Sorry, but your NFL team isn't winning the Super Bowl in 2017 -- and here's why

Sorry, but your NFL team isn't winning the Super Bowl in 2017 -- and here's why

Forget the odds -- we're going to spell out the reasons your team is doomed from the start

by Nate Peterson

Hope.

It’s what gets fans in Cleveland excited about a backup QB with only two NFL starts. Or why 49ers fans are daydreaming about a 22-year-old passer from Ohio who started only one season at a school best known for basketball.

It’s why NFL fans everywhere are scouring mock drafts and jonesing for the start of free agency. Or why three hours of Roger Goodell announcing names from a podium and hugging 20-somethings in new jerseys will outdraw the NBA playoffs on a Thursday night in April.
Yes, with some five months before NFL training camps open, hope abounds, from Seattle to Miami, Los Angeles to Boston, Green Bay to New Orleans.

Anything is possible.

Except, really, it isn’t.

Your favorite NFL team can’t win the Super Bowl next season. Well, at least for some of you.

Sorry to be a buzzkill, being that it’s not even March, but it’s true: Your squad is doomed to come up short.

Here are five reasons why:

Your coach is too young

Congratulations, Los Angeles Rams, you just hired the youngest coach in NFL history in Sean McVay! Good luck winning a Super Bowl with him in the next decade!

OK, nothing against McVay, the 31-year-old offensive wunderkind plucked from Washington, but the Super Bowl is No Country for Young Men. The average age of a Super Bowl-winning coach, when adding up all 51 previous title games, is 50 years old (49.98, to be exact). Mike Tomlin led the Steelers to a Super Bowl triumph at 36, topping Jon Gruden doing it at 39, but let’s be real: Both guys inherited a team ripe for a title.

Tomlin took over a Steelers team that was one year removed from winning a Super Bowl, with a franchise QB in place, and Hall of Famer Dick LeBeau running the defense. That’s not a knock against Tomlin. Nobody just strolls into a Super Bowl ring. But Tomlin certainly landed in the best possible situation for a first-time head coach.

Gruden also parachuted into a cushy job, taking over a Buccaneers team Tony Dungy had built from the studs up to a legit Super Bowl contender. Gruden went 12-4 in his debut season in Tampa and beat his former team, the Raiders, in the Super Bowl. He then averaged only 7.5 wins a season over the next six seasons with only two playoff appearances before getting fired. Don’t forget that last part the next time you hear the name of the NFL’s greatest tire kicker mentioned for a possible job opening.

So what does this have to do with your team in 2017? Well, three of the past four Super Bowls were won by coaches age 62 or older. The last coach younger than 50 to win a Super Bowl was the Packers’ Mike McCarthy, at 47, after the 2010 season. Not to mention, only four coaches 42 or under have ever won a Super Bowl.

So here’s looking at you McVay, Kyle Shanahan (37), Adam Gase (38), Ben McAdoo (turns 40 in July) and Sean McDermott (42).

And let’s be honest, McVay, Shanahan and McDermott aren’t taking over the 2002 Bucs. McVay at least might have a franchise QB, if he can turn around Jared Goff’s career trajectory.

Shanahan, meanwhile, takes over the worst job in the NFL outside of Cleveland, while McDermott is inheriting a Bills team that has the league’s longest playoff drought, at 17 seasons and counting. Let’s not forget Gase, who still coaches in the same division as Bill Belichick and Tom Brady.

You can maybe make a case for McAdoo, but he faces some long odds in a league that rewards grumpy old men with rings.

Who’s out: Rams, 49ers, Bills, Dolphins, Giants

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