The cards that power modern were mostly made before NWO started directly affecting the pipeline. Control can beat basically any deck that isn't completely brok

The cards that power modern were mostly made before NWO started directly affecting the pipeline. Control can beat basically any deck that isn't completely broken (eg, eldrazi winter), but does so at the expense of losing to everything else. In addition, burn is cheap and played a lot day 1. It lowers most control deck numbers enough to make a top 8 contention impossible. Teferi has helped a lot as one of very few consistent win conditions across the field. I think modern really needs UU counterspell for control to be less than niche. Once the field diversifies a bit again, control will once again fade to T2.