5 New NFL Rivalries Better Than Old Rivalries

Football rivalries can be difficult to estimate over time. With only 16 games during each team's regular season and no postseason series, a heated rivalry can be forged from just two or three tough games. Over the last 10 years, the sport's competitive balance has shifted with parrying parity, refreshing rivalries with new blood and new bitterness. 

Certain football rivalries are obvious from decades of entrenched and embittered meetings, but some of these have grown slightly stale with time.

The New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles have hated each other since approximately the end of Prohibition. The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers have played each other 189 times since 1921. To date, the Bears have a 93-90-6 edge in the series, with a stunningly close total score of 3,240-3,180. As the kids would say, bore me later. 

Essentially, all the NFC East and NFC North rivalries can be considered "old."  But with rising talent elsewhere around the league, such as the NFC West, a new breed of rivalries has arisen. 

This list examines five "new" rivalries from the last five or so years, with young talent dictating the shifting landscape of power in the NFL. 

Denver Broncos vs. San Diego Chargers

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The history of the Wild West includes tales of famed gunslingers and marked men, and a dimension of that narrative persists in one bitter AFC West rivalry. With the Oakland Raiders resigned to irrelevance, the division had lost some of its luster. 

Enter Philip Rivers. And, subsequently, enter Peyton Manning. But this rivalry truly ramped up back when Jay Cutler wore a Denver Broncos jersey. 

On Christmas Eve in 2007, the Bolts blew out the Broncos 23-3 on Monday Night Football. With a national audience watching in prime time, Cutler scrambled and threw an incompletion on fourth down, ending up on the side of the field near the Chargers sideline. Rivers opened his mouth and sent some trash talk in Cutler's direction, while linebacker Matt Wilhelm waved a snarky goodbye at Cutler. 

The Broncos remembered that disrespect. With Rivers still under center, they seek to paste him to the turf on every single play. His every failure stands as a Broncos success. 

Oddly, in the very next meeting between the teams, in September 2008, the Broncos had a win handed to them by an inexplicable call from famed referee Ed Hochuli. With the Broncos facing a goal-to-go situation down 38-31, Cutler fumbled and the Bolts recovered. However, Hochuli defied visual evidence and ruled it an incomplete pass, nullifying the turnover.

Of course, the Broncos scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion for the 39-38 win, which is also something called "karma." 

Now, with Cutler long gone, the San Diego secondary simply cannot solve Manning. After the Bolts won four games in a row against them, the Broncos have won six of the last seven meetings. And through that run of success, the bitterness toward the always-expressive Rivers has persisted. 

Green Bay Packers vs. San Francisco 49ers

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In the 2010 season, Aaron Rodgers led the Green Bay Packers to a Super Bowl victory. The next year, he won the league's MVP honor. However, the Packers have lost three of their four playoff games since winning Super Bowl XLV, and in each of the last two years, the San Francisco 49ers were the ones to end Green Bay's season.

Few things can be more frustrating than falling to a blowhard like head coach Jim Harbaugh. However, in recent years, the Packers certainly cannot argue they "got it better" than the Niners. 

The Packers have not beaten the Niners since 2010, and their last win in San Francisco came in 2006. Just when Rodgers and Green Bay appeared poised to forge the next NFC dynasty, a new guard of talent may have vaulted past them. 

San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick announced himself to the league in January 2013 with a record-setting 181 rushing yards against Green Bay in a 45-31 playoff win. 

Then the 49ers' Wild Card victory in January 2014 cemented this bitter rivalry. With the Packers hosting on a hypothermia-inducing day (the wind-chill was measured at minus-10 degrees), Kaepernick showed his tough-guy mettle by dressing without gloves or even sleeves, while Rodgers sported some thermal underwear. 

The younger QB showed no fear in leading his team downfield for Phil Dawson's deciding 33-yard field goal, coming as the final seconds ticked off the clock in SF's 23-20 win. Rodgers admitted he was off his game, telling the Associated Press: "Very disappointing, personally. It's frustrating not to play your best game in tough conditions."

And with that, cheeseheads had to ponder the downside of keeping a young QB as the backup for multiple seasons, as Rodgers is already 30 years old and seeing his prime years dwindle while the NFC becomes increasingly competitive behind dynamic young players like Kaepernick.

