NFL History: Ranking the 30 best wild card teams in NFL history

Ranking the 30 best wild card teams in NFL history: 7. 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers

There are seven Super Bowl Champions who won it all as a Wild Card team. They are the top seven teams on this list. Let’s start with the team that gave Ben Roethlisberger his first Super Bowl Championship, left a legacy for Bill Cowher, and let Jerome Bettis go off into the sunset a champion.

The Steelers went on an amazing run after being the top seed just one season before. They snuck into the postseason as a six seed despite having 11 wins (the Chiefs missed the playoffs that season with 10 wins). The Cincinnati Bengals were the division winner despite also winning 11 games. They would face off in the first round, and Carson Palmer was knocked out of the game almost immediately. Jon Kitna was not ready to play spoiler, and the Steelers would move on to the next round.

The next round saw the top-seeded Colts (there’s that Manning guy again) taking on the Steelers. This one comes down to one play. Bettis would fumble on the two-yard line about to seal the game for Pittsburgh. The ball popped out, and Nick Harper was looking at daylight. Ben Roethlisberger was literally the only player who could stop him. Harper moved inside, turned Roethlisberger around, and somehow, he caught the ankles of Harper and stopped him around the 30-yard line.

In the next round, the Steelers became the first AFC team to beat the number one, two, and three seeds when they dispatched the Denver Broncos with relative ease. They would face the Seattle Seahawks and Matt Hasselbeck in the Super Bowl. The Steelers defense held the Seahawks to 10 points, and they scored a touchdown in the second, third, and fourth quarter to clinch its first title since 1980.