When teams find themselves atop the highest peaks of winning a championship, it can make the fall all the more painful in the aftermath. Championship hangovers are a relatively fitting term for the sudden decline in team performance after winning a ring — pain following a short period of success and celebration. For some, this hangover is short-lived — just ask the Kansas City Chiefs, who have won back-to-back Super Bowls. For others, however, the celebratory postseason champagne can lead to headaches that last into the next season and beyond.
The Los Angeles Rams are a prime example of the devastating effects of how a championship can be both a blessing and a curse. In the 2021-2022 NFL season, the Rams went on a magical run, wrapping up an incredible postseason by defeating the Cincinnati Bengals in a thrilling Super Bowl for the ages. The Rams were a team that had gone all-in on success, pushing to obtain short-term gains in exchange for a dynasty.
The team was filled with aging veterans like Matthew Stafford and Aaron Donald and had traded away most of their draft picks in exchange for players who had brought the team their first title since 1999. While the team got to stand atop the NFL briefly, their collapse was one of the most brutal in recent memory.
After a 12-5 record in their Super Bowl campaign, the Rams fell off a cliff by going 5-12 — following their Lombardi trophy with a losing record and missing the playoffs entirely. The team did suffer the loss of future hall-of-fame offensive lineman Andrew Whitworth, but their collapse wasn’t helped by the emergence of the San Francisco 49ers in the division and injuries that racked the roster.
Despite the cautionary tale of the Rams, there hasn’t been a lot of evidence to support the idea of championship hangovers. The well-known myth relies on good teams suddenly collapsing, which just doesn’t happen in professional sports out of the blue. Teams win titles for a reason, and sudden collapses aren’t what good teams do. However, this doesn’t mean there can’t be some difficulties associated with teams after winning a title.
The Philadelphia Eagles showed this last season as they followed up a championship appearance with a strong 5-0 start. However, the team fell apart at the end of the season, dropping five of their final six games of the regular season and getting destroyed in the playoffs at the hands of Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The San Francisco 49ers, after losing the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2019-2020 season, had a devastating collapse. The team struggled for two years before returning to the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship game in the 2022-23 season and the Super Bowl in the 2023-24 season.
Another strong team continued the trend — this time in baseball — struggling in the postseason after a strong regular season. The Atlanta Braves, after beating the Houston Astros in the World Series, were a dominant force during the regular season. However, they struggled the following postseason, dropping in the Divisional Series against the Philadelphia Phillies.
These struggles aren’t always a death sentence for entire campaigns. In fact, one of the biggest strengths of dynasties is their ability to survive hangovers to compete for championships at season’s end. Sometimes, champions just struggled to open seasons before recapturing their previous year’s form. The New England Patriots Dynasty was a master of this phenomenon, looking weak in early season matches before crushing their competition.
Additionally, the Kansas City Chiefs have taken on this new role in the NFL, showing early-season weakness that before turning into a postseason juggernaut. In hockey, the Vegas Golden Knights appear poised to take this role in the NHL, looking relatively weak in the early portion of the season with some poor quality losses but constantly in the playoffs and continuing to be a dominant force.
After their Super Bowl against the Rams, the Bengals continued to be a strong force in the American Football Championship (AFC), advancing to the AFC Championship game before losing to the dynastic Kansas City Chiefs. Strong teams continue to stay atop their divisions, but getting over the hump can sometimes be a bit too much.
Whether it lasts a year, a game or a day, the postseason hangover can affect teams in numerous ways. Whether it comes from heightened expectations, tougher competition or losing key players, teams at the top can need help staying there. The debate of the hangover’s effect — or even its legitimacy — may still be up in the air, but one thing’s sure: Winning a championship ring can lessen the sting of next year’s struggles.
