Rarely bad, never great

Teams like the Vikings are what the Eagles used to be.

In Super Bowl LIX, the Eagles won their second Vince Lombardi Trophy in eight seasons. Before 2017, they hadn’t won an NFL Championship since 1961, which pre-dates the Super Bowl era. They defeated the Chiefs, who had won three of the previous five Super Bowls. Before this recent success, their last Super Bowl appearance and win was in the 1969 season, the last before the NFL-AFL merger.

When both teams finally won their first championships in the merged NFL, I was happy for them. To me, they always seemed well-run; when either franchise had a terrible season, it was an aberration. The Chiefs and Eagles were rarely bad but also never great — until recently.

Other teams have been like that. Two that came to mind are the Dolphins and the Vikings. The Dolphins last won the Super Bowl 51 years ago and had not appeared in the game for 40 years. The Vikings are 0–4 in Super Bowls and haven’t been in one since the 1976 season.

Some teams haven’t been like the Vikings and Dolphins at all. For instance, the Lions and Cardinals have never won the Super Bowl, but they are frequently awful and historically poorly run (despite the recent success of the Lions).