Ranking the Potential Super Bowl LIV Matchups

There are eight teams remaining in the NFL playoffs, which means 16 potential matchups we could be watching on Feb. 2. Which pairing would we most like to see? We rank the options.

Coming into the NFL season there are 256 possible Super Bowl matchups. Eventually they are whittled down, one-by-one, until we’re left with a game that history will remember forever. Right now, with eight teams left, there are plenty of game combinations worthy of joining the previous 53.

Maybe your dream game is off the board. That’s the case if you wanted to see Tom Brady against Jimmy Garoppolo. Or Patrick Mahomes against the Bears. Or if you’re a Lions fan or something.

But there are still 16 possible Super Bowl matchups, including plenty of good ones. So let’s rank them all below.

What’s the criteria? There’s no hard and fast rule, but I took many things into account: How fun the game would be, who the quarterbacks would be, franchise history or significance of the game to its fans, fun matchups and likely storylines, etc., etc. Let’s get to it.

16. Titans-49ers

Listen, there’s no shame in being ranked No. 16. To be clear, the world would still be able to pump itself up to watch a Titans-49ers Super Bowl. It’s the Super Bowl! It’s the last meaningful football game until September! The 49ers are the top seed in the NFC! This just happens to be the game I think would have the least amount of buzz. 

It would still be a fun game, featuring two teams that said they wanted to run the ball this season, and then actually came out and did it. The Ravens led the NFL in rushing yards, but so much of that was from Jackson. These two teams finished second and third in the league in yards on the ground. And I know rushing yards often correlate with wins because teams run when they get ahead, but I think these are two teams that truly want to run to win, not the other way around. This would be a throwback, smashmouth Super Bowl I’d happily watch.

15. Titans-Seahawks

This is true of any game involving the Titans, but it bears mentioning at some point: By far the funniest part of the game would be Ryan Tannehill playing a Super Bowl in the Dolphins’ home stadium. Of all the possible Super Bowl storylines that would be shoved down our throats for two weeks, that would be the most delightfully weird. I know the Super Bowl crowd is not going to be a bunch of Miami Dolphins fans, but the vision of Tannehill returning to Miami as the starting quarterback for the AFC champions is a great image.

Trask Smith/CSM/Shutterstock

14. Texans-Vikings

It’s impossible not to focus on the quarterbacks when making a list like this. Yes, there are 52 players on a team and all that, but let’s be honest—it’s a quarterbacks league. They’re the faces on the billboard, the players doing the interviews on the stage at media night and the people we tune in to watch.

While it would be great to watch Deshaun Watson play in a Super Bowl, he's the clear No. 3 quarterback in the AFC right now; it’s hard to quibble with ranking his games below games featuring Patrick Mahomes and Jackson. There’s a reason the Texans always get the Saturday afternoon wild-card game. But Watson’s day is coming.

13. Texans-49ers

Here are the Texans again, this time against a superior team and a better defense (though the Vikings have a chance to prove that incorrect on Saturday). I think this game could look very similar to a Texans-Vikings game, but the 49ers would bring just a little more juice. No disrespect to the fine people of Minnesota. Texans-Vikings would be a matchup of franchises trying to win their first Super Bowl, and there are several of those. San Francisco would be trying to win their sixth, which would tie them for most all-time with the Patriots and Steelers. The 49ers held the record by themselves after 1994, until the Cowboys equaled them the next year and then both the Steelers and Patriots caught and surpassed them.

12. Titans-Packers

Welcome to the Matt LaFleur Bowl. The Packers’ first-year head coach is not a household name like many of his peers in the divisional round, but after these two weeks he would be. LaFleur was the offensive coordinator last year in Tennessee under Mike Vrabel, and this would be a quick turnaround to the face his old boss in the Super Bowl. They only spent one year together, and they specialize in different sides of the ball, so this wouldn’t really be a mentor-mentee Super Bowl like an Andy Reid-Doug Pederson or a Bill Belichick-Bill O’Brien game, but it would still be notable.

11. Titans-Vikings

Hello, No. 6 seeds! This might not look like the sexiest matchup on paper, but admittedly there is something bizarrely appealing about the two lowest-seeded teams facing off in the big game. It’s the Any Given Sunday Bowl, a rallying cry that any team can sneak in and get here. The 2005 Steelers and ’10 Packers have won the Super Bowl as No. 6 seeds, and this game would guarantee that a third team would join that list.

