The NFL is down to its final eight teams, which means it’s also down to its final 16 possible Super Bowl matchups. It’s never too early to start dreaming about those matchups: the players whose names are on the marquee, the coaches leading their teams onto the field and the fan bases getting two weeks in the spotlight.
As I’ve done in recent years, I’m going to rank all 16 possible games. Not necessarily by how much I, simply one person, would enjoy them. But how I think most of the world would see it. Of course, if you are a fan of one of these teams, your opinion will vary. But I will do my best to speak on behalf of the neutral football-watching world.
As always, there’s a heavy focus on the story lines both on and off the field. It’s the Super Bowl! We’re talking quarterbacks and stars and narratives just as much as X’s and O’s. That all impacts the excitement building up to the game and the way we remember it decades later.
There was a point Saturday when I was worried this column would be very repetitive with last year’s after the same four AFC teams punched their tickets to the divisional round. Had the Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers both won Sunday, we would have had seven of eight teams the same. The Philadelphia Eagles are not exactly new blood in this round of the postseason, but the Washington Commanders certainly are.
I think two other factors made this season’s list hard to rank. One is that I always have to rank a team pursuing history or a dynasty against a new champion finally breaking through. This year has several great candidates to be the latter, while the incumbents, the Kansas City Chiefs, are chasing the first three-peat in the Super Bowl era. How do you weigh a historic run like that against the excitement of something new? Especially when, let’s say, the general enthusiasm surrounding the Chiefs has waned.
The other factor is that I typically give weight to the players and teams that tell the story of the season. This year, the MVP race is as big a toss-up at this point as ever. If I knew Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen was more likely to be the MVP, I might think differently about which one I’d rather see on the biggest stage at the end of their magical season.
So there are many factors to consider in this exercise that is part art, part science, part gut feel. But without the benefit of hindsight, this is how I’m feeling before the field is whittled from eight to four.
16. Houston Texans vs. Los Angeles Rams
I always feel like I need to add qualifiers to my lowest-ranked game. It’s still the Super Bowl! I’d sure as hell talk myself into it.
This game would pit C.J. Stroud trying to join a fun list of quarterbacks to win a Super Bowl in his second season (Kurt Warner, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Russell Wilson) against Matthew Stafford trying to become the 14th QB to win his second ring. But when you look back on the 2024 NFL season, you aren’t going to think about the Texans or Rams, and that hurts the luster here.
Texans OC Bobby Slowik was on that famous early-2010s staff in Washington with Sean McVay, so this game would satisfy anyone playing a drinking game waiting for those famous team pictures to come up on screen. Texans receiver Robert Woods played in the Rams’ Super Bowl LIII loss but missed their Super Bowl LVI win with a torn ACL. We always come up with story lines galore.
But at the end of the day, these are a couple of No. 4 seeds that went 10–7, even though I do acknowledge that the playoff paths required to get them into the big game (particularly the Texans needing to go through the Chiefs and then the winner of Bills-Ravens) would have to be pretty legendary and would build the hype.
15. Houston Texans vs. Philadelphia Eagles
I think you’re about to sense a pattern. There are three elite teams in the AFC, and the Texans are the fourth team crashing the party. I’m not a Texans hater, and last year at this time, one of their matchups crept into the top half of my rankings. But they were a little less exciting during Stroud’s sophomore season, and again just don’t offer the most fitting end to this season.
One of the most fun story lines for this game would be the fact that Texans coach DeMeco Ryans split his 10-year playing career between these two franchises. Who’s ready to see Chip Kelly on radio row telling stories about the 2013 Eagles? Jalen Hurts was also born in Houston; and while “NFL quarterback is from Texas” is not the most unusual story line, I’m sure that would be played up here.
These two teams don’t have a ton of history with each other, and haven’t met since a Thursday night game in 2022 before Stroud was drafted, but it’s notable that the Eagles are 6–0 in the all-time series. It would be quite a time for the Texans to get their first win against them.
14. Houston Texans vs. Detroit Lions
The Texans and Detroit Lions are the only teams remaining in the field that have never been to the Super Bowl, so it would be cool to see them play against each other. As I wrote last year, the last time two teams made their Super Bowl debuts against each other was in Super Bowl XX, when the famed ’85 Chicago Bears beat the New England Patriots. So the stakes would be high, and we’d be guaranteed the first first-time champion since the Eagles won Super Bowl LII.
