Which type of NFL team is the best? Cats? Mammals? Something else? That's what I came to find out and I found a ton of interesting stuff. First let’s take a look at how I broke it down.
I bunched NFL teams into various categories based on their name/mascot. Jaguars, Panthers, Bengals and Lions were cat teams...seems pretty obvious. The trickier ones were separating and defining the “Human” teams and which would be placed into the “Other” category. The “Other” category was easy to make because the Texans are technically not named after Texas people but more so a representation of the Pride of Texas. Not sure what that really is so we’ll drop them in the ‘Other’ Category.
Well what about the 49ers? Shouldn’t they be in the Human Category with the Browns, Titans, Buccaneers? Maybe. But I went for the generalization of the gold rush era, approach with them. For a moment I also thought of separating the human class into warriors and humans but then the Human class would have 2 teams. So they’re all bunched in as one.
The Steelers are named after the steel industry as a whole.
You get the idea.
I went back, and recorded the Franchise records of each team (including previous cities and names). So the Titans record also includes the years they were the Houston Oilers. The Colts record includes when they were the Baltimore Colts...etc. So these are numbers based off the Franchise as a whole.
Here’s what I found.
Cat Teams are by far the worst type of NFL Team. With an average 0.4482 win % and a whopping 0 Super Bowls. Big Goose Egg.
Cat teams are also the only group without a Super Bowl Win.
Bird Teams are next on the list, the only other group with more losses than wins at 0.4938% Thankfully, the Ravens, Eagles and Seahawks have helped out with some Super Bowl wins giving the group an average of 0.8 SB Wins
Human Teams. Such a monstrous group its almost unfair. Boasting a nice 0.5092 win% and a whopping Super Bowl win average of 2.7! That's 27 Super Bowls for the group.
Mammal Teams are the most winning group with a 0.5191% win percentage and a satisfying 1.5 SB Win average thanks to almost everyone. The Bills are the only Mammals to not win a Super Bowl in this group and if they could have just won at least 1 of those Super Bowls back in the 1990’s this would be the only group where every team has a Super Bowl win. Funny enough, they lost all 4 Super Bowl’s to ‘Human Teams’ and ‘Other Teams’ The 2 most heavily Super Bowl victory groups.
And last but not least. The Other Teams. Win rate is just below .500 at 0.4945% and averaging 2.14 Super Bowl wins per team. This category is a mixed bag of teams named after various industries, gods or even because "the fans yelling charge, sounds cool".
Some other fun tidbits I found!
The Jaguars and the Texans are the only 2 NFL teams without a tie.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have the WORST win % in the NFL but now have 2 Super Bowls
The Browns are the only NFL team with a winning % above .500 that have not won a Super Bowl.
I think with that being said, if the NFL ever expands the League, whoever those teams are should consider carefully what they choose their mascot to be.
And here’s a link to my google sheet if you wanna see the data yourself!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mCABlwPVn2UaQzwP7thfbQ_C9vSCkSwFgHYZtQCm--E/edit?usp=sharing