Today’s guest post comes from Miles Wray, a long-time reader of the site. You may know him as the host of the daily NBA podcast The 82 Review. You can also find him on Twitter @mileswray. What follows are Miles’ words: as always, we thank our guest writers for their contributions.

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It’s not a career goal that anybody would — or even could — shoot for, but it’s a goal that any player would still be proud of: to win the Super Bowl with two separate teams. There are 38 players in the league’s history who have accomplished the feat — it’s an achievement more rare, at the very least, than a Hall of Fame career.

It feels reasonable to assume that most of those 38 dual-winners played in the 21st century, during the sport’s highest-ever era of roster churn. But no: there are only two active players who are dual winners — perhaps because there are more NFL teams than ever today, meaning that any individual team of yesteryear had a greater percentage chance of getting to the Super Bowl. ^[1]The 36 retired players with this distinction are, in alphabetical order: Herb Adderley, Matt Bahr, Robert Bailey, Jim Burt, Bill Curry, Billy Davis, Dave Duerson, Marv Fleming, Andy Frederick, … Continue reading One of those two active players has a credible Hall of Fame case: Adam Vinatieri, victor in 2001, 2002, and 2004 with the Patriots, and also in 2006, his very first year with the Colts. The other is an undrafted linebacker who just went through a 3-13 season: Jonathan Casillas won the 2009 Super Bowl with the Saints — where he helped recover the infamous surprise onside kick at the start of the second half — and also was acquired as a special-teamer in a fortuitous midseason trade by the Patriots in 2014.

One way or another, Vinatieri and Casillas will have company after this Super Bowl Sunday. On the Patriots roster, there is hired mercenary James Harrison, winner in both 2005 and 2008 with the Steelers. The Eagles, on the other hand, have apparently made it an intentional strategy to sign past winners. The Philadelphia roster is flush with eight ring-wearers. Since the Eagles have never won a Super Bowl, all eight of these players acquired their hardware with other squads:

There’s an inherently interesting path to any career that takes a player to Super Bowls with separate teams. For instance, with an Eagles victory, Will Beatty would become the first and only player to defeat the Patriots in a Super Bowl with separate teams. But, behind the Patriots attempting to tie the Steelers for the most Super Bowl victories as a franchise, the most historically rich subplot to this year’s Super Bowl is the phenomenally rare revenge-game opportunity that LeGarrette Blount and Chris Long have before them.

Let’s forget, for a moment, the incredible fact Blount and Long are competing in the Super Bowl against the very same team that they earned a ring with just last year. The accomplishment of simply getting to the Super Bowl in consecutive years with separate teams is much more rare than winning the Super Bowl with two separate teams at any point in a player’s career. It’s only happened 12 previous times in league history, with Blount and Long now making it 13 and 14.

On a remarkable 10 of those 12 previous occasions of back-to-back Super Bowl appearances with separate teams, the player lost at least one of the Super Bowls. In chronological order, they are:

Note that, win or lose on Sunday, Blount and Long are rare anomalies even within this small sub-group. They are only the second pair of teammates, after O.J. Brigance and Kim Herring, to follow each other from team to team. Also, Preston Pearson is the only previous player to have a shot at revenge in his return trip to the Super Bowl — a shot that he and the Cowboys could not take advantage of.

With an Eagles victory, Blount and Long would double the size of a historically rare club: players who have won the Super Bowl with different teams in back-to-back years. (I should note here that I am only considering players who have played in the Super Bowls in question. There are at least two players — Brandon Browner, with the 2013 Seahawks and 2014 Patriots — who was with different franchises that won Super Bowls in consecutive years (the other is guard Russ Hochstein with the ’02 Bucs and ’03 Patriots). However, Browner did not appear in the Super Bowl while with the Seahawks while being suspended for performance-enhancing substances, while Hochstein was cut by Tampa Bay after just one game in 2002. I’m limiting the scope of this article to players who got on the field in the actual Big Daddy of ’Em All.)

It feels significant that one of these players is a Pro Bowler, the other a Hall of Famer. The first was Ken Norton, Jr., who won with both the 1993 Cowboys and the 1994 49ers. Since Norton was also victorious with the 1992 Cowboys, he also has the distinction of being the only player to win three consecutive Super Bowls in any fashion — which, it does feel surprising that no dynastic team of any era has managed a three-peat. The other player crossed paths with Norton: Deion Sanders was on the 1994 49ers and then went over to the Cowboys in 1995.

Win or lose, Blount, Long, the rest of the ring-owning Eagles — and also James Harrison — will join Vinatieri and Casillas in the chase to be members of another ultra-small historical club. Only five players have ever appeared in the Super Bowl with three different franchises:

There is, finally, a theoretical club that has zero members: players who have won the Super Bowl with three different teams. An Eagles victory on Sunday makes it more likely that this will be accomplished sooner, since there would be a remarkable 10 players around the league moving around with rings from two different team. Since Blount is once again on a one-year deal, who knows: maybe he’ll be back next February in another uniform to complete the most unlikely run of dominance in football history. If the favored Patriots get the job done, it’s up to 45-year-old Vinatieri, 39-year-old James Harrison, and 30-year-old Jonathan Casillas to land in the right situation. All three players will be free agents in March.