If anyone could predict the form of a team at the beginning of the season, you’d swear it was the former Harvard economist and current quarterback for the Washington Football Team- Ryan Fitzpatrick. As an economist, and on-field talent, he’s one of the most likely exponents of the game to be able to detect patterns and see some sort of logical progression or regression where the rest of us can’t see anything at all.
But as he said, the one thing that he’s learned the most since suiting up for the NFL is that you always have to expect the unexpected. You never know what’s going to happen on any given Sunday when you walk out onto the field of battle. A trip or a fumble, a mistimed pass, they can all change the outcome of a game in a heartbeat. That is probably why the seasoned gridiron veteran chose to make the statement that he did. It’s better to concentrate on the moment than letting your focus drift in an attempt to see some sort of pattern where the players can, or more importantly, don’t want to see one.
Fitzpatrick is an unstoppable machine when he’s lined up with the rest of his team, but he’s wrong about one thing. There is a pattern in football, and it is possible to see it emerge if you pour over a historical record, study the form of the game, and take past victories and losses into account. By looking to the past, you can start to predict the future, or more accurately a possible future, and begin to predict the outcome of a game and a season, which can help you to sharpen your playoff picks and give you a clearer idea of who is going to make it through to the end of the season and emerge as the Super Bowl champions.
But if you’re placing a few bucks on the playoffs, it doesn’t actually matter if the team that you’re rooting for makes it all the way to the final victory parade. All that really matters is if they make it to the playoffs. As we’ve already said, sometimes all of the clues that you actually need to base your choices on are staring you in the face. You just need to know what you’re looking for. And that’s why we’re going to take a quick look at which NFL teams have won the most playoff games, and which teams have made it through to the final round of the circus without actually managing to bring the big prize home.
Which Team Has Won The Least Playoff Games?
If we’re going to look at the teams that are most likely to make the playoffs, we’re also going to need to look at the teams who are least likely to win the playoffs and have a pretty disastrous record when they make it that far. As far as making it to the playoffs, the Houston Texans (played in ten, won four), the Arizona Cardinals (played in sixteen, won seven), the Carolina Panthers (played in seventeen, won nine) and the Jacksonville Jaguars (played in fourteen, won seven) on paper seem to be the most dismal choices for playoff picks.
But on paper isn’t the same as in the real world. There are teams who have made the playoffs but have fared considerably worse than the quartet that we’ve already mentioned. Based solely on the record of making it to the playoffs and then not being able to follow through and step up to the mark when they set foot on the football field, no one in history has lost as many playoff games as the Cincinnati Bengals have. They’ve fought their way to nineteen playoff games, but they had less gas left in their collective tank than any other NFL team, and they’ve lost a total of fourteen of those games. That means that they’ve won five, which gives them a playoff success rate of just over twenty-five percent. And they’re not on their own.
The Detroit Lions have made it all the way to twenty playoff games, but when they get there, something always seems to go wrong on the field and they can never seem to carry that energy forward. They’re running at a playoff win percentage of just over thirty percent as they’ve dropped the ball in thirteen games and have only ever managed to win seven. They’re not exactly anyone’s top choice of playoff picks.
Which NFL Team Has Won The Most Playoff Games?
So now we know who you don’t want to choose for your playoff picks, it’s time to take a quick look at the teams who you should seriously consider adding to your list. Given that they’ve been an NFL fixture for longer than any other team in history, the Green Bay Packers are always a good choice as they’ve made the playoffs sixty times and have won thirty-six of the games that they played in. Or how about the San Francisco 49’ers who’ve made the playoffs fifty-two times even though they’ve only won thirty-two of those games, or the Dallas Cowboys who with sixty-three playoffs to their name and thirty-five victories, are one of the most successful teams in NFL history.
But they’re not THE most successful team in the history of the playoffs, as there’s one team who has won more playoff victories than any other, by a pretty large margin. And if you’ve already started muttering the words “Tom Brady” under your breath, then congratulations, you’ve taken first place and if we had a gold medal to give you we would. That’s right folks, the most successful team in the long, and incredible history of the playoffs are the New England Patriots, who have won thirty-seven of their fifty-eight playoff games.
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