Listmania has taken over the offseason in the NFL more than ever this year since, ordinarily, reporters would at least have OTAs to cover, to some degree. While we are still getting interviews in some form or fashion here or there, they’re not like what they used to be.
And pardon me if you’ll let me digress for a moment here, but let’s think about this for a second. We’re facing the possibility that we may not have locker room interviews, at least in the very immediate future, the way they used to. Nobody is going to allow a scrum of dozens of reporters to line of in front of the guy who scored the game-winning touchdown this fall. So the media’s job is going to be different. I’m not sure if locker room interviews will ever be quite the same.
But anyway, what I was getting at is that we have yet another list on our hands. The Athletic put together a list of the most dominant seasons since 1970. The Pittsburgh Steelers and their six Super Bowls didn’t even crack the top five—though they came close, with the 1975 season ranked at six.
They took the ‘best’ season from each team and punched in a formula accounting for regular- and postseason winning percentage as well as points per game ratio, the former two each weighted at 35 percent and the latter two at 10 percent.
You can debate the efficiency of the metrics—and well, that’s the whole point. That’s what many have been doing. Including Shannon Sharpe, who argued that the Steelers’ team should rank on the top of the list.
“I went with the ’75 Steelers. They had 10 Hall of Famers”, he said on Undisputed, talking with Skip Bayless. “I don’t think we’ll ever see that again. They outscored their opponents by 15 points a game. The defense on average gave up 11.6 points a game. That’s unbelievable”.
“To me, the greatest team is the ’75 Steelers. They had 10 HOFers and I don’t think we’ll ever see that again. They outscored their opponents by 15 a game & their defense let up an average of 11.6 points a game. They kept the Cowboys from winning a couple SBs.”
— @ShannonSharpe pic.twitter.com/kww0TrLsGa
— UNDISPUTED (@undisputed) May 29, 2020
He took particular joy in reminding the Cowboys fan Bayless that the Steelers got a couple of Super Bowl titles off of Dallas. “They used to beat the brakes off of your Cowboys, so you should give them even more credit than they, because they kept the Cowboys from winning a couple of Super Bowls”, he said.
Pittsburgh, of course, defeated the Cowboys twice in the Super Bowl during the 1970s, including in that 1975 season, and again in 1978, though they did win in 1971 and 1977.
1975 was a damn good year, though. They averaged 26.6 points per game, which is their highest total in franchise history. Even when they set a franchise record in 2015 with 423 points scored, they still averaged 26.4 points. They only played 14 games in 1975. And they literally outscored their opponents by 15 points per game. Which is ridiculous.
