Ranking best NFL teams since 2000: Top 25 over past 25 years

Bill BarnwellJul 15, 2025, 06:15 AM ET

He is the host of the Bill Barnwell Show podcast, with episodes released weekly. Barnwell joined ESPN in 2011 as a staff writer at Grantland.

On Sunday, Sept. 3, 2000, the NFL inaugurated its first season to begin with a “2.” It was, to put things charitably, a different time. There was no opening night with the defending champs on Thursday or an international game on Friday (or any other game outside of the United States all season). No games were watched in high definition. The yellow, on-screen first-down line was roughly two years old. Patrick Mahomes was a pitcher on the Mets; his son was about to turn 5. Tom Brady was a healthy scratch after making the Patriots’ roster in training camp; the guy who kept him, Bill Belichick, was taking over his first game as New England’s coach.

The NFL we’re about to watch in 2025 is very different, both in terms of aesthetic and presentation, than the one you followed 25 years ago. Offenses and defenses have evolved pre- and post-snap, although some innovations are clever repackagings of past concepts. Rules have changed. NFL teams that might not have needed or wanted computers 25 years ago are sorting through player tracking data. It’s almost impossible to pluck teams from two decades ago and compare them to the teams playing now.

Good thing it’s only almost impossible, because guess what we’re doing today? That’s right: With 25 seasons in the books since the world celebrated the birth of the third millennium, I’m picking the 25 best teams of the past 25 years of professional football. If you could somehow take those 25 top teams from the past quarter century and get them to play one another, who would end up on top?

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That’s the question I’m trying to answer below, which requires some explanation. There are lots of ways to try to answer this question. Should it be a measure of which team was most successful? Which teams played the best on a snap-by-snap basis? Should I consider each team at its peak or over the entire season? What about accounting for shorter schedules and different playoff rules?

I tried to strike a balance. My goal is to find the best team if all of these teams could play each other in what amounts to a time-traveling Champions League of the past quarter century. I considered what every team did over the course of the entire season, all the way from Week 1 through the playoffs, as the best measure of its true underlying level of play. I tried to account for injuries to emulate what we actually saw play out during each team’s real season. The 2017 Eagles, for example, are going to have Nick Foles start about 31% of the time, since he took over for an injured Carson Wentz and played six of their 19 total games during their run to Super Bowl LII.

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At the same time, I wanted to reward teams that won championships. I weighted postseason performance as more significant than what happened during the regular season. I looked for teams that dominated their opposition, especially when those opponents were also among the league’s best. I wanted to favor teams that were complete and controlled both sides of the ball, but I didn’t want to leave out true outliers that were generationally impactful on offense or defense, especially if they rode those successes into the Super Bowl.

To compare their performance, with limited data for the earlier years of the century, I kept things simple. I measured each team’s scoring offense and defense per game, including its postseason figures, and then normalized them against the league average. I’m going to include each team’s percentile rank on offense and defense over the past 25 years by this measure, a number that is better when higher, with 100 as the peak. Where available, I tried to use advanced metrics to get more insight into each team’s level of play.

I also focused on sustainable and strong underlying levels of play as opposed to teams that were spectacular in close games or managed to squeeze out victories each week. While all of the teams here won plenty of games, this isn’t a list of win totals. As a good example, the 2024 Chiefs went 15-2 while winning close games with blocked field goals, fumbled snaps and bad game management by the opposing coach, but they weren’t that caliber of team from their underlying level of play. You saw what happened to them against stiff competition in Super Bowl LIX. They didn’t make this list.

Finally, I measured strength of schedule using the Pythagorean formula. For each opponent a team faced in a given season, I calculated its points scored and points allowed in games not involving that team, then built an expected winning percentage off that formula. (In other words, to measure how tough of an opponent the Ravens were for the Steelers in a given year, I calculated how the Ravens performed in every game they played that didn’t involve the Steelers.) Weighting for how often each team played each opponent, this average schedule difficulty helped inform the path each team took during its season.

