Another Super Bowl rematch

For the 2nd year in a row, the Super Bowl is a rematch of a recent Super Bowl. How exciting. What fun. Said no one ever.

So yeah, I think collectively we have this impression that rematch championships are played out. But it’s surely hitting worse this year since the Chiefs have made their fifth Super Bowl in six years, while the Eagles are appearing for the third time in eight years. I thought the NFL was supposed to have parity!

Since I was curious, I went back and looked at every Super Bowl rematch that happened within a decade of the first matchup and put together a summary table of the teams, the results, and my power ratings for each team going into the Super Bowl.

Here’s the results:

Some quick takeaways:

• The same team won both the original game and the rematch every single time - bad news for Chiefs haters like myself

• The rematch is generally a good game, even if it’s following up a blowout; even in 1993, the Cowboys were losing to the Bills at halftime

• My model was perfect at picking the winner until the Giants’ massive upset the Patriots, and now the Chiefs are breaking it pretty routinely

• With that said, my model thinks the Eagles are huge favorites going into this one, with a bigger predicted margin than any game outside of that undefeated Patriots vs. Giants in 2007, so there’s room for hope for Philly

It’s too early to say “enjoy the game”, and I have nothing else to say, so that’s that.