One thing this matchup has going for it is that it’s a rematch of a fascinating regular-season game. These teams met on Sunday Night Football in Week 10, and the Lions won 26–23. You may remember it as the night Jared Goff threw five interceptions and Detroit still won. The Lions were down 23–7 at halftime and scored 19 unanswered points, including a game-winning field goal at the final gun.
I know people are excited about the idea of the Lions reaching the Super Bowl, and you may be surprised to see one of their games land at No. 14. But it reminds me a bit of the 2017 season, when the Eagles finally won their first Super Bowl. The two teams in the AFC title game that year were the Patriots and Jacksonville Jaguars—and trust me, Philly’s story is cooler because it happened against Brady and the Pats. The culmination of the Dan Campbell–era Lions story deserves a more historically significant opponent.
13. Houston Texans vs. Washington Commanders
Yes, I’m putting the Washington Commanders above the Lions for this opponent only. If you’re gonna go Cinderella, let’s go full Cinderella!
This game would be a matchup between Stroud and Jayden Daniels, and I do love the parallels here. Stroud was the No. 2 pick in the draft, created a debate within just a few weeks about whether he should have gone No. 1, then won Offensive Rookie of the Year and led his team to the playoffs. Daniels did the exact same thing one year later (though he has not officially received the award yet).
Daniels would be anointed as a legend if he becomes the first rookie quarterback to win the Super Bowl (none have even played in it), but it would be more fun to see him try to take down an established star, so this still lands as the lowest of the four possible Commanders matchups. But if you give the Super Bowl a total shot in the arm with a pair of teams that rose quickly out of nowhere (think about where they both were in 2022—Taylor Heinicke and Davis Mills), this would be a fun couple of weeks that could give sleepwalking franchises everywhere hope.
12. Baltimore Ravens vs. Los Angeles Rams
O.K., a non-Texans game. The Ravens and Los Angeles Rams are proud franchises with good track records of success, including Super Bowl wins under their current head coaches. There’s just not much particularly compelling about this game between a pair of organizations with two Super Bowls, each trying to become the 11th team in the NFL to win a third—at least relative to the many better matchups on this list.
For what it’s worth, these two teams did treat us to one of the more entertaining games of the 2023 season, with a frantic final two minutes forcing overtime and Baltimore winning 37–31 on a walk-off punt return by Tylan Wallace.
There would be plenty of star power in this game (and the world would become more familiar with former All-Pro cornerback Tre’Davious White, who was traded from L.A. to Baltimore at midseason), but there will be time to say more about both of these teams later.
11. Buffalo Bills vs. Washington Commanders
There are two combinations remaining that would be rematches of previous Super Bowls, and one of them is a redo of Super Bowl XXVI, the second of the Bills’ four consecutive defeats in the early ’90s. That game was a 37–10 rout, before Buffalo scored two touchdowns to make the final score look closer, so hopefully we’d get a better game this time around.
Washington has undergone multiple name changes and rebrands, and multiple ownership changes, and has not been back to the NFC title game since (the longest active drought since reaching that round in the league). If the Commanders get back to the Super Bowl, we will be inundated with the whole timeline, and this matchup would give us two teams that have dealt with decades of heartbreak and misery. But I think both of these teams have more appealing matchups elsewhere.
10. Baltimore Ravens vs. Washington Commanders
The Battle of the Beltway! We have twice had Super Bowls featuring teams from the same state (the Bills vs. the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV and the San Diego Chargers vs. the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XXIX), and the closest two opposing cities have ever been geographically was when the Bears played the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLI. But those 188 miles would be blown out of the water by the 35 miles between Baltimore and D.C.
Beyond the proximity, these teams do not have a ton of history with each other. They have played only eight regular-season games against each other (though Washington played many times against the old Baltimore Colts, of course). The most recent of those eight games was in Week 6, when the Ravens won 30–23, ending the Commanders’ four-game winning streak and leaving both teams at 4–2 in mid-October.
There are several mobile quarterbacks still alive in the playoffs, but the top two in rushing yards this season were Jackson (915) and Daniels (891). They are also the two remaining Heisman Trophy winners who are starting quarterbacks on the final eight teams. It would be a cool stylistic matchup, and could potentially be remembered as a landmark game in the evolution of the way the position is played.
It would be an intriguing game on paper, though I think we can find nine better ones.
9. Kansas City Chiefs vs. Washington Commanders
The rookie vs. the dynasty. Daniels would be the first rookie to start the Super Bowl at quarterback, and in this matchup, he would be trying to prevent Kansas City from completing the first Super Bowl three-peat in 59 years of the big game.
