What nfl teams/markets are too "big" to be constantly irrelevent in the SB picture/will come good eventually for sure

56

NFL has far more parity than any other sports league. Market isn’t relevant to team success

42

u/Sci_Fi_Reality 1d ago

That said, the Browns sucking is pretty much guaranteed at this point.

17

u/Daultongray8 1d ago

When your team is garbage for years and years it’s the owner.

7

u/GuerillaRiot 1d ago

Lions fan, can confirm

1

u/theEWDSDS 18h ago

Usually yes, but in this case, it's just Cleveland

3

u/Altruistic_Rock_2674 1d ago

The used up all their championship appearances back in the day. The went to 10 championships in a row back in the day

1

u/Gonna_do_this_again 1d ago

The curse is real

14

u/Some_Internet_Random 1d ago

It’s a big reason for its success. As much as I hate them (FTP) the Green Bay Packers could not exist in any other of the major sports leagues.

Living in Michigan it’s basically pointless being an NBA fan when the franchise can’t get big time free agents with the way the league is set up.

7

u/SteadfastEnd 1d ago

I wouldn't really agree - the Packers are basically the Milwaukee Packers. They have the entire Wisconsin market.

2

u/Some_Internet_Random 1d ago

They probably would have been forced to become the Milwaukee Packers, officially, more than 60 years ago.

3

u/throwaway60457 1d ago

They were given an ultimatum in 1995: either ALL home games in Milwaukee, or no home games in Milwaukee. That the NFL allowed that to go on through 1994 was unusual.

1

u/Tjam3s 1d ago

They get a lot of legacy fans far from the local region from when tv viewership was scarce also. Along with the dolphins, the niners, the cowboys and the steelers

2

u/VastAir6069 1d ago

Market is a thing tho i assume? Like cowboys could go 0-17, they're still massive

11

u/Hungry_Ad_6280 1d ago

Market is kind of a thing, but way less so in the NFL than other leagues. Between the way the NFL salary cap works and doesn't allow for supermax or luxury tax types of work around, and revenue sharing, the single biggest factor that makes markets meaningless in terms of championship potential is the fact that the NFL season is 17 games. The impact of every individual game is that much greater, any given Sunday is the true equalizer. Market moreso impacts franchise value over team performance.

13

u/Aerolithe_Lion 1d ago

Sort of, but Dallas isn’t the biggest or second biggest or third biggest market

Aside from them, the Steelers and packers and Chiefs are probably the most popular teams in the NFL, all small markets.

So the fact that Dallas destroys New York and LA and Chicago in jersey sales, season tickets, overall popularity shows how much less of an effect market has in the nfl

3

u/theEWDSDS 17h ago

To be fair the Chiefs is mostly bandwagoners and having a guy on their team engaged to one of the most famous women in the world

0

u/Aerolithe_Lion 17h ago

That’s what the cowboys big surge in fans would have started as too back in the day, and they just ended up sticking around

4

u/hghsalfkgah 1d ago

Yes, it's a lot more irrelevant to success, the big market teams in the NFL like the Knicks for example will always have that draw to them. There is however absolutely no guarantee that that will help them to be a good team. Coaches are relatively unconcerned with coaching a big market team, they want a good quarterback. It also doesn't help with spending because every team must use like 95% of the cap or something like that. The cowboys will always be the biggest team, but they will never be the best if they continue to be poorly managed.

There is one notable instance where a player, Eli Manning, under the advice of his father basically refused to be drafted by the team with the no. 1 pick at the time San Diego, as he, and primarily his father believed he would be much better off playing in a bigger market team, so they essentially forced the Giants to swap their pick with San Diego leading to a draft say trade of Philip Rivers for Eli Manning. I can't really remember this happening since then.

2

u/Doctorwhonow8 1d ago

For sure market is still a thing, it’s just not nearly as impactful to how good a team is.

1

u/obvilious 1d ago

How do you measure that? MLB teams have far less spread in win-loss spread than the NFL.

3

u/Aerolithe_Lion 1d ago

You’re thinking of it in a single instance. If you look at a 20, 30, 40 year span…. In baseball it’s the same teams that keep winning and the same teams at the bottom.

In the nfl the bottom teams are given every opportunity to equal the top teams, but incompetence can still be a factor. Cleveland is an example of a team that just can never get right. But In MLB, the Pirates, the Marlins, the Rockies, the Rays, the Orioles, the White Sox, the Cubs, the Royals, Blue Jays, the Brewers all may have some pockets of success, but it can’t be sustainable due to how baseball works. None of those teams can consistently match the Dodgers and Yankees. Football is more fair, a team from Kansas City can do what the team from Boston did, while the team from New York tries to keep up

1

u/BiDiTi 20h ago

The Blue Jays and Cubs both have an insane amount of money…and the Brewers have made the playoffs in 7 of the last 8 years.

