Super Bowl franchise outside of the Super Bowl. No team has ever played the Super Bowl in its home stadium. The closest any team has come was the 2017 Minnesota Vikings, who were within one win of playing Super Bowl LII in U.S. Bank Stadium, but lost the NFC Championship game to the Philadelphia Eagles. Two teams have played the Super Bowl in their home market: the San Francisco 49ers, who played Super Bowl XIX in Stanford Stadium instead of Candlestick Park; and the Los Angeles Rams, who played Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl instead of the Los Angeles Memorial
Super Bowl XXXVIII Panthers made their first trip to the Super Bowl after posting a one-win regular season just two years earlier. The franchise was only in their ninth year of existence, joining the league as an expansion team in 1995. In just their second season, they posted a 12–4 regular season record and advanced to the NFC Championship Game, but lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers 30–13 (the Packers coincidentally went on to defeat the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI 35–21). But from 1997 onward, they had just one non-losing season (an 8–8 finish in 1999) until they