With all of that in mind, for all the math and analysis, I asked myself one question when I was comparing a pair of teams on the list: Given everything we saw from each of these two teams over the course of their entire seasons, which would win if they met on a neutral field? Sometimes, that led to contradictory answers: There are teams on this list that lost to other teams that didn’t make it or even come close. That might seem counterintuitive given that you literally saw that team win, but what happens on one day won’t necessarily happen again. The Bills have beaten the Chiefs four straight times in the regular season; you know how things have gone when they’ve met in the playoffs.

I’ll start with the honorable mention, then count down the best teams of the past 25 years:

Jump to a legendary team:
2000 Ravens | 2002 Bucs
2007 Patriots | 2010 Packers
2019 Chiefs | 2024 Eagles

If I list every single team that garnered meaningful consideration, I’d be 10,000 words deep before even hitting the top 25. By restricting myself to 25 teams in 25 seasons, even my limited math is good enough to know I’m grabbing an average of one team per year. Though there are a couple of seasons in which I ended up taking two teams, think about 2024 and what limiting ourselves to one team means. With the Eagles being my pick, that means the Chiefs don’t make it. It also means no 15-2 Lions. No 14-3 Vikings. No 13-4 Bills with Josh Allen‘s MVP campaign. No 12-5 Commanders and Jayden Daniels‘ special rookie campaign. There are similar great teams from each of the past 25 years that simply get squeezed out.

With that in mind, I’m limiting the honorable mention discussion to the 12 teams that won the Super Bowl and didn’t end up in the top 25. Obviously, winning pro football’s biggest prize is a valuable item to put on a résumé — I weighted things disproportionately in favor of teams that took home the Lombardi Trophy — but I’m considering what those teams did over the entire season, not just how their campaign ended. Let’s run through those teams and why I believe they came up short in this ranking:

Everyone remembers three moments for the 2001 Patriots: Drew Bledsoe suffering internal bleeding on a September hit and opening up the door for Tom Brady, the Tuck Rule game and Adam Vinatieri‘s field goals in the snow to beat the Raiders, and an incredible performance in upsetting the Greatest Show on Turf as 14-point underdogs in Super Bowl XXXVI.

What’s lost to history is a good team that doesn’t push its way into the top 25. Including their playoff run, these Patriots played the second-easiest schedule of any Super Bowl winner over the past 25 years, as they had just two wins over teams with winning records during the regular season. Their playoff wins were all narrow, although whatever good fortune they might have come across in the victory over the Raiders was offset by losing Brady to an ankle injury in the second quarter of the AFC Championship Game, with Bledsoe coming back in to help top Kordell Stewart and the Steelers. Their best game of the season, quite comfortably, came in the Super Bowl. Many of the players on this team would eventually help turn New England into a dynasty, but there were much better versions of the Patriots to come.

The 2005 Steelers were 7-5 late in the season before going on an eight-game winning streak to claim Super Bowl XL. Some of those issues were due to Ben Roethlisberger missing four games with knee injuries, but Pittsburgh didn’t even win its division. That honor went to the Bengals, who were then knocked out of the playoffs in the wild-card round by the Steelers when Kimo Von Oelhoeffen famously tore Carson Palmer‘s left ACL on the latter’s second postseason snap.

The Steelers then survived a Jerome Bettis fumble on the goal line against the Colts that nearly produced a 98-yard touchdown that would have completed an 18-point fourth-quarter comeback, only for Roethlisberger to make the best tackle of his career. Mike Vanderjagt then missed a 46-yard field goal that would have sent the game to overtime. In the Super Bowl, Roethlisberger posted a 22.6 passer rating and threw two picks, but the Steelers beat the Seahawks in a game marred by dismal officiating. They were survivors, but this wasn’t even a great team by their lofty standards.

The 2006 Colts were a great team when they had star safety Bob Sanders, going 7-1 with him on the field. Sanders played just four regular-season games before returning for the playoffs, at which point the Colts ran the table, most famously with a comeback from 21-3 down against the archrival Patriots to finally get Peyton Manning his playoff win over Tom Brady. The Sanders-led defense forced 13 turnovers during a four-game playoff run, including five by Rex Grossman and the Bears in Super Bowl XLI.