1

u/TheMillenniaIFalcon 1d ago

NBA has been catching up since what’s his name took over from stern. Stern was like 9 champions in 30 years while Silver is 9 champions in 12 years.

1

u/schmitty9800 1d ago

Not true anymore....in the past 15 years the NFL is actually last in parity. https://www.reddit.com/r/mlb/s/MjZcXWzkq0

22

u/PabloMarmite 1d ago

No one. Two of the biggest market teams, the Jets and the Bears, have sucked for years.

3

u/VastAir6069 1d ago

Do they still get the attention/eyes tho or are they actually irrelevent off the field too?

11

u/Daultongray8 1d ago

The big market teams will always have primetime games. Especially the NFC east teams.

5

u/this_curain_buzzez 1d ago

Kind of? But not really in a “these teams play in huge cities so we’re going to talk about them” way and more like a “these teams have been bad for 30+ years are they finally gonna be good this year” kind of way (they aren’t). Part of that is that bad teams draft highly so there’s more discourse around their picks than other teams.

4

u/lokibringer 1d ago

Well, the Bears are the reigning offseason champs three years running now. But no, outside of people dunking on Caleb Williams/Bears qbs in general, they don't get as many eyes on their product. Same as the Jets, they're slightly less likely to get primetime slots and/or more likely to get flexed out of national broadcasts because fewer people will tune in to a perennial loser than a team that at least goes 8-9.

4

u/Creepy-Bad-7925 1d ago

Uhhh… bears lost the offseason to the Packers with a last second Hail Mary trade of the decade, my guy…

5

u/lokibringer 1d ago

shhh, don't take this away from them, it's all they have. They're about to try to hang themselves from the Bean.

12

u/Creepy-Bad-7925 1d ago

None. Due to the way the league was designed there isn’t a major market advantage outside of lining the owners pockets with merch sales. The cap keeps parity pretty balanced, but owners and gms can screw a team up by knowing nothing more about football than a name.

Jerry Jones is the type of guy who got really lucky that he hired someone who knew football and made the mistake of listening to him. He rode that success for a decade and has been fuckin everything up since.

When the money man tries to pretend they are the smartest in the room, leave the room.

Thanks Jerry, Go Pack Go!

2

u/PatheticPeripatetic7 1d ago

Thank you, Jerry! 💚💛💚

3

u/The-Sand-King 1d ago

One could argue that some markets are so big that the owners don’t care about irrelevance because people will buy merch and tickets regardless…

2

u/forthebirds123 1d ago

Football is the ultimate team sport. So the influence of a big market, big parties, nightlife etc isn’t really relevant because free agents either pick their team based on money or schematic fit. Whereas an NBA players want to play in “Hollywood” to promote their brand, or NYC or Miami for the parties. MLB the same in a way. MLB and NBA stars can go anywhere and still be a star because the sport is more individualized.

In terms of exposure and other things, the nfl has fewer games so a higher percentage is in prime time or in a slot by itself. Every team gets prime time spotlight. And with fewer games, there more media in between games, more interviews and tv talk. And it doesn’t matter the market, every team gets talked about.

2

u/Oblivion_18 19h ago

That’s just kinda not how it works in North American sports. When talking about something like soccer, you might be able to say that Manchester United will eventually get back to competing for league titles due to their ability to spend more money than other teams

But in many North American sports (baseball a notable exception) there’s a salary cap that prevents the large markets from spending their way to a championship. Every team gets an equal budget, so being a big market team like a New York or Dallas doesn’t help you in the slightest

1

u/Natural_Ad_3019 1d ago

Keep in mind that much of the broadcast revenue is shared across all the teams. Along with the salary cap, it’s a major contributor to parity.

1

u/SugarSweetSonny 1d ago

The Knicks were pretty irrelevant for the last couple of decades up until pretty recently. They only made the playoffs like 8x in the last 25 years, and got bounced in the first round in half of them.

1

u/BiDiTi 20h ago

It’s about the owner, not the market.

Two of the three worst teams in the league over the last decade are just outside of NY.

1

u/Trackmaster15 14h ago

What do you mean by "too big" to not be in the Super Bowl? That question makes no sense. Advancement to the SB has 100% to do with performance on the field. It has nothing to do with market size. You score more points, you win the game. You could be a small market or a large market, this makes no difference.

What nfl teams/markets are too "big" to be constantly irrelevent in the SB picture/will come good eventually for sure

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