The National Football League had played 36 Super Bowls before the Oakland Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers met to complete the 2002 season. In all those games, no team that had lost on opening day at home had gone on to capture a Vince Lombardi Trophy.

The Buccaneers had opened their 2002 campaign with a home loss to the New Orleans Saints so clearly they were not going to beat the Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII.

Oh yes, they did. And they did it decisively, 48-21.

So, the rule that no team that lost at home on opening day was not as influential in that game as a coach for the Buccaneers that had coached the Raiders in the years prior to that Super Bowl … Jon Gruden. The Buccaneers coach knew the Raiders personnel as well as their own coaches. The Raiders also used some of the same formations and keys in the game that Gruden had schooled his Bucs to defend which prompted Tampa Bay defender John Lynch to say, “We know what they are going to do.”

The Buccaneers also had the better defense and the night before the game, the Raiders starting center, Barret Robbins, suffered a breakdown that landed him in a bar in Tijuana and the Betty Ford clinic for a month after the Raiders loss.

Yes, there were more elements to feed the Buccaneers success than simply a longstanding trend of a team that lost at home on opening day didn’t end their season in a hail of confetti in their team colors.

This year, the New England Patriots won ten straight games in which they scored at least 23 points while allowing 23 or fewer.

Is that significant?

More significant than losing at home on opening day?

Well, no team had ever done the 23/23 for and against trend at least seven games in a row without winning their league championship. Five teams had done it at least seven times in a row since the 1949 Philadelphia Eagles were the first. They won the National Football League Championship that year. The 1961 Houston Oilers did it nine straight games and won the American Football League title that season.

In the Super Bowl era, the 1984 San Francisco 49ers, 1999 St. Louis Rams and 2024 Philadelphia Eagles all did it at least seven weeks in a row and won Super Bowls XIX, XXXIV and LIX respectively.

Okay, take the underdog Patriots to win next week at Levi’s Stadium … they can’t lose … at least not by this measure.

But wait, before you back the Pats, know this, the Seattle Seahawks have a case to be made too. They have a defense that for much of the season and into the playoffs limited opponents rushing yards to the lowest average in the league along with the best average against the pass. Only one team in NFL history advanced to a Super Bowl while holding the fewest yards against in both rushing and passing statistics and that was the 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers.

That year, Terry Bradshaw and company won the first of four Super Bowls they would capture that decade, and they did it while becoming the first Super Bowl winner who was making their first trip to the title game against an experienced Super Bowl team. Since the Green Bay Packers beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II, a year in which Vince Lombardi’s team was making their second appearance in the game and the Raiders their first, it happened three more times before the Steelers and Vikings showdown in Roman numeral IX.

The three other Super Bowls that featured an experienced team versus a first timer were the Baltimore Colts, Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins to complete the 1970, 71 and 72 seasons. They all won while downing the Cowboys, Dolphins and Washington Redskins respectively.

Then the Steelers, meeting a Vikings team in their third Super Bowl, won on their first trip to the game, and like the Buccaneers 28 years later, they did it decisively. The Steelers number one defense shut down the Vikings in a 16-6 Steel Curtain victory.

So, take the Seahawks with the better defense. Wait a minute, the Patriots have a stat that has never lost too.

So, the defense and 23/23 rule are neutralized, and Super Bowl LX is going to be decided by something else. Something that is going to prove to be more significant.

It’s our job to find it … before it happens.

We do know this, a team that lost at home on opening day is going to win the Super Bowl this year. We know that because both the Patriots and Seahawks lost at home on opening day to kick off their 2025 campaigns.