Without Sanders for much of the season, the Colts finished 23rd in scoring defense. They were the league’s worst third-down defense and the second-worst red zone defense during the regular season. Just taking the best version of this team and assuming Sanders could play 17 games, they would be in the top 25. As it stands, other versions of the Manning-era Colts make the list, even without a ring.

The 2007 Giants produced what might have been the most memorable victory of the Super Bowl era, controlling the vaunted Patriots offense and coming up with David Tyree‘s famous helmet catch to set up a championship-winning touchdown. Making a run through the Buccaneers, Cowboys and Packers on the NFC side of the bracket, the Giants waylaid history.

Of course, they also lost to those same Patriots during the regular season, where they were also swept by the Cowboys and lost to the Packers. They had a minus-nine turnover differential during the regular season, and while they played the Pats close in the last week, that followed an eight-game stretch in which Eli Manning completed 51.1% of his passes and turned the ball over twice as often (14 times) as he produced touchdowns (seven, with six through the air.) This team had a great defensive line, and it hit a new stride when it leaned into its young talent during the postseason, but one snap before the helmet catch, a would-be interception bounced off Asante Samuel‘s hands. If he had caught that pass, nobody would even pretend this is a debate. The Giants deserve all the credit in the world for what they accomplished, but I wouldn’t like their chances against these teams over another 17-game season.

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The good news is that no fans will be mad at me for also leaving the 2011 Giants out of the top 25. Right? The 2011 version was actually outscored during the regular season, albeit while playing a tough schedule. The Giants were 7-7 in December and Manning was being unfavorably compared to fellow New York quarterback Mark Sanchez before the team rolled off wins over the Jets and the Cowboys to win the NFC East on the final day of the season.

The league’s 25th-ranked scoring defense improved massively during the playoffs, with the Giants holding the Falcons to a lone safety and then slowing down the 15-1 Packers in the divisional round. New York put up a great conference title game performance against the 49ers, who did nothing on offense and went 1-for-13 on third down one week after dropping 36 points on the Saints. The Giants then forced an early safety from Tom Brady and shut out the Patriots for the final 26 minutes of Super Bowl XLVI, eventually winning 21-17.

Was there a bit of fortune during their playoff run? Of course. Hakeem Nicks caught a Hail Mary to extend a lead against Green Bay on a day in which the Giants fell on all three Packers fumbles. In the NFC Championship Game, 49ers punt returner Kyle Williams muffed two punts, with one leading to a New York touchdown and the other setting up the game-winning field goal in overtime. Another fourth-quarter drop helped the Giants, this time coming on offense from Wes Welker in the Super Bowl. As with 2007, this was another team that was great in the postseason and closer to league average during the regular season. It’s tough to sneak in when there are so many teams that were good in both spots.

Like the Super Bowl-winning Colts, the 2012 Ravens looked a lot better on defense during the postseason. Terrell Suggs missed the first half of the year, and Ray Lewis was limited to six regular-season games by injuries. By the end of the year, the Ravens didn’t seem like a Super Bowl contender; they lost four of their final five games, limping into the postseason at 10-6.

Though Lewis wasn’t anywhere near his peak, his return for the postseason helped spark the defense, which forced 10 turnovers in four games. The Ravens needed a miracle to make it past the Broncos in the divisional round and got one when Denver safety Rahim Moore misjudged a Joe Flacco bomb with a seven-point lead and 43 seconds left, allowing Jacoby Jones to run past him for a 70-yard score to tie the game. The Ravens won in overtime, beat the Patriots in Foxborough and then won the Harbaugh Bowl against the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII.

Flacco had the hottest stretch of his career at exactly the right time, posting a 117.2 passer rating and throwing nine touchdowns without a pick during the postseason. There’s a significant span of time before and after suggesting that stretch is an outlier for the veteran passer. This wasn’t the best Baltimore team of the Flacco/John Harbaugh era, but it was the one that had the best timing.

