With 57 Super Bowls now completed, the Pittsburgh Steelers remain at the top of the totem pole in terms of wins, as they’re tied with the New England Patriots for most Super Bowl wins in NFL history with six. So it’s no surprise that on The Athletic’s point-based rankings for the best NFL franchises in the Super Bowl era, the Steelers came in at No. 1.
The formula The Athletic uses assigns points for certain criteria. If a team wins the Super Bowl, they get 10 points. They get five points for losing the Super Bowl, three points for an AFC or NFC Championship Game appearance, and one point for making the playoffs. However, you only get to hit one point threshold per year, so winning the Super Bowl only nets you 10 points instead of 14 for combining it with a playoff and Conference Championship appearance. The Steelers came in at No. 1 with 116 total points, edging out the Patriots who came in second with 115 points.
“The Steelers passed Dallas to vault into first place in 2015 but later found themselves passed by those hard-charging Patriots for one year in 2020. Then, Pittsburgh took it back in 2021, and here we sit as the Steelers attempt to find the gas pedal again. The Steelers are the most successful team that has accomplished something of note in every decade and have therefore been worthy leaders for some time in this exercise,” Bob Sturm wrote for The Athletic.
One thing to note though is that the Steelers obviously haven’t been as successful in recent years, as they have just eight points accrued since 2013, which is much smaller than New England’s 46 points in the same timeframe. But looking at both franchises as a whole, the Steelers obviously had much more success than the Patriots up until around 2000, when New England drafted Tom Brady. If the rankings were just based on the last decade though, the Steelers would find themselves tied for 11th.
Despite that, the Steelers average the most points per season, at 2.04. While the last decade hasn’t been as successful as anyone would hope or like, the Steelers’ history as a whole makes their spot at the top very deserving. Rewarding Super Bowl losses also has hurt Pittsburgh over the last decade, as they obviously haven’t appeared in a Super Bowl, but the five points for a Super Bowl loss vaulted a team like the Cincinnati Bengals (11 points since 2013) ahead of the Steelers. I don’t think anyone can argue that the Bengals have been the better franchise over the last decade, even though they have been over the last two seasons.
The Steelers have been an incredibly successful and stable franchise since the 1970s, and they’ve had continual success. That success hasn’t been up to the Steelers’ standard recently though, and that’s something they’re going to look to change with Kenny Pickett and a young offense bolstered by one of the best defenses in football over the next few seasons. Hopefully, they can get back to consistently making deep playoff runs and showing why they are the preeminent franchise in the NFL.