The Chiefs have won four Super Bowls, more than any other team still alive in these playoffs. They could join royalty with a fifth, which would tie them with the 49ers and Dallas Cowboys, and leave them one shy of the Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers. That would be true no matter who they play, but the Commanders would be seeking a fourth, which would pull them even with the Chiefs, Giants and Packers.
Other story lines would emerge. I predict Terry McLaurin’s national profile would rise in the same way Mike Evans’s did when he got a quarterback upgrade and his team started winning. Marshon Lattimore made four Pro Bowls and won Defensive Rookie of the Year with the Saints; it would be cool to see him end the season when New Orleans traded him away back at the Superdome. If the Commanders manage to win three consecutive road playoff games, it would be exciting to see the dynastic Chiefs standing in their way of making history.
8. Buffalo Bills vs. Los Angeles Rams
We have two games remaining that involve the Rams, and they will slot in at Nos. 7 and 8. I give them a bump over the Commanders in large part because they’ve just been a more significant team in the league since they moved to L.A. and the McVay era began. This would be their third Super Bowl appearance in McVay’s eight seasons, establishing a pattern of reaching the game every three years. History would remember this as a significant game.
The Bills have not been to the Super Bowl in three decades, but they have three of the top eight games on my list anyway. Their story has been well documented: the four Super Bowl losses followed by a long drought in the wilderness until Allen came along. They haven’t broken through yet, having lost to Mahomes three times in the playoffs.
Von Miller would be a main character of the week. The MVP of Super Bowl 50 with the Denver Broncos already disposed of his first former team in the wild-card round. He also won a ring with the Rams in 2021 and would get plenty of attention for facing his other former team.
This would also be a rematch of the second-highest-scoring game of the regular season, the Rams’ 44–42 win in Week 14. The Rams entered that game 6–6, fighting for their playoff lives. The Bills had a seven-game winning streak before L.A. took it to them. That was the day Allen made history as the first player with three passing TDs and three rushing TDs in the same game, when it felt like he was taking over the MVP conversation before Jackson worked his way back in. The game featured 902 yards of offense and zero turnovers, so get ready for more possible fireworks. Neither team has lost a meaningful game since, though both lost with backups playing in Week 18.
7. Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Rams
Chiefs-Rams is the Super Bowl matchup that got away. The past six Super Bowls have featured one of these teams but not the other. And both times the Rams made the Super Bowl, the Chiefs lost in the AFC championship game. It would be fitting for them to eventually meet in a game that would put a little bow on this era. (Not that it’s necessarily ending any time soon.)
Their most memorable matchup during this time is, of course, the Rams’ 54–51 win on a Monday night in 2018. That came with Goff at quarterback for L.A., but Andy Reid, McVay and several key participants remain in place. (The rematch in ’22 was a bit of a dud, with Stafford injured and Bryce Perkins making his only career start.)
This would be Reid’s sixth Super Bowl appearance (fifth with the Chiefs) and McVay’s third. Twelve coaches have gotten to the Super Bowl three times, and while many have faced off against each other (Reid against Bill Belichick, Bill Walsh against Don Shula, Joe Gibbs against Marv Levy, etc.), we have not seen two coaches meet in the Super Bowl when both had been there at least three times since Chuck Noll’s Steelers beat Tom Landry’s Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII.
6. Buffalo Bills vs. Philadelphia Eagles
These rankings feel more stratified than they’ve been in years past, but I think there are three obvious tiers. At the bottom, we had four Texans games. Then we had the six remaining Rams and Commanders games. There are three elite AFC teams, and there have been two top teams in the NFC, so our final six is the round robin of those games. The top six could be all-timers.
I gave the Jackson vs. Daniels rushing stats earlier, but Hurts and Allen dominate the field in quarterback rushing touchdowns. This game would be the Tush Push Bowl.
The Bills and Eagles went into overtime when they last met in November 2023. The game was a high point for the Eagles, pushing them to 10–1 in the season after their Super Bowl appearance, before they collapsed and won only one more game the rest of the season. It was a low point for the Bills, sinking them to 6–6 before a five-game winning streak gave them some momentum heading into last season’s playoffs. While they may have looked to be going in different directions at that point last season, both teams are perennial contenders that coasted to deserving No. 2 seeds in their respective conferences this year.
Buffalo has a long-suffering fan base still looking for that first Lombardi Trophy, and Philly fans fell in the same category as recently as seven years ago—though the team is now seeking a third trip to the Super Bowl in that span. This would feel like an appropriate game for this era.
