Since the first Super Bowl in January 1967, 118 teams have played in one with another Super Bowl still to come the following season. Twenty-four of them made it back. That is about one in five, and the rate for the losing side is lower: eight of 59.
The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots are a month into finding out where they fall. They opened the 2026 season against each other on Sept. 9 at Lumen Field, seven months after Seattle’s 29-13 win in Super Bowl LX, and the Seahawks won again, 13-10. Through five weeks both teams are 3-2. On history alone, the likeliest outcome is that neither team is in Los Angeles in February.
The only back-to-back rematch
The same two teams have met in consecutive Super Bowls once. The Dallas Cowboys beat the Buffalo Bills 52-17 in Super Bowl XXVII at the Rose Bowl in January 1993, then met them again a year later at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
The second game was closer in the first half. Buffalo led 13-6 at the break, and 55 seconds into the third quarter, Leon Lett stripped Thurman Thomas and Dallas safety James Washington returned the fumble 46 yards to tie it. The Cowboys scored the last 24 points of the game to win 30-13, and Emmitt Smith, with 132 rushing yards and two touchdowns, was named MVP.
Rematches themselves are less unusual. Ten pairs of teams have met in more than one Super Bowl, and the Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers have met three times, in X, XIII and XXX. Super Bowl LX was one of them: New England beat Seattle 28-24 in Super Bowl XLIX after the 2014 season, and no player from that game was left on either roster 11 years later. A meeting in Super Bowl LXI would make the Seahawks and Patriots the second pair to meet in back-to-back Super Bowls.
The teams that made it back
Champions have done it far more often than losers. Across every Super Bowl since 1967, 16 champions reached the next one and nine of them won it again, from the Green Bay Packers of the first two Super Bowls to the Kansas City Chiefs of the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Only eight losing teams came back the next year, and three of those won: the Cowboys in Super Bowl VI, the Miami Dolphins in VII and the Patriots in LIII.
The betting market is tougher on both teams this year than that history is. Seattle is +950 to win Super Bowl LXI, about a 9.5% chance, where 15% of champions have repeated. New England is +2800, about 3.4%, where 5% of beaten finalists came back and won.
Three of those eight returning losers were the Bills. Buffalo reached four straight Super Bowls, XXV through XXVIII, and lost all four: to the New York Giants, to Washington and to Dallas twice. No other team has reached four in a row, and Buffalo has not been back in the 32 seasons since.
The modern version of the Bills’ run ended better. Kansas City reached five Super Bowls in six seasons, LIV, LV, LVII, LVIII and LIX, and won three. The Chiefs account for three of the six times since 2010 that a finalist returned the following season. The Patriots account for two more, after the 2016 and 2017 seasons. The sixth belongs to Seattle, which beat Denver in Super Bowl XLVIII after the 2013 season and returned to lose XLIX to New England.
The 2000s were the leanest stretch. One finalist from the 10 seasons between 2000 and 2009 got back the next year, the 2003 Patriots.
Why so few get back
The calendar works against them first. Super Bowl teams play up to four more games than a team that missed the playoffs and lose about five weeks of the offseason. Seattle’s season ended on Feb. 8, and its next one began on Sept. 9 with the extra weight of the Kickoff Game.
Then winning teams get raided. Seattle lost Super Bowl LX MVP Kenneth Walker III to Kansas City in free agency, along with Boye Mafe, Riq Woolen and Coby Bryant, and offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak left to become head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. The Patriots released Stefon Diggs in March. Injuries arrive on top of that: Sam Darnold hurt his hip on Seattle’s first drive of the opener, and Drew Lock finished the game, while A.J. Brown, New England’s biggest offseason addition, left the same game with an ankle injury in his Patriots debut.
The schedule tightens by design. Under the NFL’s scheduling formula, three of a team’s 17 games are against opponents that finished in the same place in their divisions the year before, so a division winner draws three other division winners. None of this stopped the teams built to last. Six of the last eight returning finalists were the Patriots or the Chiefs, each with a quarterback and head coach who stayed together through the run.
Where the Seahawks and Patriots stand
The two are level at 3-2, but Seattle has the head-to-head win. The Seahawks beat New England in the opener and Arizona 31-7 with Lock at quarterback, lost 33-31 to Washington in Darnold’s return in Week 3, then beat the Chargers 30-23 in Week 4, with Emanuel Wilson scoring twice. In Week 5 they lost 32-29 at home to San Francisco in a game with seven turnovers, two of them Darnold interceptions, decided by Eddy Pineiro’s field goal with 1:56 left. Mike Macdonald is in his third season, with Brian Fleury replacing Kubiak as offensive coordinator.
New England lost the opener in Seattle, beat Pittsburgh 20-3, lost 35-6 in Jacksonville, then beat Buffalo 29-26 in Week 4 with a late touchdown. In Week 5 they beat Las Vegas 45-17 at home, Kubiak’s Raiders, with Drake Maye completing 26 of 34 passes for 374 yards and no interceptions. Maye is in his third season and Mike Vrabel in his second.
History favors Seattle as well. Champions have reached the next Super Bowl 16 times in 59 tries, losers eight. The last losing team to do it was New England, which lost Super Bowl LII after the 2017 season and won LIII a year later. If the Patriots get back this year, the only two Super Bowl losers to return in the last 32 seasons will both be the Patriots.
The rarest trip in the sport
Sixty Super Bowls in, getting back the following year remains one of the hardest things in football. The Cowboys and Bills managed a rematch once, the Bills reached four in a row and lost them all, and the Chiefs and Patriots put together the longest runs of the salary cap era. The Seahawks and Patriots already have two meetings behind them, in Super Bowl XLIX and Super Bowl LX, plus this year’s opener. A fourth in Los Angeles in February would be only the second back-to-back Super Bowl rematch the game has seen.