Divisional round and eventual Supe winner notes

No matter which team wins today’s 50th Super Bowl, it will mark the 25th time a team that played a Sunday divisional round game, wins the title.

This is the 49th season in which the NFL has played divisional round/quarterfinal games and a Sunday winner in those games will lead a Saturday winner (25-22) in Super Bowl crowns.

A Monday divisional round winner (the 1977 Dallas Cowboys) has one title.

The other time in 1968, the eventual Super Bowl champion New York Jets, still playing in the AFL, did not have a quarterfinal/divisional round game.

The first year the NFL had the divisional/quarterfinal round was 1967 while the first Super Bowl concluded the 1966 season.

Two of the Saturday divisional round/quarterfinal winners, who went on to claim the Supe title, did so before the AFC/NFC configuration.

They were the Green Bay Packers in 1967 and Kansas City Chiefs in 1969, the latter, in the only one of the AFL’s 10 seasons in which the league had divisional/quarterfinal games.

The (9-4-1) Green Bay Packers hosted and defeated the (11-1-2) Los Angeles Rams in the first NFL divisional round/quarterfinal game played on Saturday December 23, 1967. Travis Williams, my only “tag” in this post had a touchdown run for the “Pack.”

Eight days later on Sunday December 31, 1967, the Pack “Ice Bowled” the formidable Dallas Cowboys before easily turning back the Oakland Raiders in the second Supe on January 14, 1968.