For 18 weeks, this was the NFL’s bizarro season. Unexpected teams charged their way to the top of the standings while some of the familiar faces we’ve come to know plummeted out of the playoff picture entirely. I am here to report, after sifting through the wreckage of wild-card weekend, that the Super Bowl is still going to feel like the Super Bowl.
Welcome to my annual column in which, after the NFL playoff field is trimmed to eight teams, I rank all 16 possible Super Bowl matchups. I had thought a few weeks ago that I might be ranking a bunch of previously unthought of championship games. That notion took a bit of a hit last weekend, with some of the usual suspects dispatching of the teams we don’t typically see much in late January. Half of the teams still alive have been to the divisional round in at least two of the past three seasons. Five of them have played in multiple Super Bowls over the past 12 years.
So what makes a great Super Bowl? Well, some of those repeat visitors help. I love a game that feels like it has real historical significance to some of the defining players and teams of an era. I think the game benefits from star players and storylines that feel like a part of epic arcs across the many seasons we watch play out over time. It’s about the coaches and quarterbacks and other stars, those big names and faces that’ll be blown up on billboards and Photoshopped into the graphics in your social media feeds.
Fresh faces and new stories can be great, too. I like when a game feels truly emblematic of the season it caps. It’s not just about who the great players and teams of this era were, but who mattered this year.
This exercise was particularly hard this year. I don’t think we have any weak links. The field has top-scoring offenses, top-scoring defenses, Hall of Fame quarterbacks, Hall of Fame coaches and burgeoning young stars. Seven out of the eight quarterbacks left were first-round picks (outside of Brock Purdy, Bo Nix at No. 12 was the lowest picked). In the AFC, none of the quarterbacks have been to the Super Bowl, let alone won it. In the NFC, we have one Super Bowl champ and one who lost a Super Bowl in overtime. There are a lot of teams, games and matchups I like for similar reasons: Elite defense against star quarterback! Elite defense against highly touted young quarterback! Elite defense against elite defense!
As always, I am trying to rank them based on what I think would be the most appealing matchup, on and off the field. It’s not even necessarily what I want to see, or what I think would make the most people happy. Sometimes having a villain helps, whether you like it or not. And your particular rooting interest may vary, but I am trying to picture the hivemind on Pluribus and give us the Super Bowl for the masses.
16. Texans vs. Bears
I always feel the need to preface my 16th pick with a preamble that it would still be fun. I’m not saying to boycott or turn the game off early or that I wouldn’t be pumped to watch it. There’s basically no such thing as a bad Super Bowl on paper. If any of the eight teams alive win two more playoff games, new storylines will pop up and playoff legends will be burnished. (I have a softer spot in my heart for Caleb Williams after watching him enthusiastically grate cheese at the postgame desk after beating the Packers, and that was only wild-card weekend!) I just don’t think the history or connections between these teams make this matchup very distinctive, especially compared to many of the other games on the list.
But Williams won the Heisman Trophy in 2022, with C.J. Stroud as the third-place finisher. Stroud was then drafted with the No. 2 pick in 2023 and then Williams went No. 1 the following year. We would put the quarterbacks up on billboards, along with the Texans’ defensive stars and other intriguing figures in the game. I just think better matchups abound.
Fret not, Texans and Bears fans. Both of your teams will appear in my top five against other opponents.
15. Patriots vs. 49ers
The 49ers have been among football royalty since the ’80s, and in 1994 they became the first franchise to win a fifth Super Bowl. They were equaled by the Cowboys the next season, have since been surpassed by the Patriots and Steelers, and have lost their past three appearances. In this game, either the Patriots would be the first team to claim a seventh or the Niners would join them and Pittsburgh with six.
Kyle Shanahan has become a main character of sorts, as a hard-luck loser in some high-profile games. And while he has lost two Super Bowls as a head coach, this game would no doubt drudge up memories of the worst loss of all, when the Patriots came back from a 28–3 deficit in Super Bowl LI while he was the Falcons’ offensive coordinator.
One big story for any of the Niners’ appearances is that they’d be playing in their home stadium. No team had even played in its home building through the first 54 Super Bowls, and then the Buccaneers and Rams both won in their own stadiums in back-to-back seasons. The 49ers will try to make it three in six years.
This is another good game on paper, but similar to Texans-Bears, I think there are more interesting matchups.
