The 2017 Eagles won the Super Bowl, but the 2016 Eagles were just 7-9. That is pretty misleading: the 2016 Eagles had the best DVOA of any team in the last 30 years with a losing record, so in some ways, the ’17 season wasn’t a big surprise.

On the other hand, well, the Eagles became just the 4th team to go from a losing record to Super Bowl champion in one season. The other three teams were much worse in the prior year than the 2017 Eagles, but you can probably guess them: the 2001 Patriots, 1999 Rams, and 1981 49ers.

On average, Super Bowl champions win 12.7 games the year they win the Super Bowl (with non-16 game seasons pro-rated to 16 games), 10.9 games the year before, 9.7 the year before that, 9.5 three years before, and 9.2 four years before. The table below shows the number of wins in Year N (the Super Bowl year) for each Super Bowl champion, along with their number of wins in the prior four years. The final column shows the average of wins in Years N-1, N-2, N-3, and N-4. Note that all non-16 game seasons have been pro-rated. [continue reading…]