It’s worth noting that all four AFC head coaches have ties to the Eagles’ organization. Sean McDermott grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and spent 10 years on Reid’s staff, working his way up to defensive coordinator.
Again, it’s a little tricky to rank the Bills without knowing who wins the MVP award (though we’ll know before kickoff). I would give the team a slight bump if Allen’s breakthrough Super Bowl season came in the same year as his first MVP award. But as it stands now, I am ranking this below a hypothetical game between the Eagles and Allen’s top competitor for the award.
5. Baltimore Ravens vs. Detroit Lions
The Lions and Ravens both had six All-Pros (as did the Eagles), though these two teams led the way with four first-teamers. For the Lions: Amon-Ra St. Brown, Penei Sewell, Kerby Joseph and Jack Fox. For the Ravens: Jackson, Patrick Ricard, Roquan Smith and Marlon Humphrey (and Baltimore’s second-team All-Pros, Derrick Henry and Kyle Hamilton, are not exactly slouches). In short, this game would have stars all over both lineups on both sides of the ball.
The Ravens have been a measuring stick for the Lions during the Campbell era. They played that game in Week 3 of Campbell’s first season (2021) when Justin Tucker banked in a 66-yarder off the crossbar at the buzzer to win, forcing Campbell to wait until Week 13 to pick up his first W. Then in Week 7 last year, after the Lions had turned the corner as a franchise, the Ravens stomped them 38–6.
These teams are beloved by analytical models. ESPN’s FPI projections have them as the two teams most likely to reach and win the Super Bowl heading into the divisional round (despite Baltimore’s difficult path through both Buffalo and likely Kansas City, both on the road). The game would pit Campbell’s fourth-down aggressiveness against John Harbaugh, a coach unafraid to match him on that front. We’d see two teams led by quarterbacks who’ve been dismissed at different points for different reasons, rising up to get to the final game. It would be a great cap to the season, we just happen to have a deep list this year.
4. Baltimore Ravens vs. Philadelphia Eagles
Enough about quarterbacks (for the moment at least). One of the top story lines of this entire season has been the veteran free agent running backs who found new homes this offseason and then dominated and elevated their new teams. It doesn’t top my list, but it would be hard to come up with a more fitting Super Bowl than Henry against Saquon Barkley. They were first and second in the league in rushing yards and scrimmage yards. Neither reached a Super Bowl with the team that drafted them, but both could pull the trick immediately upon leaving. Meanwhile, we would see arguably the two best defenses in the league trying to stop them.
These teams met in Week 13, and the Eagles won 24–19 (Baltimore scored a touchdown with three seconds left to tighten it up). The Ravens controlled the ball and had 17 more offensive plays, but the Eagles handed it off to Barkley on 23 out of 54 snaps. It also could have been closer, but Tucker missed three kicks.
If you’re rooting for a rushing attack, ball-control Super Bowl, this is the game for you. Though of course we know what Jackson is capable of through the air, and Hurts was electric in his Super Bowl appearance two years ago.
If the Ravens make it to the Super Bowl, Harbaugh will be back in the same building where he beat his brother 12 years ago. In this matchup, he’d face the team for which he was a longtime assistant before landing his job in Baltimore.
But both of these teams have won the Super Bowl in recent—but not too recent—memory. So we’ve got some unique circumstances in the top three.
3. Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles
The Chiefs are looking to complete their historic three-peat, and this would be a rematch of their first one in that run. This would be the ninth repeat Super Bowl matchup. Cowboys-Bills is the only one to rematch in consecutive Super Bowls, and no other revenge game would play out on the big stage in as short a time frame as this.
The story lines and key players are well known. Reid would again face his longtime former employer, with whom he couldn’t get over the hump. Reid was 1–4 in the NFC championship game with the Eagles, and lost his one Super Bowl appearance. He is 4–2 in the AFC championship game with the Chiefs (and add another win if this matchup comes to pass again), with three rings and counting.
What’s new this time around? Jason Kelce’s retirement means he’d be watching Travis from a fancy seat somewhere instead of the opposite sideline. Jason is already on record that he’d root for the Eagles in this matchup. We know Kylie Kelce would do the same, while Taylor Swift would be on the Chiefs’ side and her dad might need to lay low for a week.
