The Super Bowl Drought for the Old Guard NFL, 1968-1983

     You might imagine that the old school NFL--teams that were established prior to the merger of the All America Conference and the NFL in 1950--continued to dominate.  In fact, that pattern started to emerge with Super Bowl I and II taken by Green Bay, who basically obliterated everything in their path. The pattern was shattered by the New York Jets and Joe Namath after the 1968 season. But would you believe that it would take FIFTEEN YEARS before the old school would win another Super Bowl?

That's correct.   To clarify, by Old School I am referring to the teams that were with the NFL prior to the merger with the All America Conference in 1950,  and stayed in the NFC after the merger with the AFL in 1970. Specifically, these teams were New York Giants, Chicago Bears, Philadelphia Eagles, Washington, Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, St. Louis (formerly Chicago) Cardinals, and Los Angeles (formerly Cleveland) Rams. 

I got interested in this question based on some commentary in the Remember the AFL group on Facebook.

The old Cleveland Browns (now Ravens) and San Francisco 49ers were originally in the AAC and joined the NFL in 1950. But the Browns as well as the Steelers and Baltimore Colts (who actually replaced the defunct Dallas Texans in 1953) joined the AFL in 1970.  So for the purposes of accounting, I have grouped the former AAC teams with the Steelers and Colts.  They are all transplanted teams, and thus differentiated from the Old Guard.  

The NFL expanded a few times as well.  It seems like the Dallas Cowboys have always been in the NFL, but in reality they were an expansion team, along with the Atlanta Falcons, Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints, set up to counter the AFL.  They were later followed by Tampa, Seattle, Houston and the new Browns. Generally the expansion teams not from Dallas have had a hard time winning Super Bowls.  

So, let's recount the 15 year drought between wins by the Old School.  

AFL teams namely the Jets, Chiefs and (transplanted) Colts won Super Bowls III through V.   The next teams that won were the expansion Cowboys (twice), and the AFL Dolphins (also twice). The Steelers won four times in the 1970s, and the Raiders won twice. They were followed by the 49ers winning the first of their four championships, before Washington finally managed to win Super Bowl XVII.

A case could be made that the Old School had become stodgy and complacent.  The new, hungrier teams from the AFL as well as the new expansion teams (especially the highly innovative Dallas Cowboys) created a superior brand of football.  

The NFC had a comeback of sorts, winning 13 straight between 1985 and 1997.  But even  that was not so much the Old Guard reasserting itself, but the continuing success of the Cowboys (Expansion) and 49ers (Transplants), both of whom were among the dominant teams.  In all, the Old School won the Super Bowl only 11 times after its dominant 2-0 start. That's fewer than either the transplant teams or the AFL teams. 

Dallas skews the results among Expansion Teams with 5 wins, while Tampa Bay, Seattle and the Saints are the other Expansion Teams to have turned in a win.

Old School                            13 wins

Transplanted AFL +AAC       16 wins

NFL Expansion Teams           8  wins

AFL Teams                           15 wins.

Once the script changed in Super Bowl 3, the football world was changed forever, and the Old Guard never fully recovered.