Super Bowl LX Featured Familiar Teams... Again

If while watching Super Bowl LX on Sunday night you thought to yourself, "This seems familiar," you would be correct. Of course, most people remember that the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots famously squared off in Super Bowl XLIX, so we had seen this exact matchup 11 years ago. 

But it runs deeper than that. The Seahawks and Patriots are among the very few teams that have played for a Lombardi Trophy over the past dozen years. In fact, only 11 different teams have appeared in the Super Bowl over the last 13 seasons. Of those 11 teams, four account for 62% of the appearances: Patriots (5), Chiefs (5), Seahawks (3), and Eagles (3).

Those same four teams have won 10 of the 13 titles (Patriots 3, Chiefs 3, Seahawks 2, Eagles 2).

For a league that prides itself on parity and the ability for teams to rebound from the bottom of the league back to the top quickly, that doesn't seem to be the case. Yes, many teams go from missing the playoffs in one season to making the postseason in the next. This year, especially. 

Of the 14 teams that reached the NFL playoffs in 2025-26, six missed the postseason in 2024-25. That's nearly half the playoff teams turning over in one year, which is cool. But the problem is, the same teams end up making deep runs year after year. 

Conferences Concentrated at the Top 

It's not just the Super Bowl, either. The AFC is extremely concentrated at the top. While 10 different teams (63%) have reached the AFC Championship over the past 13 seasons, the Patriots and Chiefs account for over half the total appearances (14 of 26). The top four teams (Patriots 7, Chiefs 7, Broncos 3, and Bills 2) have filled just under three-fourths of the slots. 

And only four teams have won the conference over that span: Patriots (5), Chiefs (5), Broncos (2), Bengals (1). We're in the middle of the Patriots/Chiefs era with the Denver Broncos popping a few times and one random Cincinnati win. How's this for a stat: it's been over 15 years since the AFC Championship didn't include either the Chiefs or the Patriots. The Steelers faced the Jets in the 2010 AFC Championship game on January 23, 2011.

The New England Patriots have appeared in five Super Bowls in the last 13 seasons (winning three). 

(Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

The NFC shows a bit more parity than the AFC, at least in terms of participation. In fact, only three teams haven't made at least one NFC Championship game in the past 13 seasons: the Bears, Cowboys and Giants. 

However, it's still the same teams winning repeatedly. Like the AFC, four teams have pretty much dominated the NFC: the top four teams have won 10 of the past 13 conference championships (Seahawks 3, Eagles 3, 49ers 2, and Rams 2). That means the NFC is generally represented in the Super Bowl by either the Eagles or a team from the NFC West (except the Cardinals). 

And the top five account for a large chunk (69%) of the appearances: 49ers (5), Packers (4), Eagles (3), Seahawks (3), and Rams (3). The NFC only seems less concentrated than the AFC because of one anomaly: 2015. The 2015-16 NFC Championship featured the Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals, the only conference championship that didn't include at least one of the top five teams. 

Although it's not as crazy as the AFC (where it's been the Chiefs and Patriots show for a decade-and-a-half), the NFC Championship has featured at least one of five teams (49ers, Packers, Eagles, Rams, Seahawks) in each of the past 10 seasons and in 15 of the past 16 seasons. 

The NFL still delivers weekly chaos, and the playoff bracket turns over enough to look like parity. Fans can celebrate the churn in the wild-card round and still admit the top of the sport has calcified into a familiar handful of squads. 

If the league wants to keep selling the "any given Sunday" notion, it has to reckon with the reality that lately, those Sundays don't come along very often in January and February.