The game would be fun on the field too. Kirk Cousins, Ryan Tannehill and Jimmy Garoppolo are the only QBs in the playoffs currently on their second teams. But Garoppolo only played two games with the Patriots, and the other two players have histories of falling short with their previous teams. Both went somewhere else and have worked to change the perception of them, and one of them would come away with the ultimate prize. We’d also get a great running back matchup with Derrick Henry and Dalvin Cook, two true workhorse backs.

10. Texans-Packers

Honestly we’re spoiled that Deshaun Watson vs. Aaron Rodgers comes in at No. 10. With Tom Brady and Drew Brees knocked out last weekend, Rodgers is now the elder statesman of the active Super Bowl champions club—which actually just includes him and Russell Wilson. It would be fun to see him fend off anyone in the up-and-coming generation of younger quarterbacks.

The Texans also have the weakest defense of anyone left in the AFC field, which means this gives us the best chance to see a vintage Rodgers game, putting up the type of numbers we’ve been used to seeing throughout his career. 

This would also pit one of the NFL’s most historic franchises against its newest—the winners of Super Bowl I against a team playing in their own first Super Bowl. Beyond Watson, it would also be great for all-time talents like J.J. Watt and DeAndre Hopkins to experience a Super Bowl.

9. Texans-Seahawks

Everyone would want to turn this into the Jadeveon Clowney Bowl. But in this world where both teams made the Super Bowl, the trade seems to have worked out for both sides. These are the two playoff teams with the worst point differentials of the whole 12-team field, with the Seahawks plus-7 and the Texans minus-7. Call it the Net Zero Bowl. Anyway, despite maybe not being the best teams that could meet in the Super Bowl, they would be among the more exciting. Before Jackson authored the season he just had, you would have said that Deshaun Watson and Russell Wilson were the two most exciting QBs in the league when they’re on the run. They drew comparisons when they faced each other in Week 8 of Watson’s rookie year, when each of them threw for 400 yards and four touchdowns in a 41-38 Seahawks win. It would be fun to see the redux in the Super Bowl.

8. Chiefs-Vikings

The NFL celebrated it’s 50th season with Super Bowl IV between the Chiefs and Vikings. Why not end the 100th season with a rematch? It’s been a rough 50 years since that game for these two teams. The Chiefs haven’t gotten back to the Super Bowl, while the Vikings returned in 1973, ’74 and ’76, lost three more times and then embarked on a 43-year dry spell. So while the Texans and Titans/Oilers are still looking for the first Super Bowl title in their histories, this is probably the best you can do if you like a game with two tortured fan bases. It would also give us Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs offense trying to put up points against a good defense, but banged-up secondary.

Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports

7. Ravens-Vikings

So much purple. Too much purple? Unclear. The NFL rotates which conference gets to be the home team and this year it’s the AFC, so the Ravens would get to decide which team wears purple. They typically wear purple at home, and they’d get dibs.

But anyway, the game on the field would be a good one too. You’ll notice this is the first game featuring soon-to-be-MVP Lamar Jackson. A Super Bowl would be a fitting end for the season he just had, and the history-making Ravens take up four of this list’s final seven spots. The Vikings may be last on my list of NFC opponents for them, but they still earn a spot in the top half of the list.

6. Chiefs-49ers

It’s rare that the tight ends would be the top storyline going into any game, but you actually have to figure that might be the case if we get a Travis Kelce vs. George Kittle Super Bowl. They are the two best players in the league at their position, and they’re also both great personalities who would likely lean into their first experience dealing with media night and the Super Bowl hoopla. Mahomes vs. Jimmy G would be fun. And since I didn’t mention it with the previous two 49ers games: Give me Super Bowl Week Richard Sherman. Andy Reid and Kyle Shanahan would also present a fun coaching matchup. Two guys regarded as offensive gurus, one in his 21st season as a head coach and one in his third.

5. Ravens-Packers

The Ravens and Chiefs have the two longest active winning streaks in the NFL right now, but this would give us two teams with the longest winning streaks in each respective conference.

All of the matchups from here on out give us superstar quarterbacks on both sides—come on, we’re talking about dream Super Bowls—but Jackson vs. Rodgers but would be a fun contrast in styles. I also love games where one star QB has a Super Bowl ring and the other is fighting for his first. Think Elway and Favre in 1997, Brees and Manning in 2009, Rodgers and Roethlisberger in ’10, among others. Yes, it’s reductive to play “count the ringzzz” when we’re discussing QBs’ careers in full. But there’s a reason people do it, and it’s the reason the stakes of these games are so high.

