Every NFL Team That Almost Went Undefeated

The 1972 Dolphins stand alone, but they’re not the only team that spent most of a season looking like they might join them. Here’s the full list of teams that got a long unbeaten run going before it ended.

The closest calls, in order

1934 Chicago Bears — Won all 13 regular-season games before losing the NFL Championship to the New York Giants, in the famous “Sneakers Game” played on an icy Polo Grounds field.

1976 Oakland Raiders — Finished 16-1, their only loss a road defeat, before winning Super Bowl XI.

1978 Pittsburgh Steelers — Finished 17-2 on their way to a Super Bowl XIII win, part of the franchise’s 1970s dynasty run.

1984 San Francisco 49ers — Finished 18-1, one of the most dominant seasons of the decade, capped by a Super Bowl XIX win.

1985 Chicago Bears — Started 12-0 before losing 38-24 to the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football. The loss is remembered almost as fondly by Dolphins alumni as their own perfect season, since it kept 1972 unmatched for another year. Chicago still finished 18-1 and won Super Bowl XX.

1989 San Francisco 49ers — Finished 17-2, won Super Bowl XXIV in a blowout.

1998 Denver Broncos — Started 13-0 before finishing 17-2 and winning Super Bowl XXXIII, their second straight title.

1998 Minnesota Vikings — Started 15-1 and looked like the best team in the league, before losing the NFC Championship Game to the Atlanta Falcons in overtime — a game remembered for a missed late field goal that would have sealed a Super Bowl trip.

2004 New England Patriots — Finished 17-2, won their third Super Bowl in four years.

2007 New England Patriots — The closest anyone has come to matching 1972: a perfect 16-0 regular season (the first ever under the 16-game schedule), extended to 18-0 through the playoffs, before losing Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants 17-14. Full breakdown in our 1972 Dolphins vs. 2007 Patriots comparison.

2016 New England Patriots — Finished 17-2 and won Super Bowl LI, best remembered for the historic 25-point comeback against the Atlanta Falcons.

The pre-merger era

Four teams from professional football’s earliest, most loosely standardized period are sometimes cited as fully undefeated: the 1920 Akron Pros, the 1922 and 1923 Canton Bulldogs, and the 1929 Green Bay Packers. Schedules in this era were shorter and far less consistent than the modern league’s, which makes a direct comparison to 1972 or 2007 difficult — but they’re a real part of the record books worth knowing.

The pattern

Almost every near-miss on this list shares a shape: a long, genuinely dominant unbeaten streak, undone by a single game — often a close one, often decided late. That’s the same shape the math behind the real odds of going 17-0 predicts: even a heavily favored team only has to lose once, and across a full season there are a lot of chances for that one loss to happen.

If you want to build a roster and test whether you can beat those odds yourself, try chasing your own 17-0 here.