About the LFL

What is the LFL (Legendary Football League)?

The LFL is a unique approach to try and determine the greatest NFL football of all time, using Lance Haffner's 3-in-1 Football simulator.

In place of a tournament style approach, or single head-to-head matchups, the LFL is a full 32-team league, which each spot being occupied by the top "team" in history, for that franchise. We will be playing a full 17-week regular NFL season, mirroring the ongoing 2019 season.

Many teams like Oakland, San Francisco, Dallas and New England etc. have a long and rich history of successful franchises, so I tried to use some of the following criteria to narrow down choices:

  1. Modern teams (late 60's+) should be used where possible. There are some dominant teams from the early decades of NFL/AFL, but this a much lesser known era to the general population. In addition, these were smaller leagues with less competition, so their "achievements" would be harder to measure against those of modern teams from a 24+ team league.
  2. As statistical football games are, by nature, driven by stats, teams chosen should be fairly high in league rank and stats. Many Super Bowl quality teams were not top of the league, but just had a successful streak of games to get to the top. Obviously, statistics can't create or predict these types of trends. Furthermore, 3-in-1 Football accounts for a team's offensive/defensive performance (in comparison to the remainder of the league), so picking teams with high league rankings will "even" the odds more for all teams, so to speak.
  3. When uncertain about some choices, just go with my gut and 30+ years of football watching to pick the team I think would be most exciting and likely to succeed.
I did go to the extent of making "2nd" choice picks for each franchise, but this served a few purposes for me - reminding myself how difficult the choices were, and to perhaps one day use for taking a 2nd shot at a similar league in the future.

So, what teams make up the LFL?

Glad you asked. Allow me to present you the final setup
AMERICAN FOOTBALL CONFERENCE.

AFC EastAFC NorthAFC SouthAFC West
2007 NE Patriots2000 Baltimore (Ravens)2012 Houston1969 Kansas City
1972 Miami Dolphins1976 Pittsburgh1968 Baltimore (Colts)1979 SD Chargers
1991 Buffalo1969 Cleveland2008 Tennessee1997 Denver
1968 NY Jets1988 Cincinnati1999 Jacksonville1974 Oakland
NATIONAL FOOTBALL CONFERENCE

NFC EastNFC NorthNFC SouthNFC West
1992 Dallas1985 Chicago2009 New Orleans1973 LA Rams
2017 Philadelphia1975 Minnesota1998 Atlanta2013 Seattle
1991 Washington1962 Green Bay2015 Carolina1989 San Francisco
1986 NY Giants1991 Detroit2002 Tampa Bay2015 Arizona

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