Seeing a young Jackson in his second year against a former MVP nine years removed from his last trip to this stage would be a storyline we’d talk about forever. And these two teams have plenty of supporting cast members on offense like Mark Ingram and Davante Adams, plus strong defenses. Like any other in the top five, it would be a great game on paper.

4. Chiefs-Seahawks

Here’s another game with a potential all-time quarterback matchup. Plus Andy Reid and Pete Carroll are household names who have been in the Super Bowl before. They also both happen to be great coaches at prepping their teams for every game, who still frequently find themselves as targets of criticism during the games. Would it be maddening at times? Possibly! That would make for a fun game too though, just waiting to see how the final five minutes of a close game would play out.

Another fun historical note is that these teams were division rivals when the Seahawks played in the AFC West from 1977 until 2001, though they’ve never met in a postseason game. Stand up, 1980s AFC West fans! This is your moment. Though I think the rest of us would have plenty of reasons to enjoy the game as well.

3. Chiefs-Packers

Finally, we’d get to answer the question: Are Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes real-life friends or is it just an act for the State Farm commercials? But seriously, if the league office, or the TV networks and advertisers were able to pick any QB matchup in August they could magically transport into the Super Bowl, this might be the one they’d have picked. Much would also be made of the historical angle, with this being a rematch of Super Bowl I. The league has been eager to overdo it with the hype of its 100th season, and this would be billed as an appropriate way to end it. That doesn’t really make sense, since Super Bowl I has little to do with the league’s first season. It would make much more sense if this was Super Bowl 50 or SB100. 

But that’s fine, just go with it. Bring on the Hank Stram and Vince Lombardi highlights. Seriously, this would be an awesome game with two star quarterbacks and two better-than-many-people-realize defenses. It would be a classic in every sense of the word, right down to the uniforms.

2. Ravens-49ers

A battle between two No. 1 seeds would be a rematch of Super Bowl XLVII, which sounds fun but means very little. So much about these teams has changed since then—just about everyone except John Harbaugh and Justin Tucker—but cue the Beyoncé and power outage jokes anyway. 

This would also deliver a game with the two top-scoring teams in the NFL. As much fun as it would be to see those offenses put up points, the great battle would be Baltimore’s offense against San Francisco’s defense. If the Niners advance this far, it means they’ll likely be healthier on defense. Put Dee Ford and Kwon Alexander back in the lineup and watch that D start playing like they were the first half of the year. Then let’s watch them try to contain Jackson. This would be a great strength-on-strength game.

1. Ravens-Seahawks

For the last two years, Mahomes has been my favorite player in the league to watch. If you made me pick any two teams to play on any old day in the calendar, I’d pick the Chiefs to be one of those two teams. But this isn’t just any Super Bowl, it’s the dream Super Bowl following the 2019 season, so Lamar Jackson simply has to be in that game.

The best Super Bowls are emblematic of the season’s main storylines. Great seasons should get a great Super Bowl along with them, like Brett Favre’s first MVP in 1995 or Kurt Warner and the Greatest Show on Turf Rams in 2001. It’s true even if the teams lose, like Dan Marino in 1984 or Cam Newton in 2015.

This was Jackson’s season; we talked about him and the Ravens literally starting in Week 1. It just makes too much sense for a Super Bowl to punctuate his MVP breakout campaign. The stakes of having this season remembered in large part for the team outcome of one game is what makes this all so exciting.

Why the Seahawks as the opponent? First off, there’s just something about that team where every important game they play seems to take the express train to crazy town. It feels like every time America gathers to watch the Seahawks, the odds of something profoundly unbelievable happening skyrocket.

The storylines here are endless. It’s the only possible matchup between two coaches who have already won the Super Bowl, in Harbaugh and Carroll. It features the only two quarterbacks who received First Team All-Pro votes this year, and two quarterbacks who seem to be at their best—and are certainly at their most exciting—when they’re on the move. We’d have plenty of familiar names and faces adding to the drama. We’d see Jackson trying to win his first Super Bowl, Wilson trying to win his second, a possible storybook ending for Marshawn Lynch’s return to Seattle and Earl Thomas going from flipping off the Seahawks sideline to standing opposite his old team in the most-watched TV program of the year. There are many great possible games on this list, but Ravens-Seahawks just has too many exciting plot lines to pick anything else.

Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.