The NFL playoffs are upon us, and it really is anyone’s guess as to who will hoist the Lombardi Trophy on the first Sunday in February.
While seemingly every playoff team has shown flashes of brilliance at various points this season, no team really has separated itself as the clear-cut favorite to win Super Bowl LIII. The Kansas City Chiefs and New Orleans Saints enter the postseason as the No. 1 seeds, but as Tom Brady explained Saturday, there’s reason to believe neither team will go all the way.
“Our coaches have always told us it is not where we play, it is how we play and so much is unpredictable in the postseason,” Brady said on Westwood One Radio, as transcribed by WEEI. “This isn’t four out of seven or three out of five, this is a one-game season and the team that plays the best wins. I would say the team that plays the best over the course of the regular season hardly wins very often, you know, the Super Bowl.”
There’s certainly some legitimacy to Brady’s point. Of the last 17 teams to finish tied with or outright own the best regular-season record, only four have gone on to win the Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles did so last season, while the Patriots also accomplished the feat in the 2014-15 and 2003-04 campaigns. But arguably the greatest regular-season team in NFL history, the 2007-08 Patriots, came up short after starting the season 18-0.
As the old saying goes, anyone can win on any given Sunday.