The 2014 Patriots might suffer from being compared with so many other Pats teams. (There are a few, as you can probably surmise, in the top 25.) This was the season they famously looked cooked on “Monday Night Football” in a 41-14 loss to the Chiefs, only for a return to form from Rob Gronkowski and a revamped offensive line to quickly hush any concerns about a 37-year-old Brady losing his touch. Leaving aside a meaningless Week 18 game, the Pats went 13-1 after the loss in Kansas City.

The playoff run wasn’t as dominant as others. They prevailed in a chaotic 35-31 game against the Ravens, owing in part to a substitution tactic that was banned after the season. They blew out an overmatched Colts team in the AFC Championship Game. In Super Bowl XLIX, they allowed the Seahawks to come within a yard of taking the lead with 26 seconds to go. You know what happened next.

The 2015 Broncos fielded a dominant defense, with Von Miller, DeMarcus Ware and a stout front producing 14 sacks and a staggering 33 knockdowns during their three-game run to Super Bowl 50. The offense? Well, Peyton Manning was benched at midseason for Brock Osweiler and nobody batted an eye, which should tell you what you need to know. The Broncos ranked 19th in scoring offense and 30th in turnovers (31). The offense wasn’t good during the playoff run, but with Manning restored to the lineup, they turned the ball over only three times in three games, which was enough to earn a ring.

The 2018 Patriots were more good than great during the regular season, as an 11-5 team benefited from an easy schedule and finished 19th in defense-adjusted value over average. If you thought they were good at the time, you had to argue with Brady, who insisted, “Everybody thinks we suck and can’t win any games” in his postgame chat after the divisional round victory over the Chargers. (No footage could be found suggesting this was true.)

This wasn’t a great defense, and the Patriots relied heavily on the offense to pull out victories over the Chargers and Chiefs in the playoffs, beating the latter after blowing a three-point lead with 39 seconds left only to prevail in overtime under the league’s old rules by winning the coin toss and scoring a touchdown on the opening drive. In Super Bowl LIII, though, they were great for one day, as Bill Belichick leaned into the 6-1 front Vic Fangio had used to stymie the Rams in the regular season, taking away their run game and forcing Jared Goff to become a dropback passer. The Pats scored the only touchdown of the game in a 13-3 win, giving Brady and Belichick their final title together in New England.

Two years later, Brady won another title with the 2020 Buccaneers, who overran an injury-riddled Chiefs line in a blowout Super Bowl LV victory at their home stadium. Those Bucs didn’t win their division title but led a charmed life in the NFC playoffs. They got a home game against a dismal 7-9 Washington team that lost starting quarterback Alex Smith for the wild-card round, and they still let a Taylor Heinicke-led team keep things close in the fourth quarter. The rematch against the Saints came in what would be Drew Brees‘ final start, a day in which he clearly didn’t have his usual capacity to throw the football.

In the NFC Championship Game, the referees appeared to let both sides play by Mutant League Football rules before a late pass interference penalty and a brutally conservative call by Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur pushed the Bucs through to the Super Bowl. They were great in the Super Bowl, and this was one of the best wild-card teams of the past 25 years, but they ended up being Team No. 26.

The 2021 Rams got off to a 7-1 start and unlocked some sort of Jerry Rice mode out of Cooper Kupp, but they lost three straight in midseason and then let their rivals into the playoffs when they couldn’t close out the Niners in Week 18. They dominated the Cardinals in the wild-card round, but their three other victories were narrow wins over the Buccaneers, 49ers and Bengals. They blew a 27-6 lead against Tampa and trailed for almost the entirety of the second half against the Bengals before a late score, with a nearly fatal dedication to establishing a dismal running game against the culprit.

This was a very good team, but it’s tough to argue against the idea the schedule broke their way. The 4-seed Rams got to play the NFC Championship Game after the 49ers knocked out the 1-seed Packers and 3-seed Cowboys. The Rams got to play the 4-seed in the AFC when the Bengals eliminated the Titans and Chiefs, while the second-seeded Bills fell in the “13 Seconds” game at Arrowhead. After going 2-5 against playoff teams during the regular season, the Rams seem more like the last good team standing than a historically great performer.

