Lions

Neither ended in a Super Bowl appearance, and that gap still separates Detroit from every other franchise with an active roster: alongside the Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans, the Lions have never reached the game since it began.

The franchise did not start in Michigan. It formed in 1930 as the Portsmouth Spartans, and financial trouble in Ohio pushed George A. Richards to buy the club and move it to Detroit in 1934, where it took the Lions name. The first season under that name ended with the 1935 NFL Championship, won 28–0 over the New York Giants. The last of the club's four titles came in 1957, a 59–14 rout of the Cleveland Browns, and the drought since is old enough that fans still trace it to the trade of quarterback Bobby Layne the following year.

The club's oldest rivalries run alongside that history rather than through it — the series with the Chicago Bears dates to 1930, the longest continuous fixture in the league, and the one with the Green Bay Packers, unbroken since 1932, isn't far behind.