The last 20 Super Bowl participants have had 24 or more takeaways during the regular season: The front runners for the Super Bowl based on this requirement among the current playoff teams in no order are Kansas City, Denver, Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Oakland, NY Giants, and Seattle.
Here is a list of all 32 teams sorted by takeaways. The current AFC Playoff teams are highlighted red and the current NFC Playoff teams are highlighted blue.
Five current playoff teams have 21 or more takeaways right now with 4 games remaining.
The next highest current playoff teams, Seattle and the NY Giants, have 16 takeaways. That means they'd have to have 8 takeaways in the last four games to get to a minimum of 24 for this to still hold true.
Other interesting notes:
No NFL team has ever won a super bowl with less than 25 takeaways during the regular season.
Since 2006, only 2014 Seattle got to the Super Bowl with less than 25 takeaways (they had 24 during the regular season)
The average takeaways number for the last 20 super bowl participants was 30.6.
The high takeaways number for the last 20 super bowl participants was 44 (the 2006 Bears.)
The low takeaways number for the last 20 super bowl participants is the 24 (the 2014 Seahawks.)
Turnovers seem to be one of the biggest and most consistent factors when predicting which teams will make the Super Bowl. Since week 5, Bucs lead the NFL in turnover differential. Bucs have all the makings of a playoffs dark horse.
