Our favorite 60 stats entering Super Bowl 60: How Philip Rivers, Cam Little and others blew up 2025 NFL season

Get ready to take some Tylenol because your head is about to explode from all of these insane stats

By Douglas Clawson

It feels like we say this every year, and maybe we’re just so spoiled or I’m a prisoner of the moment, but this NFL season was awesome and felt like one of the best ever because of how unpredictable it was.

Philip Rivers came out of retirement. Let me repeat. Philip Rivers came out of retirement. In the NFL. In the year 2025. Yeah, it was 100 times more surprising than Bill Belichick getting snubbed by the Hall of Fame, and that caused an uproar across the football world.

There were turnarounds galore (on both ends of the spectrum) in the most wide-open Super Bowl race of all time. The Bears, Jaguars and Panthers made the playoffs. The Chiefs, Bengals and Ravens did not. Pandemonium.

There were endless amounts of comebacks and thrilling finishes. Thank you, Chicago Bears.

It was such a crazy year that the final game will be between starting QBs Drake Maye and Sam Darnold. Imagine going back in time and telling someone that before the season. You may have gotten the same reaction if you had told them there would be a Super Bowl between Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa, borderline franchise QBs who were both benched this year.

Even the kicking was exciting!

My teammates and I in the CBS Sports Research group loved every minute of it, as there were endless stats to churn out to support story after story.

The social group here, our writers and editors and more contributed so many memorable stats, so here’s our favorite 60 entering Super Bowl 60:

1. Philip Rivers came out of retirement and played his first game in 1,800 days at age 44 as a grandfather. That is, hands down, the craziest happening of the season.

2. Seahawks/Patriots is the first Super Bowl matchup between teams with preseason Super Bowl odds of 50-1 or longer since 1981 (49ers/Bengals). In some respects, it’s the most surprising Super Bowl matchup ever.

3. None of the top seven teams in preseason Super Bowl odds made conference title games for the first time since 2008. The Chiefs, Ravens and Lions were a combined 23-28 this year after going 42-9 last year. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

4. This was the first postseason since 2008 without Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes and Brady both tore the ACL in their left knee in their ninth season after winning three Super Bowls in their first eight seasons (and both lost in the Super Bowl in their eighth season). This, of course, means Mahomes will win another four rings, but only after he goes about a decade without winning.

5. There were an NFL-record five playoff teams coming off 11+ loss seasons this year (Patriots, Jaguars, Bears, Panthers, 49ers).

6. Three teams in NFL history have gone from a 13+ loss season to a 13+ win season. The 1999 Colts, 2025 Jaguars and 2025 Patriots. Hats off to Liam Coen and Mike Vrabel.

7. The Patriots improved their win total from four in 2024 to 17 in 2025, including playoffs, passing the 1998-99 Rams for the largest turnaround in NFL history (+13). They also played the easiest regular-season strength of schedule since the 1999 Rams (who won a Super Bowl that year). Patriots fans aren’t annoyed with that stat at all (lol).

8. We didn’t even have to play every Wild Card game this postseason to set NFL single-postseason records for fourth-quarter lead changes (12) and comeback wins in the final three minutes (four). Both records were broken through five games this postseason.

9. It was a year of crazy comebacks. There were an NFL-record seven wins by teams down by 15+ points in the fourth quarter this season, including playoffs. There had never been more than four such comebacks in a season in league history.

10. The Broncos had an NFL-record 12 comeback wins and tied an NFL record with 11 one-score wins (2024 Chiefs).

Their most impressive comeback was against the Giants, which they won after trailing 19-0 in the fourth quarter. They recorded the most points in the fourth quarter in NFL history by a team shut out through three quarters (33).

11. It was a pretty cool feat, even if it was vs. the Giants! They lost an NFL-record five games when leading by 10+ points on the road this season.

12. The Bears were the cardiac kids all the way until their final play of the year. They won an NFL-record seven games when trailing in the final two minutes this season, including playoffs. They were 3-3 when down 10+ points in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter, while the rest of the NFL was 3-162.

13. Caleb Williams set a Bears record with 3,942 pass yards this season. But the Bears are still the only franchise in NFL history without a 4,000-yard passer. That is one of the most befuddling stats in all of sports history.

14. Four teams in NFL history have lost three times in a season with 34+ points scored. Two of them are the 2024 Bengals and 2025 Bengals (also the 1985 Chargers and 2002 Chiefs)

Cincinnati is 2-4 in the last two seasons when scoring 38+ points. The rest of the NFL is 78-5. No wonder Joe Burrow is unhappy.

15. This pretty much sums up how close the MVP race is.

Drake Maye became the first quarterback with the NFL’s best record, completion rate and yards per attempt since Tom Brady in 2007.

Matthew Stafford became the first quarterback to lead the NFL in pass yards, touchdown passes and touchdown-to-interception ratio since Tom Brady in 2007. This is a Tom Brady stat! His 2007 season is often imitated, never truly duplicated.

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