The 2021 NFL season is wrapping up this week, and it has been one of the wildest years that I can recall. In particular, every team that we would like to think of as “good” has one or two games on their résumé that are simply baffling. The Packers opened the season by being annihilated by the Saints. The Chiefs put up only 3 points against the Titans. Buffalo lost to Jacksonville, Tampa Bay to Washington, Dallas to Denver, the Chargers to Houston, and Cincinnati lost to both the Jets and the Bears.
At times this year it’s felt like there really aren’t any good teams in the NFL. But of course, someone has to win the Super Bowl at the end of the year. And no matter who it is, we’re going to look back on a game from their season and try to figure out what the hell happened.
So this got me thinking. If we go back over the past ten Super Bowl champions, how many had similarly embarrassing losses during their regular season runs? Working backwards through time, I picked out the worst loss suffered by each eventual Super Bowl champion, factoring in quality of opponent, margin of defeat, and other factors like location of game and point in the season.
What I found was a fair mix, some eventual champions who can match this season’s bizarre outcomes, and some that would look at the paths followed by this year’s top teams and turn away in disgust.
2020:
@Tampa Bay Buccaneers – 3New Orleans Saints (12-4) – 38
It was very easy to write off Tampa Bay in November of last season. They lost three out of four to drop to 7-5, the ugliest of which was this thrashing at home by their division rivals. Honestly the final score of this game understates just how lopsided it was. Only a red zone fumble stopped the Saints from scoring touchdowns on each of their first five possessions, and any attempts at a comeback were spoiled by three Tom Brady interceptions after they went down 21-0.
The narratives we tell ourselves about Super Bowl teams are always a bit too easy, but it’s hard not to look back at the 2020 Buccaneers and say that their bye week came at the perfect time. The week off following their third November loss gave them time to self-scout and to fix some of the issues with their offense. They gave Brady more control over the protection scheme, which allowed him to avoid pressure and eliminate mistakes down the field. And they got more aggressive using Devin White as a blitzer, boosting their pass rush and eliminating their biggest weakness in coverage.
It also seems that the Saints are just a bad matchup for Tampa Bay. The Buccaneers have lost four out of five to New Orleans since acquiring Brady, as the Saints defense has continued to give him problems. The one exception was, of course, in the middle of Tampa Bay’s postseason run. And that just goes to show you how wild a single-elimination playoff tournament can be.
2019:
@Kansas City Chiefs – 13Indianapolis Colts (7-5) – 19
Over the course of Kansas City’s Super Bowl run this wasn’t just their ugliest loss, it was also the only game in which they failed to score at least 23 points. They actually scored on their first two possessions of this game and then were kept off the board again until the final two minutes, while the Colts just kept kicking field goals to slowly pull away.
The offense just simply couldn’t stop shooting themselves in the foot. They fumbled at the end of a big play. They took multiple penalties that pushed them into long-yardage situations. They elected to punt on a play where they should have tried to convert. It was frustrating, and it was the first game in a stretch that saw them lose four of six (partially due to an injury to Patrick Mahomes that kept him out three games and limited him when he was on the field).
But the most important thing that came out of this was absolutely nothing. The failure of Kansas City’s offense in this one game did not result in some soul-searching reevaluation of everything they’d found success with for years. They just waited things out, trusted they’d solve the small issues they had, and hoped to have better luck when it mattered. Much as they’ve done this season, as they weathered some similar early-season struggles to emerge as the top team in the AFC once again.
2018:
New England Patriots – 10@Detroit Lions (6-10) – 26
There was actually a pretty good selection to choose from here. This Patriots championship team lost five regular season games, and several of them were not the sort we’d expect to see the Patriots lose. This defeat to the Lions came a week after losing to a Jaguars team that went on to finish 5-11, and later in the season they lost by 24 to an admittedly decent Titans squad.
I ended up picking this Lions game because this was literally the one bright moment for Detroit in the entire Matt Patricia blunder. He welcomed his old boss Belichick to Detroit, and he absolutely embarrassed him, holding Brady to just 133 yards passing and an interception. This was a point where New England’s receiving options truly bottomed out, as after Rob Gronkowski their top options were Chris Hogan and Phillip Dorsett. The return of Julian Edelman a couple weeks later helped give this offense some life, and they managed to put things together to where they were firing on all cylinders by the time the playoffs rolled around.
2017:
Philadelphia Eagles – 10@Seattle Seahawks (9-7) – 24
This was actually one of the cleanest championship runs in recent memory, which is interesting because 2017 is the only year that comes close to this one in terms of sheer batshittery. The Eagles only lost three times this season, and once was in a meaningless game in the final week after they had already locked up the top seed in the NFC.
Of their two real losses, both were on the road against teams that finished with a winning record. Their early-season seven point loss to a Kansas City team that went on to win its division is about as excusable as it comes. Losing by two touchdowns to a Seahawks team that didn’t make the playoffs is a bit tougher. But the Seahawks still finished 9-7, and Seattle is notoriously one of the most difficult road environments for a team to face. So as strange as this Eagles championship feels in hindsight, through the course of the 2017 regular season they took care of business as well as you could hope for.
