Has any team that played in the Hall of Fame Game won the Super Bowl?
The New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns will kickoff the NFL preseason on Thursday from Canton, Ohio to kick off the Hall of Fame Weekend.
There are less than 24 hours until the Hall of Fame Game kicks off the NFL preseason, as New York and Cleveland will square off in the Hall of Fame Game from Tom Benson Field in Canton, Ohio. There are 192 days until Super Bowl Sunday, and if we take history as an indicator, neither the Jets or the Browns will be lifting the Lombardi Trophy in mid February.
Hall of Fame curse?
The Hall of Fame Game has been around since the 1960s and actually outdates the Super Bowl. Since the AFL-NFL merger, there has yet to be a team to participate in the game that has went on to win the Super Bowl in that same year.
The first Super Bowl was played in 1967, but even before that, the Hall of Fame Game was a bad omen for teams looking to win an NFL Championship. In the four Hall of Fame Games before the Super Bowl era, just two of the participating teams went on to the playoffs.
Over the last 60+ years, there have been 114 teams to play in Canton’s biggest game, and 57% of them (65 of 114) have missed the playoffs. Which means that it is likely that one of the two teams kicking off on Thursday will miss the postseason. One of the strangest stats about the Hall of Fame “curse” is from 2009-2014 (with the exclusion of 2011 when there was no HoF Game because of the NFL Lockout) no team went to the playoffs. Ten straight teams that kicked off the preseason missed the playoffs until the Steelers and the Vikings ended that spell in 2015.
Three HoF teams have made Super Bowl Sunday
Both the Jets and the Browns are coming into this season with high hopes after disappointing 2022 campaigns. New York has been buzzing since Aaron Rodgers made the switch from Packers green to Jets green this offseason, and with the young talent around him, the Jets all of the sudden are on the Super Bowl radar.
The Browns have had one of the best rushing attacks in the game for the last few years. What they needed was a quarterback, and after taking a chance on Deshaun Watson and watching him sit for over half of last season, they finally have their QB1 ready for the start of the season. The only problem is, Kareem Hunt, part of their two headed monster in the backfield will most likely not be back with the team after hitting the free agent market.
Both teams will be looking to break the Canton Curse come mid February at Allegiant Stadium. If either the Jets or the Browns make it to Super Bowl Sunday, they would not be the first Hall of Fame Game teams to make it to the big game in the same season. The Cincinnati Bengals of Boomer Esaison, the Chargers in 1994, and the St. Louis Rams better known as the “Greatest Show on Turf” in 2002 all got to the title game, but fell short of championship glory.