Across the last 10 years, only one team won the Super Bowl without a top-10 defense—the 2022 Kansas City Chiefs. Expanding the window to 25 years, just six champions have done it without a top-10 scoring defense, underscoring how rare and difficult such a feat is.
Among quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl titles, 13 players have 37 rings combined, but only five of those rings came without a top-10 defense—roughly 13.5 percent. That track record frames the Chiefs’ 2022 run as a notable outlier rather than the rule.
The most recent outlier, the 2022 Chiefs, finished the regular season with 22.2 points allowed per game (18th in the league) yet captured the title by leaning on Mahomes in a high-scoring Super Bowl. During the postseason, they still reached the championship game by holding opponents to manageable numbers, but their defensive stage was clearly not the dominant factor.
Two-time champions Eli Manning and the New York Giants illustrate the other path: their defenses weren’t top-10 in the regular season (2011 defense allowed 23.1 PPG, 21st), yet they elevated in January. In 2011, postseason numbers dropped to 13 PPG, and they limited the Patriots to 17 in the Super Bowl. In 2007, a similar pattern emerged, with Giants’ defense stepping up in the playoffs and limiting New England to 14 points in the big game.
Peyton Manning’s 2006 Colts follow a related script: Indy entered the postseason with a No. 18 scoring defense, but their unit slowed Chicago to 14 in the Super Bowl after a postseason slate that featured strong, timely stops. Jim Plunkett’s Raiders — winning titles in 1980 and 1983 — also fit the trend, with a defense that wasn’t among the elite in the regular season but delivered in the postseason, including a standout performance in 1983 (No. 13 in scoring defense) that helped secure the championship.
Ultimately, the common thread among these outliers is a mix of all-time quarterback talent and/or a defense that elevates when it matters most. Only one of the five outliers gave up more than 16.3 PPG in the postseason, and that was the 2022 Chiefs. The takeaway remains clear: elite defenses help legends endure, and even the greatest quarterbacks cannot consistently win titles without a top-tier defense backing them.
