The Biggest Blowout in NFL History

The biggest blowout in NFL history was the Chicago Bears’ 73-0 win over the Washington Redskins in the NFL Championship Game on December 8, 1940. The 73-point margin is the largest in league history and the most points any team has ever scored in a title game.

Blowouts are common in football, but a 73-0 result on the sport’s biggest stage is something else entirely. Here is the full leaderboard of the most lopsided games in NFL history, the story behind the 1940 rout, and how the modern era compares. All figures are through the 2024 season.

The record holder: Bears 73, Redskins 0

The 1940 Championship remains one of the most remarkable results in American sports. Three weeks earlier, Washington had beaten Chicago 7-3 in the regular season, and afterward the Redskins’ owner reportedly called the Bears “crybabies.” Chicago answered with a demolition. Their T-formation offense scored on nearly every drive, and the defense piled on with multiple interception returns for touchdowns. The final was 73-0.

No game before or since has approached that margin. The 73-0 scoreline is football’s equivalent of an unbreakable record, a perfect storm of a motivated powerhouse meeting an opponent that completely collapsed on the biggest day of the season.

The full leaderboard of the biggest NFL blowouts

The table below ranks the most lopsided games in NFL history by margin of victory, noting whether each came in a championship, playoff or regular-season setting.

Rank	Margin	Result	Setting	Date
1	73	Bears 73, Redskins 0	NFL Championship	Dec 8, 1940
2	59	Patriots 59, Titans 0	Regular season	Oct 18, 2009
3	55	Jaguars 62, Dolphins 7	Playoffs	Jan 15, 2000
4	43	Rams 70, Colts 27	Regular season	Oct 22, 1950
5	37	Packers 37, Giants 0	NFL Championship	Dec 31, 1961

The 1940 Championship towers over everything else. Below it, the list mixes eras and settings, from the 1950 Rams’ high-scoring offense to the Patriots’ modern shutout and Jacksonville’s playoff rout of Miami in Dan Marino’s final game.

The modern record: Patriots 59, Titans 0

In the modern era, the most lopsided regular-season result is New England’s 59-0 win over Tennessee on October 18, 2009, played in a driving snowstorm. Tom Brady threw six touchdown passes, five of them in the first half, before halftime had even arrived. It is the closest any recent game has come to the spirit of the 1940 rout, though still 14 points shy of the margin.

The most lopsided playoff game of the modern format is Jacksonville’s 62-7 win over Miami in January 2000, a 55-point demolition in the divisional round. It carried an added weight of history: the game turned out to be Dan Marino’s final NFL appearance, an ignominious end for one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, and it underlined how quickly a playoff mismatch can spiral once the losing side falls behind early.

The high-scoring routs of the past

Not every historic blowout was a shutout. The Los Angeles Rams’ 70-27 win over the Baltimore Colts in 1950 came from one of the most explosive offenses the league had seen to that point, a team that regularly hung 60 or more points on opponents. A few years earlier, the 1940 Bears had shown that a blowout could be built on defense and special teams just as easily as offense, returning interceptions for scores to run up their record margin. And in the championship setting, the Green Bay Packers’ 37-0 win over the New York Giants in the 1961 title game announced the arrival of the Vince Lombardi dynasty, proving that even elite opponents could be shut out on the biggest stage. Each of these games reached the record book a different way, but all shared the same ingredient: one team executing near flawlessly while the other unraveled.

Why blowouts this big happen

Historic blowouts share a pattern: one team playing near-perfect football, an opponent that turns the ball over repeatedly, and, often, extra motivation. The 1940 Bears had all three, plus a revenge narrative. Modern rules and parity, driven by the salary cap and the draft, make 70-point margins almost impossible today, which is why the record has stood for more than 80 years.

These routs are the mirror image of the rallies on our biggest comeback in NFL history leaderboard, and the opposite of the offensive shootouts on our highest-scoring Super Bowl list. The franchises capable of dominating like this are often the same ones near the top of our most Super Bowl appearances rankings.

Why the record matters

The biggest blowout in NFL history is a monument to a single afternoon when everything went right for one team and wrong for the other. The Bears’ 73-0 win over the Redskins in the 1940 Championship set a margin so extreme that no game in eight decades has come close. In an era of parity, it may never be threatened.

The short version: the Chicago Bears’ 73-0 win over the Washington Redskins in the 1940 NFL Championship Game is the biggest blowout in NFL history, a 73-point margin. The Patriots’ 59-0 win over the Titans in 2009 is the most lopsided modern game, and the Jaguars’ 62-7 win over the Dolphins in 2000 is the biggest modern playoff blowout, through the 2024 season.