Are Seahawks a blast from the past?

The NFL does what it can via the draft, salary cap, free agency and, coming soon, expanded playoffs to engineer a sense of parity, making each team and each fan base believe it has a chance to win on any given Sunday - and to reach any season's Super Bowl.

Those efforts might finally have brought about the death of dynasties: It's been a decade since the New England Patriots won the 2003 and 2004 titles, the longest stretch without a repeat champion in nearly a half-century of Super Bowls.

"The days of the dominant teams may be gone forever," said Ted Sundquist, a former general manager of the Denver Broncos and their director of college scouting when they won back-to-back Super Bowls in the late 1990s.