5 rivalries the NFL should have kept alive

When a 32nd team was added to the NFL in 2002, it meant the league’s six divisions would be split into eight. The NFL tried its best to keep rivalries intact during the realignment, but it couldn’t save them all.

There was no way that the Bears and Packers would be split up, nor Washington and Dallas. But some fat had to be trimmed and we inevitably lost a few to the history books.

That’s a shame because some of those rivalries lost to realignment or relocation would be a blast if they were still around. Here are five of them:

Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady duels were must-see TV for nearly a decade. They happened on a nearly annual basis too, because the Colts just about always won the AFC South and the Patriots dominated the AFC East. That set up postseason meetings and — as division winners — regular season battles, too.

Brady won the first six matchups, including two playoff games. Then Manning won four of his next five against the Patriots, including the AFC Championship in January 2007.

Then Manning suffered a neck injury and was released by the Colts after missing the entire 2011 season. Indianapolis drafted Andrew Luck and the rivalry died down.

There’s still some animosity built up from the infamous DeflateGate saga of 2015. After losing the AFC Championship to the Patriots 45-7, the Colts informed the NFL that New England may have been using improperly deflated footballs. The investigation, punishment, and appeals process that followed took a year and a half, and finally concluded with Brady serving a four-game suspension at the beginning of the 2016 season.

The Colts and Patriots have only played one time since then. It’s hard to stoke the flames of a feud without the teams actually playing each other.

Imagine the friction between the two franchises if they were in the same division. And not too long ago, they were.

When the NFL and AFL merged in 1970, the Baltimore Colts were added to the AFC East, which already had the Boston Patriots. The biannual meetings weren’t that special, though. In the Colts’ last 18 years in the division, the Patriots won 27 of the 36 matchups.

The arrival of the Houston Texans in 2002 spurred realignment and it sent the Colts to the newly formed AFC South. How could the NFL have known that the Patriots and Colts were on the verge of becoming the best rivalry of the next eight seasons?

Spoiler alert: This isn’t the first time you’ll see the Steelers on this list. Pittsburgh has had only seven losing seasons since 1972. When you combine that level of sustained success and a notoriously gritty, tough playing style, the Steelers were destined to make some enemies along the way.

It’s not a coincidence that the AFC North currently has a few fierce, sometimes dangerous rivalries.

One of the lost rivalries for the Steelers was with the Houston Oilers.

After the 1970 merger, the Oilers and Steelers were grouped together in the AFC Central. While Houston wasn’t very good for the majority of its first decade or two in the NFL, it was a playoff contender in the late 1970s. That era was ruined by the Steelers, though.

The Oilers lost both the 1978 AFC Championship and 1979 AFC Championship to Pittsburgh. The latter had some controversy too when Oilers receiver Mike Renfro had a catch in the back of the end zone ruled incomplete.

Houston regrouped, rebuilt, and was back to being a playoff contender in the late 1980s with Warren Moon at the helm. But seven consecutive trips to the postseason couldn’t get the Oilers to the Super Bowl. One of those trips ended with a loss to who else but the Steelers.

The only playoff win for the franchise against Pittsburgh came in January 2003 after the Oilers were relocated and rebranded as the Tennessee Titans. In the last 11 seasons for the Oilers/Titans in the AFC Central, they won the division three times and the Steelers won it six times. Then the Titans were sent off to the AFC South and the rivalry fell by the wayside.

The Jaguars are still a relatively young franchise. They were added to the NFL in 1995, so it’s a little weird to think that they had and lost an enemy so quickly — especially when they’ve been so terrible for much of their existence. But unlike so many of the Steelers’ other rivals, Jacksonville was and still is a legitimate pain in Pittsburgh’s ass.

When the Jaguars first joined the AFC Central, the Steelers were rolling. They went to the AFC Championship in the last season before the Jaguars joined the NFL and to the Super Bowl in Jacksonville’s inaugural season.

