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Bill Barnwell, ESPN Staff Writer
As we get into July on the NFL calendar, two things begin: training camps and predictions season. Over the next seven weeks, everyone you read, listen to and share a text chain with will tell you who’s going to win the Super Bowl. And while I’ve adopted the easy solution over the past four years and just picked the Chiefs to win every single time, even I’ll admit picking the team with Patrick Mahomes isn’t exactly going out on a limb.
When this window comes around, there are usually one or more teams that pop up as the trendy picks of the summer. These are teams that showed just enough the season before to impress before bowing out with the promise of doing more the following season. They’re the fun teams to root for in advance of the season, those whose bandwagon you can jump on just before it gets too full.
How often does that team actually come through, though? I’m going to try to look through the recent past to see how often the trendy pick lives up to lofty expectations. And naturally, we’ll try to apply that to the teams likely to pop up as the sexy choices to win Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans next February.
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First, we need to define what the sexy preseason Super Bowl pick looks like. There’s no definition that covers each case I can find from the past, but there’s a best fit that covers the vast majority of teams. From my perspective, the trendy title pick usually aligns with the following concepts:
The team hasn’t made a deep playoff run in the recent past. Picking a team that already has made a few playoff trips isn’t the sort of new, fun selection we’re thinking about here. The Rams have turned over their roster, but they still have a fair number of stars from their Super Bowl LVI-winning team of the 2021 season. We’re looking at teams that haven’t yet emerged as Super Bowl contenders, especially if they’ve been down toward the bottom of the standings for a while.
They exceeded their preseason expectations the prior year by a considerable margin. Teams with accelerated trajectories often get this sort of hype after a breakout season. We can approximate this by using the preseason over/unders from Pro Football Reference. If a team beat its projected total in the previous season by at least 2.5 wins, it fits our criteria.
They made the playoffs and were competitive once they got there. Even if we underestimate how quickly NFL teams can turn things around, it’s rare for a team that missed the postseason the prior season to ever get serious Super Bowl consideration. With the exception of a situation such as the Jets’, where they had a Hall of Fame quarterback get hurt on the opening series of the season, the minimum bar for hype is advancing to the postseason the prior year, especially in a league in which 14 teams advance to the playoffs.
I’ll take it a step further. Typically, those teams either need to win a playoff game and/or look very competitive in their loss to keep people’s attention the following year. The 2021 Cardinals started 7-0, hadn’t made a playoff run with their core at that time and exceeded their preseason expectations by 2.5 wins. But after they struggled in the second half and got blown out by the Rams in the postseason, nobody had them as a trendy Super Bowl pick in 2022. To make this list, a team has to show up in the postseason.
They have a young quarterback who hit new highs (or had an impressive rookie year) the prior season. Yes, a team such as the Peyton Manning-era Broncos or Tom Brady-led Buccaneers can be a trendy pick, but we already knew those guys were capable of winning Super Bowls. Even Carson Palmer having a late-career resurgence in Arizona doesn’t feel as sexy of a selection as it does when there’s an opportunity to get behind a young quarterback who emerged as a potential superstar the prior season.
We’re looking for a quarterback who either debuted with a spectacular campaign or reached new heights relative to his prior pro seasons. That quarterback doesn’t have to be on his rookie deal, but it doesn’t feel like a trendy pick if he has already established himself in the NFL, either.
Jump to a section:
Meet the three candidates for this season
Trendy picks by year: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020
2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012
What does recent history tell us about 2024?
The trendy Super Bowl picks of 2024
First, let’s establish which teams stand out as likely to draw serious consideration as the sexy Super Bowl picks this season. There’s one obvious candidate that fits all our criteria: