Ranking the most unlikely Super Bowl teams ever

Ranking the most unlikely Super Bowl teams ever, and where the 2019 49ers land

Bill Barnwell
ESPN Staff Writer

It's fair to say that just about nobody expected the San Francisco 49ers to make Super Bowl LIV. There were certainly reasons to think they would be better -- I named them as the most likely team to improve, and I even predicted in April that they would make the playoffs. Making a leap from 4-12 all the way to the Super Bowl, though? Only one team in league history had done that across more than 50 years of Super Bowls.

Now two teams have done it, as the 49ers joined another recent Super Bowl attendee in going from 4-12 to the biggest game in football. They are one of just 10 teams to improve by nine or more wins in a single season (after prorating schedules to 16 games) in the Super Bowl era. What coach Kyle Shanahan and the rest of this organization have pulled off in 2019 is a once-in-a-generation sort of improvement.


1. 1999 St. Louis Rams

Previous season: 4-12, 5.4 Pythagorean wins
Super Bowl season: 13-3, 13.8 adjusted Pythagorean wins

Why they improved: Even the 49ers would be amazed at how quickly the Rams turned things around. The other teams on this list improved their Pythagorean expectation by a number between 4.7 and 6.0 wins. The Rams improved by 8.4 wins, and they did so despite losing their starting quarterback to a torn ACL in the preseason. The 49ers were 40-1 to win the Super Bowl before the 2019 season. The 1999 Rams were 150-1. They ranked 25th in ESPN's preseason power rankings. Nobody saw the Rams coming.

Twenty-eight-year-old Kurt Warner stepped in after 11 career NFL pass attempts and delivered one of the best seasons in league history, winning MVP in the process. A Rams offense buoyed by the additions of Marshall Faulk and Torry Holt led the league in virtually every meaningful offensive category. No team in the NFL came within 80 points of the Greatest Show on Turf, which averaged a mind-blowing 32.9 points per game. The other teams in the league topped 30 points an average of about three times per year. What other teams would regard as their best offensive performance of the season was the typical weekly output for the Rams.

As much as the offense improved, the Rams' defensive leap in 1999 often gets lost in the shuffle. While they faced the league's easiest schedule, they improved from 24th in the NFL in scoring defense to fourth under Peter Giunta. Unsurprisingly given the stories elsewhere in this list, St. Louis improved its turnover rate, jumping from 23 takeaways in 1998 to 36 in 1999. It got someone to take pressure off star pass-rusher Kevin Carter when it promoted 1998 first-round pick Grant Wistrom to the starting lineup, and Carter responded with a 17-sack season. Coach Dick Vermeil also promoted a little-known undrafted free agent to the starting lineup at linebacker after he impressed in limited time as a rookie, with London Fletcher proceeding to start across various NFL lineups for the next 15 seasons.

Warner proceeded to blitz an overmatched Vikings team in the divisional round, throwing for 391 yards and five touchdowns in a game in which the Rams went up 49-17 in the fourth quarter before the Vikings added some garbage-time touchdowns. He wasn't anywhere near as impressive against the Bucs and their league-best pass defense in the NFC Championship Game, as Warner threw three interceptions and averaged an even 6 yards per attempt. The Rams' defense instead held Shaun King and the Bucs to two short field goals, forced a safety on a bad snap, then, when they picked off King at midfield in the fourth quarter trailing 6-5, Warner drove on the short field for a game-winning touchdown pass to Ricky Proehl. The Bucs' final drive included the wildly controversial Bert Emanuel incompletion, but the Rams held and made their way to a Super Bowl matchup with the Titans.

What happened in the Super Bowl: One of the closest games in NFL history came down to a yard, as Mike Jones tackled Kevin Dyson narrowly short of the end zone to seal a 23-16 win for the Rams. Warner threw for 414 yards and two touchdowns, but the Titans kept themselves in the game for most of the contest by dominating in the red zone. They held the Rams to three field goals, a missed kick and a fumbled field goal attempt in their five red zone trips during the first half.


Kurt Warner threw 41 touchdown passes and 13 interceptions in 1999, leading the Rams to a Super Bowl win. AP Photo/Dave Martin
The Titans punched the ball in on their first two red zone trips in the second half, but after they tied the score with an Al Del Greco field goal, Warner finally struck for a big play and hit Isaac Bruce for a 73-yard touchdown to regain the lead. Steve McNair drove the Titans 60 yards to get to the Rams' 10-yard line with five seconds to go, but when the slant to Dyson came up short, the Rams were champs.

What happened next: The Rams took a step backward after Vermeil retired and fell to 10-6, with the defense ranking dead last in points allowed per game. Warner missed five games with a broken hand and threw interceptions on a career-high 5.2% of his pass attempts, but he averaged nearly 10 yards per attempt and completed almost 68% of his passes as the ultimate high-risk, high-reward quarterback.

The offense carried the Rams into the playoffs as a wild-card team, but Warner turned the ball over four times and the Rams went down 31-7 in the fourth quarter to the underdog Saints before a few late touchdowns made things close. The Rams promoted Lovie Smith to defensive coordinator for 2001 and posted a dominant 14-2 campaign, but they ran into the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

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