In this 2024 NFL season thus far the Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars are having awful seasons. In 14 games between the two teams,they have combined for just three victories. One by the Browns and the other two from the Jaguars. Since the Super Bowl began in 1967, every team currently in the NFL has reached the league’s championship game apart from four franchises.
Those four teams are the Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, and the Detroit Lions. Since that first Super Bowl, Detroit has gone the longest having spent 57 years waiting for their first appearance. Cleveland would join them in that boat except the Browns had to be reborn after former owner Art Modell stole the team away from the city in 1995 whisking the franchise off to Baltimore to become the Ravens.
It wasn’t until 1999 that the Browns were reborn in Cleveland. So, if you take those three years away from their Super Bowl aspirations, Cleveland has spent 53 years without reaching the promised land. The Jacksonville Jaguars joined the NFL in 1995 the same year the Browns became the Ravens. Therefore, Jacksonville’s wait for the Super Bowl is at 29 years and counting.
The Houston Texans became a franchise in 2002 after the city just as Cleveland had suffered lost their team to the state of Tennessee when the Oilers moved there and changed their nickname to the Titans. There have been 22 seasons in Houston and yet no Super Bowl appearance.
Prior to the creation of the Super Bowl, the Detroit Lions had won league titles four times (1935, 1952 and 1953, 1957). But since Super Bowl I, the team has reached the playoffs multiple times and to the conference championship twice including last season but has yet to be called NFC champions and get to the big dance. So as indicated, Detroit is going into year 58 and is still waiting to reach the Super Bowl unless they finish this season representing the NFC in Super Bowl LIX to be played on February 9, 2025, at the Caesars Super Dome in New Orleans.
For teams that have reached the Super Bowl won or lost, some of the longest droughts are as follows in years.
For the Jaguars, Texans, Lions, and Browns, which team is the closest to getting to their first Super Bowl? Certainly not the Jaguars and Browns. Jacksonville is having a difficult season, but the Browns may be in the worst shape of any team in the NFL competing with the Carolina Panthers for the team in the most disarray. Houston and Detroit are heading for another post season appearance, so they are still in the running.
