Top teams in regular season playing for Super Bowl

This year’s Super Bowl features a rare matchup of the NFL’s top two teams from the regular season.

The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs were the league’s only 14-game winners, marking just the sixth time since the 1970 merger that the squads with sole possession of the two best records in the regular season met for the championship.

The last time it happened came after the 2013 season when Seattle beat

Denver 43-8 in a matchup of 13-win teams.

That blowout was relatively typical of these meetings, with the average margin of victory in the previous five powerhouse matchups being 21 points.

The closest game was Washington’s 37-24 win over Buffalo following the 1991 season. The three others featured San Francisco beating Miami 38-16 after the 1984 season, Dallas topping Denver 27-10 to cap the 1977 season and Oakland beating Minnesota 32-14 the previous year.

Since seeding began in 1975, this is the 15th time the top team in each conference made it to the Super Bowl. The previous time came after the 2017 season when the Eagles won their first Super Bowl championship by beating New England 41-33.

This is also the third time both Super Bowl teams won at least 14 games in the regular season, although both Kansas City and Philadelphia needed wins in the added 17th game to get there. Atlanta and Denver did it in 16-game seasons in 1998, and Miami and San Francisco in 1984.

The Chiefs and Eagles also have been in control all postseason, with neither team trailing in the playoffs. The only other times both Super Bowl teams did that came in the 2004 season (Patriots vs. Eagles), 1991 season (Bills vs. Washington) and 1966 season (Packers vs. Chiefs).

AIR IT OUT

Patrick Mahomes will try to do something that has never been done before in the NFL by following up a regular season when he led the league in yards passing with a Super Bowl title.

Mahomes threw for 5,250 yards during the regular season — 511 more than second-place Justin Herbert for the largest gap between first and second place since Kurt Warner beat out Peyton Manning by 699 yards in 2001.

The only player to reach the Super Bowl after throwing for more yards in the regular season than Mahomes was Manning, with a record 5,477 in 2013. His Broncos lost 43-8 to Seattle in the Super Bowl.