14. Broncos vs. 49ers
Here we have two historic franchises that have both played in the Super Bowl eight times. That includes one game against each other, Super Bowl XXIV, a blowout in which Joe Montana’s 49ers prevailed 55–10 and handed John Elway his third Super Bowl loss.
This game would place the Shanahan family directly under a large spotlight. Kyle Shanahan is on his mythic quest to finally win a Super Bowl, which would make him and Mike Shanahan the first father-son duo in NFL, NBA, MLB or NHL history to both win rings as head coaches. This would be Kyle’s third trip to the game as a head coach, and he’d face the team his dad led to two Super Bowl titles with Elway in the ’90s.
There is some familiarity on the field, too. Two of the Broncos’ key offseason additions were Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga, former members of the Niners’ defensive core. On the other sideline, let’s not forget that the oldest player on the 49ers—I’ll pause if you want to make a quick guess—is none other than punter Thomas Morstead, whom you may remember executed the famous onside kick that current Broncos coach Sean Payton called after halftime when he won Super Bowl XLIV with the Saints. They were together for many playoff heartbreaks in New Orleans, but neither has been back to the Super Bowl since that game 16 years ago.
13. Texans vs. Seahawks
These teams field the two lowest-scoring defenses in the league and the two best defenses by DVOA. The matchup would be reminiscent of the last time the Super Bowl was at Levi’s Stadium, when the two best defenses by DVOA showed up (the Broncos and Panthers) and a pass rusher won MVP (Von Miller). It could result in the kind of slugfest where the first team to 14 points wins.
These teams played in Week 7, the nightcap of a Monday night double-header that kicked off at 10 p.m. ET. Seattle turned the ball over four times, but still managed 27 points and won comfortably. The Seahawks improved to 5–2 and dropped the Texans to 2–4.
Fun fact: Only three of these 16 games are rematches from the regular season and, oddly, all three involve the Texans. In years past, there have been potential rematches from some of the best games of the regular season, which can add juice to a Super Bowl rematch. None of this year’s games quite fit the bill.
This is the matchup I predicted before the playoffs, so I would enjoy seeing it for selfish reasons. But beyond my own desire to take a victory lap, these teams have much more appealing matchups coming up later on this list.
12. Bills vs. Bears
Quarterbacks will always take up a lot of the oxygen when we’re talking about NFL playoff storylines, and this year we have some intriguing matchups of QBs who are at similar points in their careers. Here’s a QB matchup where I love the pair stylistically. Caleb Williams has that gene where he has no qualms about running around and still looking for a target deep down the field. Josh Allen similarly has given us memorable scrambles and gallops and runs through traffic.
The Bills are 0–4 in Super Bowls, and it will be a major story whenever they get back there, which is true no matter which opponent they’d face. This was supposed to be a special season as they shut down Highmark Stadium, but playing three road playoff games means it’s not quite the same part of their story as it would be if they were collecting one last batch of memories at home throughout the AFC playoffs. But it would be fun to dump two starving fan bases from the Great Lakes into the Super Bowl and watch their quarterbacks run around and make plays for three hours.
Twelve years after winning a Super Bowl, Russell Wilson would still be the talk of one matchup. | Brad Penner-Imagn Images
11. Broncos vs. Seahawks
These teams have an intertwined recent history thanks to the blockbuster Russell Wilson trade in March 2022. Even though the Broncos have since moved on from him as well, it would be a major storyline for both teams to have quickly moved on and taken their dead-cap medicine to meet in the Super Bowl.
The NFL scheduling overlords briefly tried to turn this matchup into a thing. They met on Monday Night Football in Week 1 of Wilson’s first season in Denver, a game most people remember for Nathaniel Hackett’s clock management at the end of regulation when he settled for a 64-yard Brandon McManus field goal. Two years later, they met again in Week 1: Bo Nix’s NFL debut and Mike Macdonald’s head coaching debut came against each other. Of course, their much more historically significant matchup was Super Bowl XLVIII, Seattle’s lone championship, when Wilson and the Legion of Boom dominated the Peyton Manning–led Broncos 43–8.
