The Washington franchise has had no shortage of great teams, but the ones that never got to the Super Bowl have always carried a special kind of ache. The club now known as the Washington Commanders owns five NFL championships, reached the NFL Championship game six other times and first got there before the franchise even moved to Washington.
The trophy case is packed. The what-ifs are, too.
There are plenty of candidates for the best team that never made it all the way. That includes a few teams from the pre-Super Bowl era, when the title game looked a little different and Washington still had every reason to think the path was open.
The 1939 team belongs in the conversation. Washington finished 8-2-1 and second in the Eastern Division, and plenty of people believed it should have been the one taking on the Green Bay Packers for the championship instead of the New York Giants.
That season included a bitter 9-7 loss to the Giants in the regular season finale, when a last-minute field goal was ruled no good. Fans and players thought the call was wrong, and many believed Washington had really won 10-9.
That team had real bite on both sides of the ball. Washington allowed only 94 points in 11 games, the fewest in franchise history.
The defense featured bruisers like Ernie Pinckert, Wilbur Moore and Wee Willie Wilkin, while Sammy Baugh and Frank Filchock helped keep the offense moving. The point differential was the third-best in team history, with only a couple of Joe Gibbs teams in longer seasons topping it.
The 1973 squad also belongs on the shortlist. A year after Washington reached its first Super Bowl, George Allen had his team set up to get back there.
He added Kenny Houston and Dave Robinson to a defense that was already nasty, then worked Duane Thomas into a backfield that included Billy Kilmer and Sonny Jurgensen. The offense also featured Larry Brown, Charley Taylor, Roy Jefferson, Jerry Smith and Herb Mul-Key.
It was a loaded roster, but the age was showing by the time the playoffs arrived. Minnesota’s second-half surge stopped Washington before it could reach the conference finals.
The next season looked a lot like the one before it, even if the feeling around the team was different. The 1974 club started 4-3 after losing its second game to the St.
Louis Cardinals, and Allen’s “future is now” approach suddenly looked shaky. Then Washington caught fire, winning six of its last seven and outscoring opponents 186-95 over that stretch.
The core pieces were familiar: Houston, Chris Hanburger and Diron Talbert leading the defense, with Billy and Sonny again handling the passing game. But once more, the playoff run ended too soon, this time with a divisional-round loss on the road to the Los Angeles Rams.
Still, the best Washington team never to make the Super Bowl was the 1984 group.
Joe Gibbs may have done his finest coaching job with that team. It was 5-4 after nine weeks, coming off a season of playoff disappointment and a Super Bowl XVIII blowout loss to the Raiders, and then it ripped off six wins in its final seven games. What made the run so impressive was how much of the roster spent major time on the injured list.
Joe Washington and Charley Brown missed half the season. John Riggins kept seeming to land in traction.
Jeff Bostic and George Starke also missed significant time up front. None of it stopped Washington from rolling up 426 points, the sixth-most in franchise history, with Riggins leading the way and Art Monk putting together a record-breaking season.
The defense was just as fearsome. Charles Mann, in his second year, emerged alongside Dexter Manley, Darryl Grant and All-Pro Dave Butz on a crushing front. Darrell Green, in his first of seven Pro Bowl seasons, anchored the secondary with Vernon Dean to form one of the league’s best cornerback pairings.
In hindsight, 1984 felt like a hinge point. Joe Theismann and Riggins were nearing the end, and the Chicago Bears - the team that knocked Washington out of the playoffs - were on the rise. The Bears sacked Theismann seven times in that playoff meeting, a preview of what was coming the next season.
Even so, that Washington team had all the markings of a champion. The fact that many of those same players went on to win a Super Bowl a few years later says plenty. And that’s why 1984 stands above the rest: not just because it fell short, but because it was good enough to make the failure hurt.
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