The 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t get any warmup games and it didn’t seem to matter. And now the NFL preseason has been reduced.

There have been a total of 55 Super Bowl champions, the latest courtesy of Bruce Arians’ wild card Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The team won road playoff games at Washington, New Orleans, and Green Bay before becoming the first NFL club to play a Super Bowl in its own stadium. Todd Bowles’ defensive unit limited the Chiefs to three field goals in a convincing 31-9 victory.

Of course, due to COVID-19, Tom Brady and his teammates did not have the advantage of getting to know each other via the preseason. The entire 65-game slate was eliminated. That’s the reason that on August 4, the Pro Football Hall of Fame game will feature the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys. Those were the clubs slated to play in 2020.

Now the National Football League is about to embark on its first 17-game regular season. And that means the preseason has been reduced to three games for each team – with the exception of Pittsburgh and Dallas.

Is It Important To Win During the NFL Preseason?

But is winning during the summer really all that important? Yes and no. Of the first 54 Super Bowl champions, only 12 finished the preseason with a losing record. The latest example happened to be the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs, who went 1-3 that summer, started the year 6-4 and got hot when it counted most and eventually knocked off the 49ers in South Florida (LIV).

It may also surprise some to know that even if you include the Buccaneers going 0-0 last summer, they are only the second NFL squad to not win a preseason game and still hold up the Lombardi Trophy by season’s end. That would be Joe Gibbs’ Washington squad during the league’s nine-game strike-shortened campaign. And like the Bucs in 2020, the Burgundy and Gold won four postseason games on the way to beating the Dolphins in Super Bowl XVII.

Apparently, it’s not important to win all of your games during the summer. But it appears that a team intent on winning a Super Bowl that season probably needs to win at least one. The 2020 Buccaneers and 1982 Washington Football Team managed to pull off that feat without a preseason victory and it’s safe to say both of those NFL seasons were unusual for dramatically different reasons.