Back before Tom Brady, the Super Bowl was often a boring bust. Coincidence?
The kids today just don’t understand.
There was a time, for instance, when Tom Brady wasn’t starring in every Super Bowl. And back then, the Super Bowl was the worst game of the year — the most boring 60 minutes of football — without fail.
Here’s hoping the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers keep the present trend going when they meet in Super Bowl 55 at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.
In recent years, most of the games have been closely-contested and often have come down to the final minutes.
Back in the 1980s and 90s? Forget about it. The Super Bowl was usually a snooze fest as one team built up an early lead and pouring Gatorade on their coach by halftime.
Between 1981 and 2001, in fact, there were only five Super Bowls that ended with a one score deficit or less. This included one brutal stretch between 1984 and 1988 when the loser lost by 19 or more points. The viewing public was also losing.
The Dallas Cowboys, who used to play in Super Bowls (know your history, kids!), were part of this boring blowout trend. A 35-point win over the Buffalo Bills in 1993 started their string of three titles in four years. Their other two wins were by 17 and 10 points. The biggest blowout in Super Bowl history was the San Francisco 49ers’ 55-10 drubbing of the Denver Broncos in 1990. The NFC dominated much of this stretch, including a 13-year run of Super Bowl wins from 1985 to 1997.
Fortunes started improving for the AFC, however, about the same time Brady joined the league in 2000. The AFC has won 12 titles in the past 19 seasons, including of course, six by Brady’s Patriots.
Whether Brady and the Patriots have anything to do with it is up for debate, but the excitement of the Super Bowl has improved in the past 19 years.
Since 2002, 11 Super Bowls have been decided by one score or less. And that’s not counting the Patriots’ 13-3 win two years ago over the Rams when the game was 3-3 after three quarters and New England didn’t ice it until a field goal with 1:12 remaining. Nor does that include the Chiefs’ 31-20 win a year ago when they trailed the 49ers 20-10 going into the final quarter. Five years ago the Broncos’ touchdown with 3:08 remaining turned a one-score game into a 24-10 win.
In fact, the last dud Super Bowl was in 2014 when the Seahawks built a 36-0 lead against Peyton Manning’s Broncos and won 43-8. (Some would argue the Patriots’ 13-3 2019 win over the Rams was a dud game and, technically, they’d be right.) In 2010, the Saints were only up a touchdown when Tracy Porter’s 74-yard pick six put the game away with 3:12 left.
This story was originally published February 5, 2021 at 5:53 AM.