Denver Broncos vs. New England Patriots

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In the Denver Broncos' final game before Peyton Manning arrived on the team to break every league passing record in existence, the New England Patriots danced all over the Tim Tebow-led Broncos in a 45-10 playoff win.

Manning's arrival in Denver wiped the slate clean. After years of Tom Brady versus Manning with the Indianapolis Colts, the Hall of Fame quarterback rivalry seamlessly transferred over to Manning's new team. In four head-to-head meetings since then, Brady and the Patriots have won three, most recently a convincing 43-21 domination.

However, Manning's lone Broncos win over Brady came in the most meaningful of matchups, a 26-16 victory in the AFC Championship Game that squashed Brady's pursuit of another Super Bowl.

The Seattle Seahawks notwithstanding, Denver's win added another meaningful chapter to the trumped-up Manning vs. Brady rivalry, and it cemented the Broncos and Patriots as the AFC's most powerful pairing.

In the offseason, the Broncos upgraded their secondary specifically to contend with the challenge of facing a maestro like Brady in the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Patriots added better pass-rushers to help disrupt Manning's placid pocket passing.

This rivalry is so much more than Peyton and Tom, but they also serve as emblems of excellence. 

Seattle Seahawks vs. San Francisco 49ers

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Now that the Seattle Seahawks have leapt into both relevance and supremacy, they have formed a whale of a rivalry in the NFC West with the San Francisco 49ers. (You may have heard about a little dispute concerning a wide receiver who was talking about Richard Sherman.) 

The Niners had an eight-season playoff drought but have found plenty of success since then, reaching at least the NFC Championship Game in three straight seasons. Unfortunately, they have zero Super Bowl titles to show for that, while the Seahawks methodically marched past them to win SB XLVIII. 

As both teams have a young and talented core, led by rising quarterbacks Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson, this looks to be a fierce rivalry with playoff implications for years to come. However, the core of this rivalry consists in the pairing of excellent defensive units. 

When the Seahawks and Niners lock horns, a grueling defensive battle of late-80s proportions can break out at any time. In a league increasingly marked by offense, potent air attacks and pedestrian 300-yard passing games, defensive matchups come as a welcome surprise. 

Moreover, the league and its sponsors could not ask for a more perfect scenario than two talented young QBs leading these teams. While Wilson's prudent ball-protection and game management helped lead the Seahawks to a championship, 49ers fans are still waiting for Kaepernick to live up to his seemingly limitless potential. 

As ESPN's Ron Jaworski declared prior to the 2013 season: "I truly believe Colin Kaepernick could be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever." Instead, he might not even be the best QB in his own division, and each meeting between these teams serves in part as a referendum on the two young signal-callers. 

Baltimore Ravens vs. New England Patriots

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After Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay decided in 1984 to truck his entire football franchise all the way to Indianapolis under veil of night, a dark period of a dozen football-less years ensued for the gritty Maryland city.

In 1996, the Cleveland Browns trucked across the country, picked a new name inspired by a poem and set up shop in a city by then more known for putting crab meat into copious menu items than for football. 

Since then, the Baltimore Ravens have been one of the most fearsome teams in the league, stoking rivalries and scorn between many opponents. And the best new rivalry has been between the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots. (Note: Unlike with the Pats, the bitter rivalry between the Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers is really an extension of the "old" Steelers' rivalry with the Cleveland Browns, just a burning hatred rekindled elsewhere)

Think along the lines of the Chicago Bulls and whatever team LeBron James happens to be on. There is a level of disrespect toward a titan of the sport fostered by the Bulls, which is excellent fuel for a rivalry.

While Tom Brady is a great quarterback with many impressive accomplishments to his credit, the Ravens don't care. They want to hit "Tom Terrific" in the mouth—repeatedly. And more importantly, the Ravens have actually succeeded in doing so. 

Between 1996 and 2009, the Ravens and Pats met only five times. New England won all of those meetings. Since 2010, the teams have met six times, resulting in three wins apiece. However, two of Baltimore's wins came in the playoffs, and the other playoff meeting saw the Patriots survive by only a field goal.

In the most recent postseason matchup between them, the January 2013 AFC title game, the Ravens defense guided the team to a 28-13 win and gifted the world a sad (or wonderful) new meme: Bradying. The ability to make a Hall of Fame-bound quarterback look so utterly dejected and helpless on the field forever conferred a meme-ready image on Pats haters.