Only two teams could make Super Bowl XLIX, but how far away were the other 30 from being contenders? To figure that out, we at Pro Football Focus dug deep into our database, which has graded every player on every play since the 2007 season. The goal: find what it takes to field a championship-caliber roster.
We started by evaluating each player (minimum 250 snaps played) on the 28 teams to make the conference championship games from 2007-13. Players were placed in one of four categories -- elite, good, average or bad -- based on how their performances compared to that of an average player at their positions.
After adding up all the data, we determined that, on average, 40 percent of the qualifying players on those 28 teams earned either elite or good grades.
From there, we looked at the 30 teams that didn't make this year's Super Bowl in the exact same way -- by eliminating the players who played fewer than 250 snaps and putting the remainder into one of the four categories based entirely on their 2014 performance.
Couple that data with the 40 percent historical baseline and out pops how many more above-average players each team needed this season to be considered a true Super Bowl contender. Here's a quick example: The New Orleans Saints had 35 players who played 250 or more snaps this season, but we deemed only five of them elite or good. The Saints needed 14 such players to hit the 40 percent threshold, so they were nine short.
Make sense? Find your favorite team here.