But that’s all in the past! In the present, this would be a hard-nosed battle between the best (Seahawks) and third-best (Broncos) scoring defenses in the league. Good luck to anyone trying to score 43 points in this one. The game does not have quite the same star power as some of the others on the list, but it would be remembered as a battle between the two No. 1 seeds. This could be a classic, hard-hitting defensive battle. Give me Pat Surtain II matched up against Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Sam Darnold worrying about a team that posted 68 sacks (11 more than second place) and a league-high (tied) six Pro Bowlers on each side.
10. Patriots vs. Seahawks
Speaking of Super Bowl rematches, here’s yet another one involving the Seahawks. These two teams met in Super Bowl XLIX, which culminated in one of the most famous plays in NFL history. Malcom Butler’s interception of Russell Wilson at the goal line swung a Super Bowl and altered the legacy of so many people. Not a ton of the characters involved are still in place 11 years later, but I don’t think that would stop the football world from reminiscing about one of the greatest games of all time. These teams don’t have a ton of recent history. The Seahawks have won all three matchups since, which is likely very little consolation.
But this is a pair of balanced teams that could treat us to a great game. Both of these teams finished in the top four in the league in both points scored and points allowed.
9. Broncos vs. Bears
Three of the eight quarterbacks still standing are members of the much-ballyhooed 2024 draft class. This game would pit Caleb Williams against Bo Nix, the first and sixth quarterbacks selected that year. Sean Payton has talked plenty about how his draft process led him to Nix, and it would be fun to see them get to this stage only to take on the guy universally thought to be the No. 1 prospect on the board that year.
Here’s a fun fact I discovered this week that blew me away: The last time two quarterbacks from the same draft class started against each other in the Super Bowl was Super Bowl XVIII, when Jim Plunkett’s Raiders beat Joe Theismann’s Washington team 12 years after they were drafted in 1971. More than 50 draft classes have gone by without two quarterbacks lining up against each other in the Super Bowl! There are three remaining ways to snap that streak this year, including this game.
I think these two teams were also emblematic of this year’s wild regular season, given the regularity with which they staged simply outrageous comebacks. Per Pro Football Reference, Williams led the league with six fourth-quarter comebacks, while Nix led the league with seven game-winning drives. Some of those games were among the most dramatic of the season: Broncos-Giants, Bears-Bengals, Bears-Packers and more.
Maybe this game would play out like one of those Olympic cycling races where neither rider wants to take a lead early.
The Texans are one of four franchises that has never been to the Super Bowl. | Thomas Shea-Imagn Images
8. Texans vs. Rams
The Rams are the only team I have not yet mentioned, meaning all four of their games will be in the top half of my rankings. That probably says something about my personal preferences for Super Bowls. They were one of the top “storyline” teams all year, the betting favorite until they lost to the Seahawks in Week 16. Even though they ended up entering the playoffs as the NFC’s No. 5 seed, they maintain a been-there, done-that, recent champ vibe. Matthew Stafford is the only remaining quarterback who has a ring, and one of my favorite Super Bowl archetypes is when one team that has already climbed the mountaintop and is looking for another gets to face a team looking to do it for the first time. The Rams give us four of those possibilities.
I will slot the Texans in last among those four possible games, though it would be great to watch Stafford, Puka Nacua, Davante Adams and that high-flying offense take on the Texans’ ferocious defense. These teams played each other in Week 1, and the Rams won 14–9 in a game where neither team scored in the final 27 minutes. It was the Rams’ lowest point total of the season, clearly one of their weaker overall offensive outputs, and I’d love to see what each team has learned since and what adjustments they’d make. The Texans infamously started the season 0–3, but they faced good competition and lost every game by one score. Let’s see how far they’ve come with a fitting bookend to their season.
7. Bills vs. Seahawks
This game would be another matchup of quarterbacks from the same draft class, this time the first two Super Bowl appearances from quarterbacks in the famed class of 2018. For a while, it has felt like this group has the chance to go down with 1983 and 2004 among the most famous and successful in history. Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have combined for three regular-season MVP awards, while Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold are no slouches with multiple Pro Bowls each. They can still get there as a class, but none of the five QBs selected in that year’s first round have been to a Super Bowl, let alone won one. Patrick Mahomes is largely to thank for that, having disposed of Allen and Jackson in the playoffs five times, including four AFC championship games. I noted last year that Jalen Hurts became the first quarterback to enter the league after Mahomes who has won a Super Bowl.