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The 2023 Chiefs were their own worst enemies at times, led by a group of wide receivers whose drops directly led to multiple losses during the regular season. A Christmas Day loss to the Raiders left them at 9-6, and though they had enough in the tank to win the AFC West, Patrick Mahomes & Co. were forced to travel to play playoff games on the road for the first time in the future Hall of Famer’s career.

After a blowout win over a frozen Dolphins team at home, the Chiefs went through stiff competition on the road, narrowly beating the Bills in Buffalo and topping a 13-4 Ravens team in Baltimore before an overtime win over the 49ers earned them another Super Bowl. It was an incredible run for Chris Jones, who made a series of season-saving plays in the wins over Buffalo and San Francisco, and Mahomes, who led two fourth-quarter comebacks and a game-winning drive in overtime of the title game. Even Chiefs fans, though, would probably admit that this wasn’t the best team of the Mahomes era — or particularly close to it.

Fate: Lost in Super Bowl LIII to Patriots, 13-3
Offense: 95th percentile
Defense: 48th percentile

These Rams felt like the future of football. Building on their stunning 2017 season, it didn’t seem as though anything could derail Sean McVay’s offense. The Rams began the 2018 season by winning their first eight games, averaging 33 points in the process. Although they lost to an excellent Saints team in New Orleans to fall from the undefeated ranks, Jared Goff & Co. followed the performance by outdueling the Chiefs in one of the most memorable games of the past 25 years, the famous 54-51 shootout on “Monday Night Football,” where the defense chipped in with five takeaways and two Samson Ebukam touchdowns. (Don’t ask what happened when the Rams didn’t force a takeaway.)

Hitting their bye at 10-1, the Rams looked unstoppable. Then, suddenly, things changed. An injury to Todd Gurley limited the star back, who wasn’t the same for any stretch of time after the bye. One week after the Lions put their edge rushers as far outside as possible to help force Los Angeles’ zone runs back inside, Bears defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s 6-1 front stifled the run game and forced Goff to be a pocket passer. He threw four picks in a 15-6 loss. The Eagles got the Rams again the following week, and although Los Angeles came back with two victories against the dismal Cardinals and 49ers to end the regular season, warning bells were blaring.

After beating the Cowboys at home, the Rams were bailed out by their defense in the NFC Championship Game against the Saints. An overwhelmed offense struggled early and handed the Saints an early turnover, but the Rams held New Orleans to two short field goals early before a touchdown drive put them down 13-0. Aaron Donald and the defense held the Saints to 10 points over their ensuing seven drives, aided at the end by one of the most famous missed pass interference calls in league history, which gave the Rams time to drive and tie the game in regulation. John Johnson picked off Drew Brees in overtime, and although the offense couldn’t do much, Greg Zuerlein hit a 57-yard field goal to send L.A. to its first Super Bowl under McVay.

There, with two weeks to prepare, Belichick hard-coded the Fangio approach into his defense. McVay and the Rams had no answer. The defense played its best game of the season, holding an excellent Patriots offense to 13 points on 11 possessions, but the Rams never found a way to get the Patriots out of their six-man fronts and couldn’t get their dropback pass game going. They punted on their first eight drives and scored three points. It’s still tied for the lowest total produced by a McVay offense in a single game.

That loss eventually changed the league. The McVay and Shanahan-style offenses were forced to diversify their run concepts, modernizing what had become the league’s favorite way to attack defenses. Goff wasn’t quite as effective without the heavy play-action attack, and McVay eventually grew frustrated, quasi-benched him for a playoff game against the Seahawks and then sent him to the Lions in a salary dump as part of the Matthew Stafford trade, which led to a title for the Rams and a resurgent Lions franchise. The 2018 L.A. team was eventually overshadowed by the team that won the title, but over the entire season, it was better than the 2021 edition.

Fate: Lost AFC Championship Game to Patriots 41-27
Offense: 67th percentile
Defense: 89th percentile

At 15-1, this was the best regular-season team of the Bill Cowher era. Dick LeBeau’s defense allowed a league-low 15.7 points per game. And after Tommy Maddox started the season by going 2-1, rookie first-round pick Ben Roethlisberger took over as the starter and won his first 13 starts, averaging nearly 9.0 yards per attempt in a low-volume, high-efficiency passing game.

Going 15-1 in the regular season is one thing, but it’s even more impressive considering who the Steelers beat. In midseason, the Steelers stopped the Patriots from extending their 21-game winning streak, beating them by two touchdowns. The following week, they hosted the other team that would eventually compete in the Super Bowl and routed the Eagles 27-3. They ran a little hot, going 6-0 in one-score games, but every team runs a little hot when it goes 15-1.

The postseason just didn’t go quite as well. The Steelers allowed two return touchdowns to the Jets and eventually had to survive a 43-yard miss by Doug Brien that would have won the game for New York before prevailing in overtime. In their rematch with the Patriots, New England went up 17-3 in the second quarter; with the Steelers driving for a score to get back into the game, Roethlisberger threw an 87-yard pick-six to Rodney Harrison, putting it out of reach.

Fate: Lost Super Bowl XLIX to Patriots 28-24
Offense: 73rd percentile
Defense: 97th percentile

Although they lost by the narrowest of margins to the Patriots in the Super Bowl, I’d argue the Seahawks were the better team across the full season than their eventual conquerors. This team led the league in DVOA, thanks to a late-season surge.

After Bobby Wagner returned from a midseason pectoral injury, the Seahawks put together their best stretch of defensive football in the Legion of Boom era. Over the final six games of the regular season, they allowed a total of 39 points. In our 25-year window, it’s the second-best six-game stretch by points allowed behind a run from the 2000 Steelers, who were playing in a league in which leaguewide scoring was 10% lower than it was in 2014. Colts coach Tony Dungy was sufficiently moved by Wagner’s performance to give him an MVP vote for an 11-game season, meaning that Wagner is likely to finish his career with more MVP votes (one) than Russell Wilson and the rest of these legendary Seahawks teams combined (zero).

Unsurprisingly, the Seahawks finished the season as the league’s best defense. The offense ranked only 10th in scoring, but it was better by EPA (seventh) and played at a relatively slow pace. Wilson threw for 3,475 yards and added 849 more with six scores as a runner, both of which would become career highs (barring something very unexpected happening with the 2025 Giants). Seattle won its Super Bowl rematch with Denver in overtime, swept the 11-5 Cardinals and dominated a Packers team it would see again in the playoffs with a 20-point victory in Week 1. The Seahawks also lost to an Austin Davis-led Rams team, which doesn’t help their case.

The Seahawks’ playoff run to the Super Bowl was uneven. After Carson Palmer went down with a late-season injury, a 7-8-1 Panthers team got to host Ryan Lindley in the wild-card round. The Panthers won, giving the Seahawks a home game against a sub-.500 team in the divisional round, which was an easy victory. Facing the Packers in the NFC Championship Game, Wilson threw four interceptions, only to have his season saved by a brutal stretch of in-game decision-making by Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy. With a fake field goal for a touchdown, the world’s shortest Hail Mary producing a 2-point conversion and a fateful onside kick recovery giving the Seahawks a late lead, the Packers still managed to push the game to overtime before Wilson hit Jermaine Kearse for a 35-yard touchdown to send the Seahawks to the Super Bowl. Great teams persevere and find ways to win? Or was Seattle lucky? Both are probably true.

The Super Bowl was obviously a tight affair, with Chris Matthews producing one of the most out-of-nowhere 100-yard games at receiver in championship history. The Pats made defensive adjustments as the game went on, and with Cliff Avril sidelined by a midgame concussion, the pass rush eventually wore out, allowing Tom Brady to go 13-of-15 and score twice on New England’s final two drives of the game. Kearse’s miraculous catch gave the Seahawks life, but after Dont’a Hightower made a title-saving tackle on Marshawn Lynch at the 1-yard line, Malcolm Butler became a household name. The Legion of Boom-era Seahawks never challenged for a title again. We’ll get back to them and a more successful season later on down the list.

