Although Super Bowl LX will not be the second meeting between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks this year, rematches have occurred in the big game a few times in the past 25 years.
The stage for Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara is officially set, with the New England Patriots slated to take on the Seattle Seahawks at Levi’s Stadium for the second Super Bowl meeting between the two franchises.
Super Bowl LX will culminate what has been a thrilling and rather unpredictable postseason, noted for its absence of star quarterbacks such as Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson.
The result is the Patriots making a triumphant return to the Super Bowl in their first postseason appearance since 2021, while the Seahawks ran through the NFC as the No. 1 seed and will play for all the marbles with Sam Darnold at the helm, who is spending his first year with the franchise.
Seattle enters this year’s Super Bowl as a 4.5 point favorite in a game that is often notoriously hard to predict, at least partially owing to the relative infrequency of the Super Bowl being a rematch of a regular season game.
In the NFL’s regular season schedule, teams predominantly play against other teams in their own conference, including two games against each division opponent. For non-conference games each season, every team in a given division will face off against the teams in a given division of the opposite conference for at least four non-conference games a season.
For example, the Patriots and other AFC East teams played teams from the NFC South this season, while the Seahawks and other NFC West teams faced off against clubs in the AFC South.
Since the NFL adopted a 17-game schedule beginning in 2021, teams could play as many as five non-conference games in a season, which the Patriots did this year by also facing the New York Giants in addition to the four NFC South teams.
This dynamic has made the Super Bowl rematch a relatively rare luck of the draw, having occurred just four times since the turn of the century.
On three of the four occasions a rematch has occurred, the team that lost the regular season game went on to win the Super Bowl, with only the 2011 Giants emerging victorious in both their regular season and Super Bowl meetings with the Patriots.
Here’s a look at the four times the Super Bowl was a regular season rematch since the dawn of the new millennium.
2001: Rams defeat Patriots 24-17 in regular season, Patriots defeat Rams 20-17 in Super Bowl XXXVI
In what ultimately turned out to be a Super Bowl preview, the St. Louis Rams traveled to Foxboro Stadium for a Week 10 Sunday night duel against the Patriots, with St. Louis holding a 7-1 record heading into the contest against New England’s 5-4 mark.
The Rams ultimately won the regular season game by a touchdown, owing to an incredible performance from star quarterback Kurt Warner, who threw for 401 passing yards and three touchdowns in the win.
New England of course exacted their revenge a few months later in the Super Bowl, with the Patriots bouncing back from a blown 17-3 lead to win it all as time expired with a game-winning kick from Adam Vinatieri to cap off a 20-17 win.
Tom Brady and the Patriots would face the Rams again in the Super Bowl 17 years later, this time with the Rams hailing from Los Angeles – with New England coming out on top 13-3 in that matchup.
2007: Patriots defeat Giants 38-35 in regular season, Giants defeat Patriots 17-14 in Super Bowl XLII
The most famous instance of this phenomenon, Super Bowl XLII between the Patriots and New York Giants as a rematch of a historic Week 17 game, which saw New England edge out New York in a 38-35 win to secure the first and only 16-0 regular season in NFL history.
After narrowly escaping defeat and bouncing back from a two-score deficit in the Week 17 matchup, the Patriots took down the Jacksonville Jaguars and San Diego Chargers en route to a Super Bowl rematch with the Giants at what is now State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
In what was a low-scoring, physical affair, the Patriots appeared to have scored a championship-winning touchdown with under three minutes left in the game, which would have made New England the only team to go undefeated through the postseason on the 16-game regular season schedule.
However, a heroic catch from David Tyree helped set up the Giants in New England territory late in the game, with Plaxico Burress catching the game-winning touchdown pass with just 35 seconds left on the clock. New York’s defense went on to hold serve on the following Pats’ possession, finishing off one of the most remarkable upsets in North American professional sports history.
2011: Giants defeat Patriots 24-20 in regular season, Giants defeat Patriots 21-17 in Super Bowl XLVI
The lone occurrence of a team completing the two-game sweep, the Giants took down the Patriots yet again the Super Bowl following the 2011 season – and preceded it with a regular season victory this time.
The two teams faced off in a Sunday afternoon affair in Week 9, with both teams holding a 5-2 record heading into the game. Although New England bounced back from an early 10-0 deficit to take leads of 13-10 and 20-17, a 1-yard touchdown pass from Eli Manning to Jake Ballard with just 15 seconds left in regulation sealed a 24-20 victory for New York.
Super Bowl XLVI, played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, was another close affair between the two clubs, with the Patriots holding an unconventional 10-9 lead at halftime. After extending the lead to 17-9 with a touchdown on the opening drive of the second half, two field goals from Lawrence Tynes later in the third quarter brought the Giants to within two points.
As was seemingly customary for Giants games against the Patriots, it was Ahmad Bradshaw who converted on a 6-yard touchdown run with less than a minute to go in the game to give the Giants a 21-17 lead after a failed two-point conversion, which was enough to hold on for the team’s fourth and most recent Super Bowl title.
2020: Chiefs defeat Buccaneers 27-24 in regular season, Buccaneers defeat Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV
Given that Tom Brady won a total of seven Super Bowls and appeared in 11 of the games, it should come as no surprise that the GOAT was involved in all four instances of a Super Bowl rematch – with Brady coming out on top in his final trip to the Big Game.
Before a meeting with Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl, the two teams met in Week 12, with Kansas City holding a 9-1 record to Tampa Bay’s 7-4 mark. Andy Reid’s Chiefs were in control for most of the game, taking a 27-10 lead in the fourth quarter and withstanding a late comeback to hang on for a 27-24 win at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
Surely enough, that would be where the two teams would meet again in Super Bowl LV, with the Buccaneers becoming the first team to play a Super Bowl at their home stadium – albeit with a drastically reduced crowd due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in place at the time.
Mahomes and the Chiefs would not be met with the same fortune they had in their November meeting, with the Bucs unapologetically dominating throughout the game, keeping Kansas City out of the endzone the entire night while Brady threw three touchdown passes en route to an emphatic 31-9 victory.
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