Darnold, of course, is no longer on the team that drafted him, having gone on a well-chronicled journey from the Jets to the Panthers to the 49ers to the Vikings to the Seahawks. But it would be fun for the culmination of his redemption story as the poster boy reclamation project QB to reach a final boss in Allen, the QB who went No. 7 in his draft class and transformed his franchise into a perennial contender.
They pilot two of the top-scoring offenses in the league, and I’d love to see Allen’s first Super Bowl come against a team that ESPN’s Kevin Clark famously (in some corners) says has literally never played a normal game.
(And yes, spare a thought for Josh Rosen, that fifth quarterback from 2018, who would be watching this game at a Super Bowl party somewhere when the graphic with his face on it inevitably pops up.)
6. Broncos vs. Rams
The last time these two teams met was on Christmas Day 2022. Remember that one? Baker Mayfield led the Rams to a 51–14 win, multiple fights broke out on the Broncos’ sideline and Nathaniel Hackett was fired the next day. (A second Hackett reference in one column! Going through the Broncos’ recent history with these four NFC teams, it became clear the team is not far removed from going through some stuff.)
This matchup pits the highest-scoring offense in the league (the Rams) against one of the top defenses (the Broncos). Again, that is true of many potential matchups this year.
Sean McVay and Sean Payton are the only coaches among the final eight who have won Super Bowls. The last Super Bowl between two coaches who had already won rings as head coaches was Super Bowl XLIX, when Bill Belichick’s Patriots beat Pete Carroll’s Seahawks (there’s that Malcolm Butler game again). The winner would be guaranteed to be the 15th coach to win multiple Super Bowls, a list teeming with NFL royalty. We’re talking Hall of Fame résumés here, and the chance to watch two all-timers go at it.
These guys also have a playoff history that dates back to Payton’s time in the NFC. This game would be a coaching rematch of the infamous 2018 NFC championship game, which went to overtime after the no-call on Nickell Robey-Coleman’s clear pass interference penalty. Would this count as revenge for Payton? I don’t know, but I can imagine him being the one to bring it up.
5. Texans vs. 49ers
The Texans are one of four NFL teams that’s never been to a Super Bowl. Any appearance would leave the Browns, Lions and Jaguars behind in that dubious club. This would be a matchup against a historic franchise with five Lombardi Trophies, albeit one that has spent 30 years trying to get another.
This game gives us a classic mentor-mentee coaching battle, with the Texans’ DeMeco Ryans having gotten his head coaching gig after spending seven seasons on Kyle Shanahan’s staff, working his way up from quality control to defensive coordinator. I’d love to watch his swarming defense match wits with Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey and the Shanahan offense. These teams met in Week 8 and it was a comfortable Houston win, but in a game Mac Jones started for San Francisco.
I don’t mean to keep picking on Shanahan, but if you were writing a series of Greek tragedies in which he loses increasingly cruel games, having him lose a Super Bowl in his home stadium against his former protégé would be another one for the list. But seeing him persevere and drag an injury-riddled team through a potentially all-time great defense to finally win that title would be incredible. That’s what makes sports so fun, that he’d get all the way there and those would be the only two options. The path to sports glory has possible devastation around every corner.
Josh Allen and the Bills last saw the 49ers in a snowstorm. Next time at the Super Bowl? | Tina MacIntyre-Yee/Democrat and Chronicle / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
4. Bills vs. 49ers
Every time I think about a possible Bills-49ers Super Bowl, which has come up a few times in this column in recent years, I think about childhood nostalgia, the height of NFL Primetime and Chris Berman predicting this Super Bowl every year when I was growing up. Thirty years later, it still looks like it would eventually be a great game! These are two of the defining teams of the past decade or so that have not broken through in what we should probably call the Patrick Mahomes era, and there would be massive stakes to know that one of them would finally win the damn thing and the other would once again memorably fall short.
The last time we saw these teams play against each other was in 2024, when they were paired for a Sunday night game in heavy snow in Buffalo, when Josh Allen caught a lateral and dove into the end zone, one of the most fun highlights of his MVP season.
This game would have been the Bosa Bowl, though only Joey is healthy and Nick has been on IR most of the season. It would be a pair of All-Pro running backs in Christian McCaffrey and James Cook II. It would be Brock Purdy playing in his second Super Bowl and Josh Allen playing in his first. Two wild cards that had to survive three road games just to get there. Great vibes, great uniform colors. This one would feel like a classic Super Bowl.