2016:
@New England Patriots – 0Buffalo Bills (7-9) – 16
This is another one where it’s hard to pick out a bad loss. From a distance, this early-season loss to Buffalo looks pretty rough. But this was the final game of Tom Brady’s four-game suspension that kicked off this season, and the Patriots were forced to start rookie Jacoby Brissett with Jimmy Garoppolo sidelined by injury. Being stuck with a third string quarterback is a pretty good excuse for suffering one of two losses on the season.
But the only other choice for this was a 31-24 loss to Seattle later in the season. This wasn’t the best year the Seahawks had, but they still won their division and made a brief run in the playoffs. By the time Brady was available, the Patriots coasted through the rest of their season on their way to their memorable Super Bowl victory over Atlanta.
2015:
@Denver Broncos – 13Kansas City Chiefs (11-5) – 29
There were a couple good choices to pick from here. A 15-12 loss in December to a Raiders team that finished 7-9 was probably the low point on paper, but I’ll stick with this thrashing by Kansas City for what it represented in the big picture of Denver’s season. The Chiefs were a playoff team, and it isn’t shocking that they would beat an eventual Super Bowl champion. But the way in which this game unfolded felt like it marked the end of Denver’s championship hopes.
The Broncos started the season with seven straight victories before losing a tight one on the road against Indianapolis. But it was very clear that something was not right with Peyton Manning, as he’d thrown at least one interception in every game and ten over the previous five. They rolled him out against Kansas City, and he proceeded to go five for twenty with four interceptions before he was benched for Brock Osweiler.
Obviously we know how this turned out, with Manning taking over to do just enough in the postseason to let their elite defense carry them to a championship. But at this point, it seemed like Manning was done and that any hopes they had rested on the shoulders of Osweiler. It’s hard to think of a lower moment for a recent championship winner than that.
2014:
New England Patriots – 14@Kansas City Chiefs (9-7) – 41
This game is probably the most memorable case of overreaction in recent memory. The Patriots came out on Monday Night Football, and they got absolutely thrashed by a Chiefs team that was just in the process of finding itself. Brady was pulled once the game was out of hand, and rookie second round pick Jimmy Garoppolo came in and looked pretty decent. With a 2-2 record, a big investment in a young quarterback, and Brady showing some signs of struggles in his age 37 season, plenty of people jumped all over the speculation that this could be the end of the road.
Obviously seven years later this all seems absurd. Brady has won four Super Bowls since this game, three of them with the Patriots. New England only lost two regular season games the rest of the way, and one was in the final week where they started Garoppolo to keep Brady healthy for the postseason. And this Kansas City game became a meme that’s hung around for both Brady and Bill Belichick ever since, popping up anytime people question if we are starting to see the end of things.
2013:
@Seattle Seahawks – 10Arizona Cardinals (10-6) – 17
This is another regular season that was pretty clean across the board. The Seahawks lost three times, and this was the only one that wasn’t on the road against an eventual playoff team. Even then, Arizona finished with ten wins and missed out on a wild card spot simply through tiebreakers. And this game wasn’t even that meaningful to Seattle, as they had already locked up homefield advantage through the playoffs.
2012:
Baltimore Ravens – 23@Philadelphia Eagles (4-12) – 24
Part of the reason 2021 feels so wild is that we got used to elite teams simply taking care of business in the regular season. I’m working backwards for this list, but if you look above you’ll see that from 2013 through 2019 there are really only two games that stand out as ugly losses for eventual champions. That wasn’t always the case though, as we see with the last two entries on this list.
The 2012 Ravens are one of the flukier champions in recent memory. They barely made it into the playoffs with a 10-6 record, and they ended the regular season by losing four of their final five. Most of these were losses to other teams that ended up making the playoffs, but early in the season they fell against an Eagles team that ended up collapsing down the stretch. After starting 3-1, the Eagles proceeded to lose eight straight and eleven of their final twelve. The Ravens got Philadelphia at a bad time by facing them in the first month when they were actually semi-competent, but that doesn’t erase the fact that fully one quarter of Philadelphia’s wins this year came over the team that ended up winning the Super Bowl.
2011:
@New York Giants – 10Washington Football Team (5-11) – 23
Washington won only five games in 2011, and two of them were over the eventual Super Bowl champion Giants. On opening week they hosted New York and won 24-10, and then in December they went on the road and won by a nearly identical score of 23-10.
The latter of these two Giants defeats is the more egregious to me. First of all, it’s always worse to lose at home. Secondly, this loss came with only three weeks left in the season, when New York’s playoff chances were precarious and they couldn’t afford to lose against anyone much less against a bad division foe. This capped off a string of five losses in six games, and left them needing help just to have a chance at an eventual postseason run.
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