Can a Great Offense Win Championships Without a High-Caliber Defense?

You often hear people say defense wins championships, but you never hear anyone say that offense wins championships.

Why, not?

Is the old cliche true about the necessity to play quality defense, or is it a myth that many people have come to adopt simply to glorify the sometimes less-exciting side of the ball?

In an effort to get a better understanding on this subject, I looked back to history.

Sometimes, teams have Cinderella seasons but for the most part, you would imagine that history should provide an accurate gauge for us to determine whether NFL teams truly need a championship-caliber defense to become champions.

Has any sort of pattern been established?

Has every team been different and found their own ways to win, regardless of exceptional performance on either one side of the ball?

These are the questions that I hope to answer.

What I did was research the 43 Super Bowl-winning teams.

I recorded where each team ranked in the league in each of their Super Bowl-winning seasons in terms of points-per-game scored and points-per-game allowed.

Instead of ranking these teams based on the actual amount of points they scored and gave up, I tracked where they ranked among the league in their championship seasons.

The reason being that since the rules of the game have changed so much, scoring 25 points per game in 1978 would have been much more impressive than scoring 25 points per game in 2008.

The same could be said in the sense that holding your opponent to 13 points per game in 2008 would be much more impressive than holding your opponent to 13 points per game in 1978.

Point totals vary from season to season, while the overall rankings provide a more accurate indication of where these teams ranked among the rest of the league in each of their respective championship seasons.

Now, before I unveil the rankings, how many people think that there have been a number of a teams to win Super Bowls without quality defensive squads?

How many teams do you think may have won Super Bowls without quality offensive units?

For the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to say that ranking in the top-ten on either side of the ball is a pretty solid indication that the specific unit played at a quality level.

Other readers may have a different criteria.

Without any further ado, here are both the offensive and defensive rankings of all 43 Super Bowl winning teams...

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