Fate: Lost in divisional round to Bengals 27-10
Offense: 93rd percentile
Defense: 89th percentile

One of these Josh Allen/Sean McDermott-era Bills teams was going to make it into the mix. The 2021 team went 12-7, but it had the league’s best defense and stomped the Patriots in the wild-card round before falling to the Chiefs in the 13-second game. The 2020 team went 13-3 and won two playoff games before losing to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game, but it wasn’t as good on defense as the 2021 or 2022 editions.

This team went 13-3 through a wildly impressive regular season. Its September loss to the Dolphins required a goal-line stand by Miami, while the Week 10 defeat at the hands of the Vikings took one of the greatest catches of the past 25 years to extend the game before a bad snap to Allen at the goal line handed Minnesota a touchdown in the final minute. The Bills started the season by manhandling the defending champion Rams, and they also beat the Ravens, Steelers and Chiefs in consecutive weeks.

What happened at the end of the season couldn’t have been anticipated. Set for a prime-time battle against the Bengals for the 1-seed in the AFC, Damar Hamlin‘s terrifying accident led the game to be called. Though the Bills came back the following week to beat the Patriots and claim the top seed, a team that had endured the Hamlin incident and a deadly snowstorm that shut down Buffalo for days in December looked worn out in the postseason.

By the time Buffalo faced the Bengals in the divisional round, the Bills were down defensive stars Von Miller and Micah Hyde, and after backup safety Dean Marlowe got hurt during the game, they finished the day with a fourth-string safety in their backfield against Joe Burrow. In the sort of snowy conditions that were supposed to be in their favor, they were overwhelmed and outplayed by a better Bengals team in their de facto rematch of the abandoned game.

Pro Football Reference had the Bills as the league’s best team that season, three points better than the 49ers and nearly five points per game above the eventual Super Bowl-winning Eagles. It’s difficult to add the Bills to the top 25 when their season came to such a disappointing and anticlimactic end, but this was a special team that faced difficult, unimaginable circumstances.

Fate: Won Super Bowl XLIII over Cardinals 27-23
Offense: 58th percentile
Defense: 98th percentile

The Steelers winning games under Mike Tomlin with a middling offense, an elite defense and big plays from their special teams? Never seen that one before. This was a better offense than the ones they’ve run out during their annual trips to the wild-card round over the past few years, although Ben Roethlisberger threw nearly as many interceptions (15) as touchdown passes (17) and took sacks on almost 9% of his dropbacks during the regular season. He turned the ball over four times in a late-season loss to the Titans, handing Tennessee the top seed in the AFC.

The offense got a little better during the postseason, when Roethlisberger averaged nearly 8.0 yards per attempt. With Willie Parker averaging 3.5 yards per carry, though, the real improvement came by mitigating some of the bad plays; the Steelers turned the ball over only twice during that three-game span, which was enough for the defense and special teams to take over.

Troy Polamalu and the defense added some much-needed firepower to the offense, as the Steelers put together return touchdowns in each of their three postseason victories. In the divisional round, Santonio Holmes took a punt return 67 yards to the house against the Chargers. A week later, Polamalu broke open a close game against the Ravens with a 40-yard pick-six in the fourth quarter. In the Super Bowl, quite famously, James Harrison helped swing the game with a 100-yard interception return at the end of the first half, turning a potential Cardinals touchdown into seven points for Pittsburgh. That ended up being the difference, with a late Roethlisberger touchdown pass to Holmes overturning a three-point deficit.

This was a spectacularly good defense, with Harrison winning Defensive Player of the Year and Polamalu picking off eight passes (counting the postseason). Among other defense-heavy teams, though, there are those that were about as good on offense and just a tiny bit better on D.

