It's already been talked about ad nauseam in the five months since the Carolina Panthers got back from San Francisco. The 1993 Buffalo Bills were the last team that made it back to the Super Bowl a year after losing it the previous season.
The 23-year hangover was yet again a topic of conversation Wednesday as players arrived in Spartanburg for the first day of training camp.
Tight end Greg Olsen spent his rookie year with the 2007 Chicago Bears, one of the seven teams since 2000 that didn't even make the playoffs a season after they were Super Bowl runners-up.
What's the cause of this mysterious hangover?
As he often does, Olsen provided a good perspective:
"It's not just the players — the team, the community, the fans — it's human nature. I think everyone just assumes, 'Hey, you've got the same guys back. Why would it be any different?'
"I think the answer is every game is different; every season is different. Every season has its own kind of history, its own storyline. There's so many moving parts, there's so many factors that go into whether you have success or not.
"This league is ultracompetitive. Teams around you are continuing to get better. It almost seems the better you are, the harder it is to get better. The teams that struggle a little bit more have more opportunity to get more players. It's just the way the league is designed.
"I think from a human instinct perspective, you kind of rest on your laurels. We've identified that from Day 1. That can't be the case with us. We're going to start from one, and we're going to build that platform starting with OTAs to minicamp and now to training camp.
"If we're not willing to do those things, and if we think we're just going to show up Week 1 and rattle off 14 wins in a row like we did last year just because we're the same guys in the same uniforms, you're going to find yourself in a bad spot. That's just not the way this league works."
Fullback Mike Tolbert wasn't as wordy:
"History said that nobody won NFC South twice or three times in a row. We did it, so why can't it be done?"
Fair point, but a 23-year slump isn't a meaningless coincidence. Something — or things — happen to a team after they lose a Super Bowl. If the Panthers are going to find a cure, it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
"We have a lot of work to do," Olsen said, "we take this very seriously.
"This is too hard to come out and just half-assed and find ourselves 1-4 asking, 'What's going on?' We're not going to allow that to be the problem and that all starts with our preparation here at camp."