You’ve read countless Super Bowl predictions over the past month, based entirely off guesswork as to who will stay healthy, who will stay good and who will make the leap to the next level. But since no one can see the future, why not look to the past for a prediction? For The Win examined the DNA of past Super Bowl winners and came up with 10 specific rules that winnowed the field of 32 down to the single team that will hoist the Lombardi Trophy on the first Sunday in February.

1. No Super Bowl winner since 2001 finished below .500 the year before their title.

The last Super Bowl winner to finish the previous year with a sub-.500 record was Bill Belichick’s first title team in 2001. The last team who entered their championship season coming off a sub-.500 record and didn’t benefit from a ridiculous call in the snow and/or videotape was the St. Louis Rams, who went 4-12 in Dick Vermeil’s second season before a grocery clerk and a knee injury led the team to one of the most unexpected Super Bowl wins ever in the 1999 season. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1980 to find a team that did the same. So, despite the NFL being a league of so-called parity, if you didn’t finish 8-8 last year, you aren’t winning the Super Bowl. And that right there eliminates almost half of the NFL from contention for Super Bowl 50.

Eliminates: Atlanta Falcons (1), Carolina Panthers (2), Chicago Bears (3), Cleveland Browns (4), Jacksonville Jaguars (5), Minnesota Vikings (6), New Orleans Saints (7), New York Jets (8), New York Giants (9), Oakland Raiders (10), San Francisco 49ers (11), St. Louis Rams (12), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (13), Tennessee Titans (14), Washington Redskins (15).

2. Teams that play on Thanksgiving haven’t won a title since Dallas won its last Super Bowl 79 years ago. Oh, sorry, it’s only been 20 years. Seems longer.

You know what they say about tryptophan. Dallas has five Super Bowls while annually playing Thanksgiving, but none since 1995. But the only other team to play on the day of thanks and go on to hoist the Lombardi Trophy was the 1973 Miami Dolphins, who beat Dallas 14-7 on Thanksgiving and then beat the Vikings in the Super Bowl.

Eliminates: Dallas Cowboys (16), Detroit Lions (17), Green Bay Packers (18), Philadelphia Eagles (19).

3. Every division in the NFL has won a title in the past nine seasons, except for one.

Now this is parity. Since 2006, every single NFL division, with one exception, has at least one Super Bowl winner, with the NFC East (2) and AFC North (2) serving as the only multiple winners. That’s seven divisions winning in nine years. The only division without a title in that span is the AFC West. You have to go all the way back to John Elway’s two wins in 1997 and 1998 for the West’s last victory.

Eiminates: Denver Broncos (20), Kansas City Chiefs (21), San Diego Chargers (22).

4. No team has won a Super Bowl the year after hosting the Super Bowl.

We all know the stat about a team never winning the Super Bowl on its own turf, but less known is the fact that no team has won a Super Bowl the year after its field hosted the biggest sporting event in America. So, sorry, Cardinals, I don’t know how but this is clearly Katy Perry’s fault.

Eliminates: Arizona Cardinals (23).

5. It’s been (at least) decades since teams breaking longest active playoff droughts have won the Super Bowl.

Though I can only safely say this back to the early 1980s, it appears that the team with the longest active playoff appearance drought hasn’t won the Super Bowl in the same year it broke said drought. (The 1999 St. Louis Rams came close in the first category but the 1999 Seattle Seahawks had a drought that was one year longer at the time.) And the team with the longest active streak without a playoff win hasn’t done so either, so sorry, Bills (haven’t made playoffs since 1999, longest in NFL) and Bengals (haven’t won playoff game since 1990, longest in the NFL).

Eliminates: Buffalo Bills (24), Cincinnati Bengals (25).

6. Super Bowl runner-ups do not come back to win the Super Bowl.

The last team to lose in the Super Bowl one year and then win it the next was the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl V and Super Bowl VI. And even getting back to the Super Bowl after losing one is a tough proposition these days. The last team to do it was those infamous Buffalo Bills who went to four-straight Super Bowls in the early ’90s and won none.

Eliminates: Seattle Seahawks (26).

7. They say learning how to win in January is key, but learning how to win in February is even more important.

There have only been 13 NFL games held in February and, of the six remaining teams, three have won one of those 13 games. That’s bad news for the teams used to winning in January or not all, respectively.

Eliminates: Houston Texans (27), Miami Dolphins (28).

8. No repeat champions.

This is a tough one because the last repeat champions in the NFL were the very team being eliminated here. But with the landscape of the NFL currently different and every single human being associated with the NFL who isn’t on the Patriots payroll making sure everything is on the up-and-up this year, we feel comfortable eliminating the Pats and saying the no back-to-back streak continues into its second decade.

Eliminates: New England Patriots (29).

9. Sports Illustrated‘s pick does not go on to win the Super Bowl.

It was difficult to go back and find all the old SI NFL preview issues online because of the magazine’s archive site’s inexplicable, and impossible, redesign. But as far as I can tell, SI hasn’t picked the Super Bowl winner in the preseason in at least a decade and quite possibly (and probably) longer. That coupled with the residual effects of the SI cover jinx, which really doesn’t exist any more thanks to regional covers, is enough to disqualify this year’s pick.

Eliminates: Baltimore Ravens (30).

10. Only four of the 49 Super Bowl winning quarterbacks (8%) have had beards.

And none of those looked like Abraham Lincoln after a particularly bad visit to the barber.

Eliminates: Indianapolis Colts (31) which means that, by process of elimination …

12. The Pittsburgh Steelers will be Super Bowl 50 champions.

Even though we have them losing Week 1, it all fits perfectly. Ben Roethlisberger enters the season clean shaven (he was one of the four bearded Super Bowl QBs along with Terry Bradshaw, Jim Plulnkett and Ken Stabler). They know how to win in February — only one other team has multiple wins in the shortest month and that’s Eli Manning’s New York Giants. There have been four Super Bowls divisible by ten and the Steelers have won two of them (Super Bowl X and Super Bowl XL). And they’re just under the radar enough to be a surprise winner, the kind the NFL has gotten used to over the past 15 years. So start planning your parade route, Pittsburgh. This method is never wrong (except last year, when it chose the Colts — an error we’re attributing to Deflategate).