Fate: Lost NFC Championship Game to Giants 20-17
Offense: 65th percentile
Defense: 98th percentile

These 49ers might seem like a curious choice. They lost in the NFC title game to the Giants, who aren’t featured in the top 25. The 2012 49ers didn’t have as impressive a regular-season record, but with Colin Kaepernick taking over at quarterback, they boat-raced the Packers in the playoffs and made it to the Super Bowl, where they nearly pulled off a 22-point comeback against Baltimore before coming up just short. The 2012 team also did that against a tougher schedule, coming off its first-place finish in 2011.

I wouldn’t fault you for picking the 2012 team, but the 2011 49ers were more imposing on defense, allowing just over 14 points per game. They had three first-team All-Pros on defense (Justin Smith, NaVorro Bowman and Patrick Willis) and a second-teamer in Carlos Rogers, who had six picks in his best pro season. Coordinator Vic Fangio’s defense forced 38 turnovers in a stunning debut season, as the 49ers’ turnover margin (plus-28) tied them with the 2010 Patriots for the best from any team over this 25-year span.

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The offense wasn’t pretty, but with a heavy dose of the running game and safety valves built in for Alex Smith, the 2005 No. 1 pick held his own by protecting the ball. The Niners threw only five interceptions all season and had just two players (Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis) top 250 receiving yards. They filled in some of the gaps on special teams, where their kicker (David Akers) and punter (Andy Lee) were both first-team All-Pros. These 49ers were like a supercharged version of the modern Steelers.

Perhaps I have a soft spot for what happened to them in the postseason, which seems horrible. They won my pick for the best NFL game I’ve ever covered, a brutal, dramatic and eventually cathartic 36-32 victory over the Saints in the divisional round. One win away from the Super Bowl, they were engaged in a defensive struggle against the Giants in the NFC Championship Game, only for it to be decided when returner Kyle Williams muffed two punts to set up the tying touchdown in the fourth quarter and the winning field goal in overtime. The Niners deserved better.

Fate: Lost Super Bowl 50 to Broncos 24-10
Offense: 98th percentile
Defense: 83rd percentile

I’ll understand if Broncos fans are mad when they see that the team they beat in the Super Bowl made it onto the top 25 while their champs did not. The Panthers were simply a better team throughout the season, even if they weren’t during the big game. Carolina won its first 14 games and had a real shot at going 16-0 before it fell to an 8-8 Falcons team, one year before Atlanta went on its own run to the title game.

The Panthers’ disappointing performance in the Super Bowl and a lack of sticky star power has led them to quickly fade from memory. The only likely Hall of Famers on the roster were Luke Kuechly and Jared Allen, the latter of whom had two sacks in his final NFL season. A Sean McDermott-led defense got career years out of Josh Norman, Kawann Short and Kurt Coleman, a journeyman who got nine of his 23 career interceptions during this regular season and postseason.

The main star on offense won MVP: Cam Newton threw for 3,837 yards with 35 touchdowns and added 636 rushing yards and 10 more scores on the ground. An offense whose leading wide receivers were Ted Ginn Jr. and Jerricho Cotchery shouldn’t have scared anyone, but buoyed by Greg Olsen and a creative run game, the Panthers were remarkably consistent: They scored 27 points in 15 of their 19 games, a mark that tied them with the 2007 Patriots and a handful of other teams in second place over the past 25 years. Only the 2018 Chiefs, with Patrick Mahomes and a handful of other future Hall of Famers on offense, got to 27 more often. The Panthers were 15-0 when they did so.

The Panthers were also excellent during their run to the Super Bowl. They dominated the Seahawks, going up 31-0 at halftime before Seattle racked up 24 unanswered points of its own. Newton & Co. then shellacked a very good Cardinals team in the NFC Championship Game, eventually forcing six Carson Palmer turnovers in a 49-15 victory. With a clearly limited Peyton Manning waiting in the Super Bowl, the Panthers were five-point favorites. They laid an egg, looked overawed by the moment and never got their run game going, which is why they’re not higher in the top 25.

Fate: Lost AFC Championship Game to Chiefs 17-10
Offense: 92nd percentile
Defense:https://wol.com/ranking-best-nfl-teams-since-2000-top-25-over-past-25-years/