We don’t want to be the ones to spit in the wonderful postseason stews being simmered in San Diego and New York. Both teams have put together aromatic masterpieces, rich, and meaty, and worthy of respect.

 

But our old pal history tells us that the Giants and Chargers are going to be eating gruel for a long offseason.

 

You see, the Giants finished the regular season at 10-6 – no reason to hang your head, it gets you in the playoffs, and that's all that matters.

 

Sort of. Unfortunately, teams that finish 10-6 (or worse) in the regular season have had a very poor track record when it comes to Super Bowl glory.

 

The list of Super Bowl champions that had 10-6 records in the regular season is very short. In fact, it includes only the 1988 49ers, a team led by Joe Montana. We remember Joe Montana. We idolized Joe Montana. And you, Mr. Eli Manning, are no Joe Montana.

 

And there was nothing regular about the 1988 regular season, either – not a single team finished better than 12-4, and ten teams won 10 or more games. It was a wide-open field, a term that would hardly be used to describe this 2007 campaign.

   

We digress.

Fourteen teams with records of 10-6 or worse have advanced to the championship round since the NFL expanded to 16-game seasons in 1978 and made the 10-6 record possible. Those 14 teams went 2-12 in the championship round – and one of those wins came when the 9-7 Rams beat the 10-6 Buccaneers in the 1979 NFC title game.

 

So, in the 12 championship games where 10-6 (or worse) played 11-5 (or better), the "10-6ers" went 1-11.

 

That’s a pretty rough track record, 1-11. That’s only one more win than you have, and you’re not even a football team.  

 

There have, however, been three 11-5 Cinderella teams to win the Super Bowl title – the 1980 Raiders, 2001 Patriots and 2005 Steelers.

 

This is hope for San Diego, 11-5 during the regular campaign and needing only to overcome a 15-point spread against an undefeated team on the road to be a 50-50 shot at becoming the fourth.

 

But our unsmiling friend reality won’t even allow Chargers fans that glimmer of precedent.

 

Since 1978, there have been 51 playoff games between two teams separated by three or more games in the regular-season standings – i.e., the 16-0 Patriots vs. 11-5 Chargers and the 13-3 Packers vs. the 10-6 Giants.

 

The team with the worse record has won just 8 times in 51 tries, a dramatically terrible .157 winning percentage.

 

In addition, the teams with the better record averaged just a hair under 30 points per game (29.5) while the losers managed only 13.9 – a difference of more than two touchdowns. That's a remarkable rate of dominance in any collection of NFL games, let alone between playoff teams.

 

If the Chargers or Giants should buck this trend Sunday, they'll likely do it by a slim margin – of the eight upset winners, four won by a field goal and two others by a touchdown or less.

 

In fact, the only inferior team to pull the upset by a healthy margin did it twice – the 1987 Vikings, who upset New Orleans and San Francisco in the tainted strike season.

 

So, if it feels like a foregone conclusion that it’ll be Green Bay and New England in the Super Bowl, there’s a reason – it’s called 30 years of postseason history.