"I politely inform you that the Rams of 2001 outscored opponents by an average of 14.4 points per game, outscoring opponents by 230 points in the process," wrote Imig. "I didn't see them on your list of the most dominant teams, but I could be mildly weetoddid."

 

Well, Pat, we're not medical professionals. But based upon the keen observations we made while boozing with you down in St. Louis last spring, being mildly weetoddid is the least of your worries.

 

But much like the broken clock that's right twice a day, you still bring up a very good point that we need to address because you've unwittingly uncovered a contradiction in our methodology that we've corrected below. 

 

So light up another can of Sterno, men, and use it's romantic flicker to highlight our new list of the most dominant teams of the Super Bowl Era below. The big news from the list? 

 

No soup for you, 2007 Patriots! The undefeated Patriots no longer top the list of most dominant teams. In fact, they're not even close.

 

Here's the quick version of what we we've done and what we will do to statistically steady the Goodship Gridiron in the wake of the JoeSportsFan crew's stunning discovery.

 

The 2001 Rams were not included in our list of most dominant teams for a logical reason: because when we created the original list two years ago, we looked only at teams that scored twice as many points as their opponents.

 

The 2001 Rams, who outscored opponents 503-273 (31.44 PPG to 17.06), failed to make the cut even though, as Imig pointed out, at +14.4 PPG, their per-game scoring differential (not to mention their gross scoring differential) was greater than that of a number of teams on our list of most dominant teams.

 

We used a 2 to 1 scoring margin as the cut-off to determine "dominance" because we felt looking only at gross or per-game scoring margin would have unfairly favored modern teams – such as the 2001 Rams or 2007 Patriots – who play in a league where scoring is much higher.

 

FOUR
To cite a specific example: is it more impressive that the 2001 Rams, at the height of the Live Ball Era, outscored opponents by 14.4 PPG? Or is it more impressive that the 1975 Rams, at the height of the Dead Ball Era, outscored teams by 12.7 PPG, but by greater than 2 to 1 (22.3 to 9.6)?

Actually, we don't know the true answer of which is more impressive. But those were the criteria and the logic we used. If you didn't score twice as many points as your opponents, you didn't make the cut.

 

 

FIVE
However, Mr. Imig ... here's our contradiction. Teams had to outscore their opponents by a 2 to 1 margin to make our list of most dominant teams. You all get that now and it's fairly solid logic.

 

But, when it came time to rank the teams, how did we rank them? That's right: by scoring differential, which favors modern teams. So on one hand we determined that you needed to score twice as many points as your opponents to make the cut so that we might treat Dead Ball Era and Live Ball Era teams as equals; then we sent Dead Ball Era teams to the back of the bus by ranking the most dominant clubs by scoring differential.

 

To be more consistent, we probably should have ranked teams by scoring ratio. After all, it was a ratio we used (2 to 1) to determine inclusion in our exclusive club.

 

So here it is shiny and anew as a morning snowfall: a look at the most dominant teams of the Super Bowl Era based upon scoring ratio. It's radically different than the original list we created two years ago and that's now topped by the 2007 Patriots. You can also click here for a sortable spreadsheet and do your own statistical party tricks with the most dominant teams of the Super Bowl Era.