TODAY’S SPORTSTAT: When will the Eagles win another Super Bowl?
By JERRY TAPP
Now that the Philadelphia Eagles have won their first Super Bowl, when will they win their second one? Could they go back-to-back? Or, will they sit on one Super Bowl victory for many years?
Let’s take a look with a little historical perspective to try to explore the above questions. First, the Eagles, by winning the 52nd Super Bowl, became the 20th NFL franchise (of the 32) to win a Super Bowl. Of those 20, 12 have won two or more Super Bowls and eight have won just one. That means 12 of the current franchises have never won a Super Bowl; of those 12, four have never even made it to the Super Bowl: Cleveland, Detroit, Houston and Jacksonville.
Of the 12 franchises that have won two or more Super Bowls, let’s focus on when they won their first Super Bowl and when they won their second:
- Four teams won their first and second Super Bowls in back-to-back years: Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Denver and Miami.
- Five teams won their first and second Super Bowls within six years of each other: New England (two years), San Francisco (three years), New York Giants (four years), the Raiders (four years), Washington (five years), Dallas (six years).
- Two teams won their first and second Super Bowls more than 10 years from each other: Colts (36 years), Ravens (12 years).
It was mentioned above that the Eagles are now one of eight franchises that has won one Super Bowl. Here’s a look at when the other seven franchises won their one and only Super Bowl.
New York Jets (won Super Bowl 3)
Kansas City Chiefs (won Super Bowl 4)
Chicago (won Super Bowl 20)
Rams (won Super Bowl 34)
Tampa Bay (won Super Bowl 37)
New Orleans (won Super Bowl 44)
Seattle (won Super Bowl 48)
What does all this mean?
The 12 teams that have won multiple Super Bowls won their first and second Super Bowls within an average of about six years. Take away the Rams 36-year wait for their second Super Bowl title and the average wait for Super Bowl win No. 2 averages just over three years.
The Eagles could, however, go the route of the Jets and Chiefs and spend nearly a half-century waiting for their second Super Bowl crown.
When will the Eagles win (or will they ever win) their second Super Bowl? There is no secret formula we can plug in. As someone once said, “That’s why they play the games.”
Follow Jerry on Twitter @StatsonTapp
Jerry Tapp
Jerry Tapp is a freelance writer from Racine, WI with a major concentration on sports statistics and numbers that define sports teams and players. He began his foray into sports stats-focused writing as a regular contributor to the “Numbers” column in Inside Sports magazine in the mid-1980’s and then began writing a weekly “Stats on Tapp” column for the Racine Journal Times. That column was eventually nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He later wrote sports stats items for the Washington Post under the “Stat of the Day” heading. After launching his blog, www.statsontapp.com in 2011, Jerry turned his sports stats attention to sports websites. He wrote regularly for Bleacher Report, BallHyped, football.com and Heavy.com. Today he keeps busy writing weekly columns of stats-centric articles for three sports websites, Today’s Pigskin (NFL), Today’s Knuckleball (MLB) and Today’s Fastbreak (NBA), and as a monthly contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers “GameDay” publication that is distributed to fans attending games at Miller Park.