No Extra Week to Prepare
Only five previous Super Bowls have had just one week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl -- IV, XV, XXV, XXVII and XXXIV. The margin of victory for those five Super Bowls was 10.2 points compared to 17.3 for all other Super Bowls. If we compare just the Super Bowls since 1978, the year the league's passing rules were changed to increase overall scoring, the average margin of victory for Super Bowls with two weeks of prep time jumps to 19.4 points while the one-week championships drops to 8.8. So less preparation time obviously keeps the game closer. Of the four modern-era one-week Super Bowls, only one had a margin of victory greater than 10 points -- Super Bowl XXVII in which the Cowboys defeated the Bills 30-13. However, even that could be considered a much closer game than it should have been considering the Cowboys blew out the Bills by 35 points in the previous year's Super Bowl.
Only five previous Super Bowls have had just one week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl -- IV, XV, XXV, XXVII and XXXIV. The margin of victory for those five Super Bowls was 10.2 points compared to 17.3 for all other Super Bowls. If we compare just the Super Bowls since 1978, the year the league's passing rules were changed to increase overall scoring, the average margin of victory for Super Bowls with two weeks of prep time jumps to 19.4 points while the one-week championships drops to 8.8. So less preparation time obviously keeps the game closer. Of the four modern-era one-week Super Bowls, only one had a margin of victory greater than 10 points -- Super Bowl XXVII in which the Cowboys defeated the Bills 30-13. However, even that could be considered a much closer game than it should have been considering the Cowboys blew out the Bills by 35 points in the previous year's Super Bowl.
