“Wait ’til next year” has long been the rally cry for fans whose teams fell short of a championship.
But next year hasn’t been kind to the Super Bowl runner-up.
It’s been 23 years since a team that lost the Super Bowl made it back the following season. The Buffalo Bills became synonymous with Super Bowl futility in the early 1990s, losing four consecutive years.
The ’93 Bills were the last Super Bowl runner-up to return to the game the following year – a fact that a reporter mentioned to Panthers coach Ron Rivera last week at the NFL annual meetings in Boca Raton, Fla.