Ranking All 49 Super Bowl Champions: Redskins 1991 #1

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We often complain about the lack of credit given that 1991 team, most of us agree there weren't many all around teams who were better. Well, here are some well deserved accolades.



Ranking all 49 Super Bowl champions, from best to worst | For The Win

Yes, the 1991 Washington Redskins are the greatest team to win a Super Bowl. They’re also the poster children for how numbers always lie. Criminally underrated, the ’91 Skins were one halftime Hail Mary and a lineman-eligible drop in the end zone during a meaningless Week 17 game from being undefeated. They have the second-highest point differential of any Super Bowl champion. They had 50 sacks and Mark Rypien, who started all 16 games, was sacked just seven times. (Tom Brady was sacked four times on Sunday alone.) They played a tougher schedule than any team in the top 10 of this list (they’re the only team whose opponents had a collective record of .500 or better). They ran through the NFC playoffs by a score of 65-17 and were whupping up on Buffalo 37-10 in the Super Bowl when they took the foot off the gas and allowed Buffalo two garbage-time TDs. (At the same pint the 'Skins were doing that, the ’85 Bears were running it up by giving The Fridge a Super Bowl touchdown.) Don Beebe, who played on four straight Super Bowl teams with the Bills, said this Redskins team was the best he’d ever seen. Paul Zimmermann, the great Sports Illustrated writer, once wrote this Washington team was as good as any. But because Mark Rypien was the quarterback, Earnest Byner was the running back and the defense was led up front by Charles Mann, people automatically assume Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders were better. Maybe, but it all starts up front and The Hogs were the best ever. Either way, give me the ’91 Redskins and you take the field — I’ll win 25 or more.
 
I'm not going to lie. Reading the headline, my biased opinion wholeheartedly agreed with that. But my honest opinion was that there were better Super Bowl teams. I think of some of those 49er teams a few years before that. But after reading the reasons stated in the article, even the unbiased part of me agrees with that. They are still the most underrated team in Super Bowl history. Not because they were overlooked before the game, but because no one remembers them now. They didn't have flash or pizzazz. They just went out and beat you down.
 
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Wow, can't say I expected to see us #1. I'd agree with Kel, there may have been better teams, but the 91 team is certainly up there in terms of all-time great teams.
 
I can support this particular team being #1 all time with the criteria the writer uses. We were stacked at every single position on the field. If one guy went down, we wouldn't lose much from another stepping into their place, either...every position to backup players, you could expect solid play from everyone.

Just another example of why Gibbs should be considered top 3 all-time Coaches. Guys like Walsh had a scheme that led to a coaching tree that is rather extensive and says a lot about him, but Gibbs got everything from every player, and was able to scheme. He may not have the tree of coaches that followed him like Walsh, but he is every bit the coach Walsh was. Lombardi? Well...he's just another category as far as I'm concerned.
 
If the '91 Redskins aren't #1, they should definitely be in the conversation.

"Criminally underrated" is absolutely right.
 
That 91 team was definitely 1 of the best ever. I think they are somewhat forgotten b/c of the way the did it. Games were almost boring that year b/c they were never close. They systematically dismantled opponents. Games were usually over by halftime. That team was very good and quite deep at all levels. HOF coach with top staff and their very best. Very good QB, linebackers, secondary, receivers, running backs, but they were absolutely dominant on both lines, which is another reason they're kinda forgotten. They definitely were not sexy lol. Those lines were the best in the league though. If you go watch Mark Rypien highlights from 91, you almost never see a pass rusher in the frame. Defenders just couldn't even get close to him. The dline on the other hand were always all over the other teams QB. The classic example of a team winning games in the trenches.
 
Love seeing the love for the best team of all time. I have a friend from HS who is a Bears fan and he admits freely that the 91 team would have kicked the 85 Bears' ass handily.

I roll my eyes everytime I hear someone say the 85 Bears are the GOAT.
 
One of my tests to see how serious a football fan is when I meet them is to ask them who they think the greatest SB winner of all time is. Usually, they will mention their own team with an embarrassed look (which I totally understand) and then move on. If the 91 Skins are mentioned, I know I can talk real football with them.

If they say the 04 Pats, I know I'm dealing with an idiot.
 
I've been watching some of the "Super Bowl Classics" on the NFL Network ... and last night had to suffer through Indy vs Chicago 2007.

