds left in regulation to tie the score at 17 apiece, sending the game into overtime for the first time in NFL history (regular season overtime wasn't instituted until 1974). The Giants received the overtime opening kickoff but went three-and-out, and Don Ameche went on to run it in from the one-yard line to give the Colts the title (they beat the Giants in the title game the following year as well).
• 1967 NFL Championship Game: After beating the Dallas Cowboys in their own stadium in the previous year's title game, the Green Bay Packers met the Cowboys in the title game again, this time in Lambeau Field. The game-time temperature was −15 °F, the wind chill was −36 °F by today's standards, and the stadium's heating system malfunctioned, leading to the game being dubbed the "Ice Bowl." With 13 seconds left, Packers QB Bart Starr ran it in from the two-foot line to give the Packers the 21-17 win and their third straight title.
• 1972 AFC Divisional Playoff Game: Only the second playoff game thus far in the Pittsburgh Steelers' 40-year history (the first being a 21-0 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1947 Eastern Division tiebreaker), this game is remembered for one of the most famous plays in NFL history, the "Immaculate Reception." The Oakland Raiders led 7-6 with 22 seconds left and the Steelers faced fourth-and-10 from their own 40 when QB Terry Bradshaw passed to halfback John Fuqua, who collided with Raiders safety Jack Tatum. The ball bounced backward off of one of them, and Steelers fullback Franco Harris snatched it out of the air and ran it in for the touchdown. The play came with no small amount of controversy, as some argued the ball hit the ground before Harris caught it or that the ball touched only Fuqua and not Tatum in the collision, which would also invalidate Harris' catch per the rules of the time. Regardless, the Steelers won, and while they lost the AFC title game the following week, the play foreshadowed a massive shift in the fortunes of this team, which won four Super Bowls from 1975-80 after having been terrible for most of their history.
• 1981 AFC Divisional Playoff Game: The Miami Dolphins hosted the San Diego Chargers with a game-time temperature of 76 °F and 80% humidity. The game is frequently considered one of the best ever not just because of its memorable twists and turns but because of the sheer effort both teams put into it despite the difficult conditions. The Chargers took a 24-0 lead, but the Dolphins came back and took a 38-31 lead on the first play of the fourth quarter. However, with 1:06 left the Chargers had first-and-goal from the nine as QB Dan Fouts threw to tight end Kellen Winslow in the end zone. The pass went over Winslow's head, but RB James Brooks was standing behind him to catch the game-tying TD. The Dolphins got within field goal range for the last play of regulation but Winslow blocked Uwe von Schamann's kick to send it into overtime. Chargers kicker Rolf Benirschke then missed a field goal attempt of his own. Von Schamann had another chance to win it, but his field goal try was blocked again, this time by Chargers defensive lineman Leroy Jones. Benirschke got a second change to win it, and this time it was good, sending the Chargers to the AFC title game. In a stroke of irony, the AFC title game was played in Cincinnati at −9 °F with −37 °F wind chill by the current system. The Bengals won 27-7.
• 1981 NFC Championship Game: The Immaculate Reception wasn't the last TD catch to change the fortunes of an entire franchise, as "The Catch" stands as the play that turned the San Francisco 49ers into a dynasty. With Joe Montana in his first year as a full-time starting QB, the 49ers finished 13-3 after winning just 10 games total the previous three years. Trailing the perennially dominant Dallas Cowboys 27-21 with less than a minute left and facing third-and-three from the six-yard line, Montana threw into the end zone as Dwight Clark make a leaping TD catch. The 49ers won 28-27 to reach the Super Bowl for the first time and went on to win their first of five Super Bowl titles in a 14-year period.
• 1992 AFC Wild Card Game: The Buffalo Bills trailed the Houston Oilers 35-3 in the third quarter after Bills starting QB Jim Kelly was injured in the first half and replaced with Frank Reich. In 1984, Reich had led Maryland back from a 31-0 deficit to beat Miami in what was then the biggest comeback in college football history, and history repeated as the Bills came back to win in overtime 41-38 in what was then the biggest comeback in NFL history and still the biggest playoff comeback.
• 2001 AFC Divisional Playoff: The Immaculate Reception also wasn't the last controversial call to go against the Oakland Raiders that dramatically changed the fortunes of their opponents. After finishing 5-11 the previous season, the New England Patriots lost their first two games of 2001 and lost their starting QB Drew Bledsoe to injury. In his place, untested second-year QB Tom Brady led them to finish the season 11-5 and took them to the division round against Oakland. On a snowy night the Patriots trailed 13-10 late in the game when Brady appeared to fumble the ball to the Raiders, but the call was overturned under the "tuck rule" that a QB dropping the ball while making a passing motion and then trying to tuck the ball back into his body is still an incomplete pass and not a fumble. The Patriots won 16-13 in overtime, went on to win their first ever Super Bowl and their first of six in an 18-year span, and Brady won his first of seven titles (a record for any player in NFL history even including the pre-Super Bowl era).
• 2018 Week 11: The Los Angeles Rams hosted the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday Night Football with both teams 9-1 headed into the game. With 1:49 left, the Rams QB threw a 40-yard TD pass to Gerald Everett to give them a 54-51 lead, the final score in what is still the only game in NFL history where both teams scored at least 50 points.
• 2022 Week 15: Several weeks before meeting the Minnesota Vikings, the Indianapolis Colts fired head coach Frank Reich, who had pulled off the biggest comeback in NFL history as a player. This decision proved to have karmic consequences as the Vikings came back from 33-0 down in the third quarter to win 39-36 on a Greg Joseph field goal with three seconds left in overtime, breaking the NFL record for biggest comeback.

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