With Victory Sunday, Steelers Would Surpass Cowboys as NFL's Most Successful Franchise Since 1970 Merger

by maryrose on Jan 28, 2009 2:43 PM EST Comment 15 comments

We all know that if the Steelers win Sunday, they gain their sixth Lombardi Trophy, separating themselves from the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers, who each have five. But while the Lombardi trophy is clearly the most important piece of hardware for a franchise to be proud of, there are other achievement levels that should be taken into account when evaluating the total overall success of that franchise.

I have looked at five different levels of success and assigned incremental point values to each level. A winning season is worth one point; reaching the Conference Final Four is worth two more; being a Conference Runner-Up is worth three more; winning the Conference Championship is worth four more; and then taking home Lombardi is worth five more points.

I looked at each franchise on each level since the 1970 season. This is the first year where 26 teams were created equal under a common draft. Winning a championship, or achieving any level of success, is much more difficult among 26-32 teams than it was in the old days with just 10-14 teams. So rather than mixing apples with oranges, from 1970 on there are only oranges.

In addition to being one of only three franchises to boast five Lombardis, the Steelers also lead the NFL (tied with Miami) in racking up 29 winning seasons in those 39 years, a remarkable rate of just under three every four years. Dallas is in third place with 28 winning seasons. The Steelers also lead the NFL (tied with Dallas this time) with 20 appearances in the onference Final Four. This represents playing in the second round of the playoffs more than half the time. regarding Conference runner-Ups, the Steelers again lead the NFL (tied with San Francisco and Oakland) with seven. Looking at Conference Championships, the Steelers (7) only trail Dallas (8).

All in all, the Steelers now sit with 143 points (under my incremental system), tied with Dallas, and with house money to play with this Sunday. The 49ers have 126 points and only one other team is in triple digits (the raiders at 105). The chart is listed below. We certainly have a great deal to be proud of Steelers' fans, and it has been that way for quite some time. Check out below:

NFL Success Rate Since 1970

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Interersting thoughts….

I was surprised to see the Rams as high on the list as they are…

Also, Its a shame the Raiders have become a joke, because they were a storied franchise.

I'll drink your Milkshake, I'll drink it up!

by drinkyourmilkshake on Jan 28, 2009 3:36 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Stats

I love football stats. Now I have more that I can look at. Cool! :) It’s great to see that the Steelers have been so successful over the last 39 years. Hopefully, we’ll be just as successful over the next 40 years.

by WolfpackSteelersFan on Jan 28, 2009 4:21 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Maryrose, you might be interested to know that ESPN did a similar analysis back in September of 2008. They used a lot of different factors to determine the best franchise of all time, and the Steelers narrowly missed first place to the Dallas Cowboys, 1,498 points to 1,495.
Interestingly enough, using their criteria, Pittsburgh has now surpassed Dallas, because of this year’s performance. You can see it all here:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=nflrankings/1-10/080917

by The King in Yellow (and black) on Jan 28, 2009 4:39 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Thank you

but the file cannot be found from the link, at least from my computer.

Thoughtful discussion with a sense of history

by maryrose on Jan 28, 2009 4:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

For whatever reason, the “/1-10/080917” didn’t “connect” with the rest of the link. However, if you highlight the whole thing and paste it onto your address line, it should work. Give it a shot, because I’m curious what you think about it.

by The King in Yellow (and black) on Jan 28, 2009 5:19 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

This is the 2nd time this same problem occured today. The software doesn’t seem to be able to handle some of the characters in those links.

Maybe Blitz or some other Tech-Savy guy or girl could assist with showing us the error in our ways.

I'll drink your Milkshake, I'll drink it up!

by drinkyourmilkshake on Jan 28, 2009 5:28 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

It's certainly another barometer

The usual suspects are somewhat similar to mine. I do like their total winning percentage, but I don’t care for Monday Night Football and even All Pro performers, of which teams have no control over. When you play good team football, especially on defense, your All Pro numbers might not be fair. Case in point this year with the Steelers. One of the best defenses in recent memory and we get two All Pros and a substitute because we play within the team concept.

But hey, you can make soup a whole bunch of ways and ESPN’s was very interesting. It did have a little creativity. I never knew it existed. Thanks for calling it to our attention.

Thoughtful discussion with a sense of history

by maryrose on Jan 28, 2009 5:38 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

“I do like their total winning percentage, but I don’t care for Monday Night Football and even All Pro performers, of which teams have no control over.”

Agreed. Also, “Crushing Defeats” seemed to be assigned fairly arbitrarily. How does one determine if a defeat was crushing?
I enjoyed the fact that a team of experts, using different criteria, came to a very similar conclusion.

by The King in Yellow (and black) on Jan 28, 2009 5:47 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

crushing...

Yeah I guess the Pats of last year are the greatest of all time because they “crushed” their opponents. Boo ESPN, learn from Rose!

by Chicago Steeler on Jan 28, 2009 7:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

URLs with a -

If you replace any dashes with %2D , it should work – like this:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=nflrankings/1%2D10/080917

reference

by acrollet on Jan 28, 2009 6:49 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

And another thing

The longest the Steelers have gone without a winning record is only two years. Chuck Noll had two two-year droughts and Bill Cowher one. They each had an 8-8 season. Only eight times since 1970 have the steelers had a losing record, and two of those occurred in the first two years!

Thoughtful discussion with a sense of history

by maryrose on Jan 28, 2009 4:56 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

that's amazing

just the fact that the cowboys haven’t won a playoff game in what? 12 years? should disqualify them from being #1… That and the fact that they stank ;) (to quote mechem)

by acrollet on Jan 28, 2009 6:51 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

it’s funny that they tell us to blame Neil O’Donnell for being second. I’ll jump on that wagon.

Brandona

by PrimantisStillersNAt on Jan 28, 2009 9:59 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

+1

Uh yeah I blame him. I blame him and the Pats videotapers

by Mechem on Jan 29, 2009 1:11 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Cool post

I like the way you broke it down. It is an interesting divide thats for sure. Dallas reached more Super Bowls, yet has = wins to ours, yet we’ve reached oodles of Conference Championships and fallen short.

Poor lions?

by Mechem on Jan 29, 2009 1:11 AM EST reply actions 0 recs