What is the first step for a National Football League team becoming a winning dynasty?

Ownership? Coach? Players?

Yes, all those elements have to be in place for a team to maintain a winning edge for season-after-season and win multiple Super Bowls. But perhaps the first step to greatness is being really bad.

I grew up a San Francisco 49ers fan; my first recollection of the team was my brother’s disappointment in 1957 when they blew a 24-7 halftime lead to lose their first ever postseason game. It would be 13 years before the 49ers participated in the postseason again, and in three playoff appearances to complete the 1970, 1971 and 1972 seasons their campaigns ended with a loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

The 49ers wouldn’t even crack the playoff field for the rest of the decade and when Bill Walsh arrived as the team’s head coach in 1979. When he was hired the team was coming off a 2-14 campaign. In Walsh’s first season with the 49ers, he didn’t improve that record. Then he got the team up to six wins in 1980 and a Super Bowl Championship the next season. The rest is history. The 49ers were the best team in football for a decade and-a-half while winning a fifth Super Bowl to complete the 1994 season.

San Francisco’s nemesis in the ‘70s, the Dallas Cowboys, were winless in their initial National Football League season in 1960 and hadn’t won more than they lost in any campaign until 1967. Once good, they stayed dominant for a number of years and made five Super Bowl appearances in the next ten seasons and won the Vince Lombardi Trophy three twice.

Then, they dropped back down to also-rans, and when Jerry Jones bought the team and fired the only coach Dallas ever had, Tom Landry, the team was poised for another surge in the standings. In his first year, 1989, Johnson led Dallas to only one win, rock bottom for a franchise that rose to seven wins the following year and the playoffs in 1991. In 1992, the Cowboys won their first of three Super Bowls over a four-year span.

It seems that it is darkest before dawn for an NFL franchise.

The New England Patriots had been also-rans in the American Football Conference for years save one season, 1985. That season the Patriots rode a winning streak all the way to Super Bowl XX, a game they got blown out in by the Chicago Bears, 46-10. New England finished in the AFC East Division cellar in 1999 and 2000 before their years of troubles were transformed with a Super Bowl win in 2001 behind second-year quarterback Tom Brady. He turned out to be the best quarterback in NFL history and led the Patriots to six Super Bowl titles before adding another one to his collection of trophies with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to complete the 2020 season.

For the past decade, the dominant team in the NFL has been the Kansas City Chiefs. Behind Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs have appeared in five of the most recent seven Super Bowls and won three of them. Know what the Chiefs record was before they became a winning dynasty? The Chiefs finished in last place in 2011, and in 2012 won only two games while also finishing in the cellar of the AFC West Division.

Yep, you want to find a team on the cusp on getting good? Find a team that has struggled in prior seasons.

Why?

Because teams that finish in the cellar get the benefit of picking early in the following year’s draft putting them in the best position to add topflight personnel to their roster. They also have the advantage of the motivation to overcome recent disappointments while meeting opponents that may take a victory over them for granted and fall into a motivational trap.

In recent NFL seasons, the teams with last place finishes also get the advantage of a schedule that has them playing other cellar dwellers. For example, while the 2024 Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles had the Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers on their 2025 schedule, the last place 2024 finishing Patriots were meeting the likes of the Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans, Cleveland Browns and New York Giants last season.

The easier schedule is one reason the Patriots advanced to the playoffs last year, and eventually to the Super Bowl. That success, now that they are playing a first place schedule, will likely be a one-and-done success pattern for New England.

But what teams have been bad long enough to collect talent through the draft and have a coach and quarterback in place to forecast success?

The Cleveland Browns have been bad long enough but are still without a quarterback. The Raiders have been bad long enough and drafted who they hope will be their franchise quarterback in Fernando Mendoza. But the Raiders have organizational problems and most likely will leave Mendoza on the bench this year to learn NFL football while newly acquired Kirk Cousins gets most of the playing time.

The team that has been bad for a long time and has collected great talent through the draft and now have a proven head coach with recently hired John Harbaugh, is the New York Giants. The big question Big Apple is whether Jaxson Dart is a franchise winning quarterback. If he is, the Giants will soar in 2026.

That is a big “if”.