You may be sick of the Chiefs, and you might be less impressed with them this season than you were earlier in this run, but this would be a historic game and you’ll miss this era when it’s gone. Plus, watching much of the world unite around the Eagles trying to prevent this history would be fun.
And we don’t wish injury on anyone, certainly not Mahomes in a Super Bowl, but just imagine if Carson Wentz’s services were needed at any point in this game. The quarterback whose backup won the Super Bowl … coming in as a backup against his former team in a future Super Bowl? He might be the most interesting player who could face a former team on that stage this year.
2. Kansas City Chiefs vs. Detroit Lions
A possible cure for your Chiefs fatigue: the Detroit Lions! Instead of a rehash of two years ago, let’s have the NFC sub in the longest-running Super Bowl era 0-fer. The Lions have been around since 1930, but have not played for a championship since ’57. They and the Browns are the only teams that existed when the first Super Bowl was played that have not made it. Because the Browns disappeared for a few years, the Lions are the only team that’s 0-for-58. This was a historic year of firsts in Detroit. The team had never won more than 12 games, and then got to 15. This is their first time entering the playoffs as a No. 1 seed. It feels like the whole run has been building to this.
I must say, this game would have felt more poetic last season. The two teams met on opening night, Thursday of Week 1. It was a big deal at the time that Detroit was picked for that game, and then the Lions won by a point. I would have appreciated the symmetry of them bookending the season in Game 1 and Game 285. But one year later, the football-watching world would take it.
Campbell exudes bring-on-all-comers energy, and it would feel like something out of 300 to see his crew take on a dynasty and try to shut down the first Super Bowl three-peat.
This game would not have some of the individual players who were the story of this season (Allen, Jackson, Barkley, Henry), but these are the two No. 1 seeds. They led their conferences wire to wire. The Chiefs were not the most glamorous team this season, but if you subscribe to the notion that you must be dethroned to lose your place at the top, then you have to give them credit for their 15 wins in 16 games their starters played.
Those 30 combined wins would be a Super Bowl record, though obviously much easier with a 17-game schedule. Since the league expanded to a 16-game season, there have only been two Super Bowls between opponents with two or fewer losses: 49ers vs. Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX and Broncos vs. Falcons in Super Bowl XXXII.
Can the Chiefs pull out another close game, one more rabbit out of their hat against Campbell turning the entire field into four-down territory? This would be Mahomes vs. Goff, a rematch of that famous 54–51 game. It would be Travis Kelce’s ad-libbed laterals against Ben Johnson’s planned ones. It’s an all-time matchup on paper.
1. Buffalo Bills vs. Detroit Lions
Throughout this list, I have touched on the quality of these two teams and their long histories of suffering. I think seeing the combination on both sidelines in the same Super Bowl would make for an all-timer.
It’s hard to imagine the stakes being higher. Campbell spoke after losing the NFC championship game last season about how hard it is to get back. There’s no guarantee. The Lions will lose talented players as young parts of the roster get expensive. The Bills already have, but managed to push back through with a second wave in the Allen era.
This game has stakes. It would be cool for the Chiefs to get that three-peat, but history will remember them fondly either way. The Bills and Lions would come to New Orleans knowing it might be their best shot in a generation.
Both of these teams have forever been the underdog. It would be almost darkly funny to finally get there, thinking all along that the world would be pulling for you, only to see your counterpart from the other conference, from the other side of Lake Erie, standing on the other side of the field. Imagine the Lions finally, finally, get to the Super Bowl and their opponent is a team that’s 0–4 in the Super Bowl and hasn’t been there in 30 years.
But again, it’s not just about the teams having suffered. It’s also about their 2024 squads being deserving for their play on the field. They’ve both built up to this moment from the bottom—the Bills more gradually, the Lions more suddenly—to reach this position where seeing their name on the program wouldn’t be a surprise.
These teams met in Week 15, and it was literally the highest-scoring game in the NFL this season, a 48–42 Bills win. It was the game Campbell wanted so desperately to win that he called for an onside kick with 12 minutes left, knowing his leaky and banged-up defense just couldn’t stop Buffalo from marching up and down the field.
Neither team has lost a meaningful game since. But setting this matchup in motion would mean one of these fan bases would suffer the worst loss of all. It’s almost too cruel to think about. But that’s what makes winning so beautiful. That wide chasm of emotion between the team that wins this game and the team that loses it is what makes everyone want to sign up to do it all over again next year. It’s why we’d watch any of the 16, and why this one would carry so much weight.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Ranking All 16 Possible Matchups for Super Bowl LIX.