Yet, it was the Jaguars that won the series 8-6 in the first seven seasons. And it was the Jaguars that snapped a streak of four consecutive division titles for the Steelers by winning the AFC Central in 1998 and 1999.

The budding rivalry was defused when the Jaguars moved to the AFC South and the Steelers to the AFC North in 2002. Jacksonville didn’t stop being an annoying gnat for Pittsburgh, though.

In the 2007 season, the Jaguars became the first team to ever win in Pittsburgh twice in one season by beating the Steelers at Heinz Field in the regular season and then again in the playoffs. Ten years later, the 2017 Jaguars became the second team to do it.

In eight career regular season matchups against the Jaguars, Ben Roethlisberger has 11 interceptions and a 78.2 passer rating — well below his career rating of 94.2. In their most recent matchup, Roethlisberger threw three interceptions before rallying to steal an ugly win with a last-minute rushing touchdown.

What is it about the typically miserable Jaguars that make them such a good foil to the consistently strong Steelers? Who knows, but it’s too bad we don’t get their slugfests twice a year.

Is Texans vs. Cowboys a rivalry? It’s debatable. They play almost year for the Texas Governor’s Cup — a real NFL rivalry trophy that’s about as close as we’ll get to the silly, fun versions in college football.

Geography is the only reason for the showdown, which usually occurs in preseason. But when it was the Oilers annually facing the Cowboys, there was at least some history to explain the matchup.

On the same day in November 1964, Oklahoma offensive tackle Ralph Neely was drafted in the second round of the NFL Draft by the Baltimore Colts and the second round of the AFL Draft by the Houston Oilers.

Neely first accepted and signed an offer from the Oilers, but sent his signing bonus back after the Cowboys traded with the Colts for Neely’s rights. He joined the Cowboys instead for the 1965 season and was an instant star in the NFL. The Oilers subsequently filed a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Eventually, the Cowboys agreed to send four draft picks in the 1967 AFL/NFL Draft — the first common draft involving both leagues — as compensation for Neely. They also agreed to start the Governor’s Cup and the rivalry was officially born.

The furor from the Neely legal battle eventually died down, but at least the origin story added a little extra spice to the annual Houston vs. Dallas game. It ended for good when the Oilers shipped off for Nashville in 1997.

Now the Texans and Cowboys have taken its place, and that’s fine. But it’s just not quite the same.

About half a century ago, conventional thought was that the NFL was superior to the AFL. The deep pockets of AFL owners was the catalyst for the merger, but most believed the NFL teams wouldn’t have much trouble running through the AFL ones once the leagues combined. That belief was hammered home by the Packers mowing through the Chiefs and Raiders in Super Bowls I and II.

That changed some when the Joe Namath-led Jets beat the Colts in Super Bowl III.

New York was an 18-point underdog against Baltimore. For comparison, the 9-2 Kansas City Chiefs are expected to be 14-point favorites against the 2-9 Oakland Raiders in Week 13. That’s the kind of mismatch that was expected, but it was the Jets that came away 16-7 winners.

The victory for the Jets is still one of the biggest upsets in pro football history and it legitimized the AFL teams as a worthy addition to the old guard of the NFL. It also made the placement of the Jets and the Colts in the AFC East an interesting Super Bowl rematch that happened twice a year.

In the first five seasons of the unified NFL, the Jets and Colts split their series 5-5. Unfortunately for the rivalry, though, neither team did much in the next three decades. So the departure of the Colts for the AFC South in 2002 didn’t disrupt much.

But like the Colts’ rivalry with the Patriots that developed too late, the best clashes with the Jets also happened after the 2002 realignment. The Colts and Jets didn’t meet in the playoffs once between 1970 and 2001, but once they were in different divisions, they played in the postseason in 2003, 2010, and 2011.

In hindsight, the NFL could’ve had a pair of great rivalries if the Colts stayed in the AFC East. But the balance of the AFC was probably helped by the realignment, even if it cost us more games for the Colts against the Jets and Patriots.