Last Team to Tank a Season and Win a Super Bowl a year or two after?
While you can turnaround a franchise quickly ,
its less likely you turn it around quickly if you deliberately tank.
Looking at the aforementioned teams to see if they were indeed tanking....
Tampa turned it around in one season.
was previously 7-9
Denver in 2015.
Philadelphia won in Pederson’s second year.
Seahawks won it in Pete’s fourth year.
Also the Saints win it in Payton’s fourth year
And the Patriots won their first championship in BB’s second year.
And the ‘99 Rams turned it around in one season.
It took Denver from 2010 (4-12) to 2015 to win the superbowl. In 2010 they beat the Texans (5-10) by one point in the second to last game by scoring back-to-back TDs in Q4.
Philly was 7-9 before Pederson
Patsies were 8-8 before BB
99 Rams could make an argument at 4-12 (but still soundly beat the 8-6 Patsies in week 15)
Just looking at the last 25 years, these are the teams that went from bottom 5 to a Super Bowl appearance in 3 years or less:
2021-2022: Bengals
2016-2017: Falcons
2013 Failclowns finished 4-12 but beat the lowly Bills in OT in week 13 and played the WFT in week 15 beating them with a last second FG to give the WFT the better draft position.
2019 Bengals make a pretty good case for tanking, but if that was their full plan they got a little risky taking the Phins to OT in week 16. The Bengals did do really well in back-to-back drafts but they also did well in Free Agency....
- Trey Hendrickson
- Reilly Reif
- Vonn Bell
- DJ Reader
- Chidobe Awuzie
I argue that any team that deliberately tanks, ultimately destroys the culture of any core players on the roster and as a result in general takes longer to recover with the 19 Bengals perhaps being the rare exception to the rule.