Will Afc Team Ever Win? Nfc Doesn’t Just Triumph, It Dominates The Super Bowl

Four times over the last 11 seasons, the San Francisco 49ers have won the Super Bowl. The Dallas Cowboys are expected to win their third in four years next Sunday.

When it’s not the 49ers or the Cowboys, it’s the 1985 Bears, perhaps the greatest defensive team in modern NFL history.

Or the 1986 Giants, whose defense rivaled the Bears. Or Joe Gibbs’ Washington Redskins, who won three titles with three different quarterbacks and one of the best offensive lines ever.

They all have one thing in common.

They all play in the NFC.

It’s been assumed during the 11 straight seasons that the NFC team won the Super Bowl that it’s simply cyclical, a swing of the pendulum following a decade when AFC teams won eight of nine.

It’s hard to call it cyclical any longer.

In the last 11 Super Bowls, the NFC teams have outscored the AFC 428-181, or 38.9 points to 16.4. That’s approximately the score of the first game of the streak - San Francisco 38, Miami 16, at Stanford Stadium Jan. 20, 1985, Dan Marino’s only Super Bowl appearance and Don Shula’s last.

Almost nobody expects the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat the Dallas Cowboys next Sunday. They only question if the Steelers can keep it close.

Even Steelers fans.

“Of course I’m glad they got there, but I don’t have much hope,” said Adam Wolfson, a New York insurance broker and a longtime Steelers fan. “In fact, sometimes I wonder if it would be better if they’d lost to Indianapolis on a ‘Hail Mary’ than to have them win then get embarrassed by Dallas.”

If that’s a Pittsburgh fan, what does the rest of the world think?

The world according to Las Vegas, has been raising the line since it opened at 11 right after the Cowboys’ 38-27 win over Green Bay that set up Sunday’s game. It jumped a point in the next three hours, meaning a lot of heavy money came down kerplunk on the Cowboys.

But that’s been the trend.

This will be the third straight game in which the line will be double figures - Dallas was favored by 10 over Buffalo two years ago and San Francisco by 19 over San Diego last season.

Both covered.

In the last 12 years, the NFC team has been favored by a touchdown or more nine times and the AFC team has been favored just twice - Denver by three over Washington in 1988 and Buffalo by six over the Giants in 1991.

Only two of the last 11 games have been truly competitive.

The first was in 1989, when Joe Montana led the 49ers on a 92-yard, 11-play drive and hit John Taylor from 10 yards out with 34 seconds left to beat Cincinnati 20-16. That was the third of San Francisco’s five Super Bowl wins.

The second was in 1991, when the Giants edged Buffalo 20-19 as the Bills’ Scott Norwood was wide right with a 47-yard field goal attempt on the game’s next-to-last play.

That may have been the only game in which the AFC team was demonstrably better on paper, but New York won it by holding the ball for 40 minutes and 33 seconds, keeping Buffalo’s high-powered, no-huddle offense off the field.

In only two other games did the AFC team even lead at the half.

The most recent was two years ago, when the Bills, in the last of their four straight losses, led the Cowboys 13-6 at intermission. But just 55 seconds into the second half, Leon Lett stripped the ball from Thurman Thomas and James Washington picked up the fumble and returned it 46 yards for a score, irrevocably turning the game.

The other was in 1987, when the Broncos led the Giants 10-9 at intermission and might have been up more had Rich Karlis not missed two short field goals.

In the second half, New York converted a fake punt on the first series, outgained the Broncos 162 yards to 2 over a 20-minute span, scored five straight times to go ahead 39-10 and won 39-20.

The others were monumental blowouts - Chicago’s 46-10 rout of New England in 1986; San Francisco 55-10 over Denver in 1990; Dallas’ 52-17 win over Buffalo three years ago.

And most often they’re over almost before they start, like last year’s 49-26 San Francisco win. Take that 55-10 game.

“After the second series, Bill Walsh looked at me and said, ‘It’s over,”’ said Carmen Policy, the 49ers’ president, who happened to be sitting with the man who had coached San Francisco’s first three victories.

“I said, ‘Not so soon.’ And he replied: ‘There’s no way they can stop you.”’

Why such domination by the NFC? Just about every theory has been debunked:

Styles. The NFC was supposed to be the conference of power and defense, the AFC of finesse. But Dallas and San Francisco, who have won the last three games, have quick-strike offenses that were supposed to be the AFC province.

Coaches and general managers. Bobby Beathard, who won three Super Bowls in Washington, is now general manager in San Diego and Bill Parcells, who coached the Giants to two, is now in New England. San Diego has made it once but the Pats haven’t come close. Will Jimmy Johnson make a difference in Miami?

Cycles. True, the AFC won eight of nine Super Bowls between 1973 and 1981, but six of those wins were by two of the best teams in NFL history, the Dolphins and Steelers. The aggregate score in those eight wins was 200-111 - an average 25-14 - and Dallas’ 27-10 win over Denver in 1978 gave the NFC at least a taste of victory.

In fact, the conferences are far more competitive than the Super Bowls show.

Over the 12 years of the streak, the NFC leads just 323-308-1, in part because the AFC’s bottom teams may have been better than NFC teams like the Cardinals and Bucs.

And things might have been relatively even the past four years if Dallas and San Francisco, clearly the class of the league, had been lopped off the NFC.

Buffalo, despite going 0-for-4 in the final game, is clearly the third best team of the ‘90s, behind the Cowboys and 49ers.

But in the Super Bowl, only first place counts.