3. Patriots vs. Bears
I love this game. On first instinct, it started lower on my list, but the longer I stared at it, the more I felt compelled to move it up. This is the third and final matchup of quarterbacks from the same draft class: the No. 1 pick (Caleb Williams) and No. 3 pick (Drake Maye) in 2024. The stakes would be very high, with one of them guaranteed to win a Super Bowl and join a club they can never kick you out of. Winning a title early means you get to skip that ugly phase most quarterbacks are churned through (and many never get out of) where everyone asks whether you’re capable of winning the big one.
This would be a rematch of the legendary Super Bowl XX, when the famed ’85 Bears toppled the Patriots, and it would come on the 40th anniversary of that season.
I also think these two teams represent what this season was like. Maye and Williams played against each other in Week 10 of their rookie seasons, but that game was coached by Jerod Mayo and Matt Eberflus. Enter Mike Vrabel and Ben Johnson, two top Coach of the Year candidates and absolute maniacs (I mean this as a compliment), and they turned around two teams ahead of schedule on their rebuilds, earned No. 2 seeds and supplanted the presumed Super Bowl contenders who were expected to win their respective divisions.
This is a matchup that would not have made sense in August but came to life and would be a fitting way to remember 2025.
Small side note: Your media darling of the week would be Bears guard Joe Thuney, who was a first-team All-Pro for the third consecutive season. Thuney has played in five Super Bowls, three with the Patriots and two with the Chiefs (and it would be one more if he hadn’t gotten hurt during the 2024 playoffs). His story would get attention for any Bears Super Bowl, but especially against the team that drafted him.
2. Bills vs. Rams
This is yet another classic Super Bowl on paper. Two perennial contenders and preseason favorites. Two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks, the veteran toward the end of his career who has a ring against the younger one in the middle of his prime still seeking one. Depending on Stafford’s place in the MVP voting, it could be a meeting between the two reigning back-to-back MVPs. Their last matchup was in 2024, a shootout the Rams won 44–42, in which Allen had three passing touchdowns and three rushing touchdowns amid his MVP season.
I always say I like when the Super Bowl feels appropriate for that specific season (for example, I leaned heavier on the Ravens in Lamar Jackson’s MVP years). The Bills don’t quite feel that way this year, but they benefit from being a team of this era. I think after a few years of impartial fans making darlings out of the Bills, the world started to get a dash of Buffalo fatigue as playoff losses piled up on their docket. I feel it in the talk show and social media discourse of When is Josh Allen gonna do it, and He has no excuses this year with Mahomes/Lamar/Burrow not in the playoffs. It happens to lots of teams when they’re no longer the hot, new thing. But I do think a lot of that would melt away as soon as he finally got to the Super Bowl, and that most fans whose teams are out of it would love to see a Bills Super Bowl run, making Buffalo a sentimental favorite.
This is simply a game with plenty of familiar names and star players that looks great on the marquee.
Matthew Stafford is the one quarterback left in these playoffs who is looking for a second Super Bowl ring. | Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK
1. Patriots vs. Rams
I’ve said I like a game that defines the season, and this one fits the bill. After months of debate about whether Matthew Stafford or Drake Maye should win MVP, let’s see them settle it on the field. (Sort of.) These are the two All-Pro quarterbacks, whom we know are going to finish first and second in the MVP race, in whatever order, leading the two teams that scored the most points in the regular season.
This would be the third time the Patriots and Rams have met in the Super Bowl, a distinction currently true of only Cowboys-Steelers. This would be the first Super Bowl matchup to be played in three different decades. Sean McVay coached in the second one. Mike Vrabel played in the first one.
There are definitely people who would hate to see the Patriots back in the Super Bowl a mere seven years after Tom Brady last took them there, but having a villain can often make for a fun title game. And these Patriots are not as villainous as those Patriots, with the love people seem to have for Vrabel and Maye this season. This game would feature a playoff stalwart against an up-and-comer; it just so happens the up-and-comer is a charmed fan base barely removed from its dynasty that people still love to hate.
Any of these Super Bowls would be fun, and many of them have the potential to be all-timers, but this one is likely the most fitting to cap off our bizarro season.
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