Someone will have to explain to me the thinking behind designating that game "classic." The Bears were embarrassingly bad. Not just the quarterbacking--though Rex surely put in the worst Super Bowl performance ever by a QB--but the penalties, missed assignment, missed tackles, awful time management, and just about anything else you can think of.

The Colts we just ok that day, but it would have taken a Herculean effort on their part to lose to the 2007 Bears.
 
I take the 1989 49ers off the list as the greatest because it was the same flawed Denver team that the Redskins beat 42-10 a couple of years earlier.

The Bills were actually a very good team in 1990 and 1991. Their close loss to the Giants on the missed field goal and the loss to the Redskins the next year put them in a spiral where they made the SB the next two years but psychologically weren't going to beat Dallas. The pressure of the losses had them playing as tight as any team I have ever seen.

To me one of the best Super Bowls was the 21-17 Steelers/Cowboys game.

There were enough HOFers in that game to field a team on its own and the drama/intensity of the game matched it.

What takes the New England teams down IMO from being high on this list is both the opponents they faced AND the scores of those games.

The Patriots lost twice to a wild-card team in the Giants, beat a decent 2003 Carolina team 32-29, and a good but not great Philly team 24-21.

Last year's game was a Seattle win until Pete Carroll had a brain fart at the goal line. In any event that was hardly a game for the ages.

Only the 2001 surprise win over the favored Kurt Warner Rams stands out, and now the outcome of that game is clouded by the whole Spygate scandal and thoughts that NE had an unfair advantage heading into the contest.
 
In Peter Queen's list of the 5 greatest teams of the SB, the 91 Skins not only don't make it, but the 1990 Bills do. King claims the 91 Redskins just didn't dominate teams the way the greats did...uh, how is opening the season with multiple shutouts and setting a record for margin of victory in the playoffs not dominating, but coming within one point of a team playing its backup QB is? Did the Bills really degrade so significantly in one year that the team that HUMILIATED them in 91 would have lost to the 1990 team? Seriously, you jackass? What a fat douchebag.
 
In Peter Queen's list of the 5 greatest teams of the SB, the 91 Skins not only don't make it, but the 1990 Bills do. King claims the 91 Redskins just didn't dominate teams the way the greats did...uh, how is opening the season with multiple shutouts and setting a record for margin of victory in the playoffs not dominating, but coming within one point of a team playing its backup QB is? Did the Bills really degrade so significantly in one year that the team that HUMILIATED them in 91 would have lost to the 1990 team? Seriously, you jackass? What a fat douchebag.

I know I'm biased, but that may be the dumbest thing I've ever read. Holy shit. What an idiot.
 
The Bills were actually a very good team in 1990 and 1991. Their close loss to the Giants on the missed field goal and the loss to the Redskins the next year put them in a spiral where they made the SB the next two years but psychologically weren't going to beat Dallas. The pressure of the losses had them playing as tight as any team I have ever seen.

If the Bills beat the Giants in that first-of-four trips, I think they could have won one more. Definitely not against us... we completely demolished them and the game wasn't even in the same universe as the score... but at least the first one against Dallas. The 'Skins were completely disrespected against the Bills that year... the Bills had the #1 Offense in the league, but we were #2 (while leading the league in points) and had a much more potent Defense (Buffalo was second to last).

Maybe if Thurman Thomas hadn't lost his helmet... ;)

Nick
 
I was at that game... it was something else. And it's about Darn time the 91 Redskins got the credit they deserve!!!!

2 WRs over 1000 yards
1 RB over 1000 yards
QB sacked 7 times total

That was the year I became spoiled in thinking what the team should be like every single year. People like Mann and Marshall just coming up and destroying people and then returning to the huddle like it was not a huge deal. We didn't just beat teams, we dismantled them and it was FUN to watch games in that season.

Greatest Super Bowl Teams Ever: 1991 Washington Redskins, 1985 Chicago Bears | Bleacher Report

bleacher report ranks them #1 all time...as they should. I remember the Falcons game still as one of the ones that had me fired up because Glanville was running his stupid mouth "are ya scareyed?" and made his sidelines look like a celebrity event instead of a real game. He came in cockier than he should have after we destroyed them in the regular season!! I'll never forget Holyfield sneaking off and the seat cushions raining down!!
 

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