The Biggest Comebacks in Sports History

The biggest comebacks in sports history do not share a single number, because every sport measures a deficit differently. By points erased in one game, the largest belong to basketball, where the Utah Jazz overcame a 36-point hole against Denver in 1996; in the NFL, the Buffalo Bills’ 32-point rally from 35-3 down in a January 1993 playoff game stands as the record.

Comebacks are sport at its most thrilling, the moment a result that looks settled suddenly comes undone. Because you cannot compare 36 basketball points to three soccer goals directly, the honest way to rank them is sport by sport, celebrating the defining rally in each. Here is a curated leaderboard of the biggest comebacks in sports history, all examples as of the 2025 season.

The record by sport: basketball leads on points

Basketball’s high scoring and quick possessions make it the home of the largest single-game point comebacks. The Utah Jazz’s 36-point rally against the Denver Nuggets in 1996 is the record, and a cluster of 35-point comebacks sit just behind it. No other major sport sees deficits that large erased, which is why the numerical record lives in the NBA. The full story sits in our breakdown of the biggest comeback in NBA history.

The takeaway is that a “biggest comeback” number only makes sense within one sport, so basketball’s figure tops the raw count without being directly comparable to the rest.

The full cross-sport leaderboard

The table below gathers the defining comeback in several sports, ranked by how large the deficit was in that sport’s terms.

Sport	Comeback	Event	Year
Basketball (NBA)	36 points	Jazz over Nuggets	1996
American football (NFL)	32 points	Bills over Oilers, “The Comeback”	1993
Soccer (UCL final)	3-0 halftime deficit	Liverpool over AC Milan, Istanbul	2005
Soccer (UCL knockout)	4-0 aggregate	Barcelona over PSG	2017
Golf (Ryder Cup)	10-6 down entering singles	USA at Brookline	1999

Each row is the signature rally in its sport. They cannot be stacked against one another cleanly, but together they map out what the phrase “biggest comeback” means across the sporting world.

The NFL record: The Comeback

The NFL’s benchmark is the Buffalo Bills’ playoff win over the Houston Oilers on January 3, 1993. Buffalo trailed 35-3 in the third quarter with backup quarterback Frank Reich under center after Jim Kelly was injured, then scored 35 unanswered points on the way to a 41-38 overtime win. The 32-point rally remains the largest in league history and is known simply as The Comeback. You can read the full account in our piece on the biggest comeback in NFL history.

Soccer’s most famous night

Soccer’s low scoring makes any multi-goal comeback dramatic, and the most celebrated is Liverpool’s in the 2005 Champions League final. Down 3-0 to AC Milan at halftime in Istanbul, Liverpool scored three times in six second-half minutes to force extra time, then won the penalty shootout. On aggregate over two legs, Barcelona’s 2017 recovery from 4-0 down against Paris Saint-Germain, completed with a 6-1 second leg, ranks among the sport’s greatest reversals too.

These comebacks show why soccer measures its miracles in goals rather than points: erasing even a two-goal deficit can feel as improbable as a 30-point basketball rally.

Comebacks, upsets and the drama of sport

A great comeback is close cousin to a great upset, and the two often overlap when an underdog storms back to stun a favorite. For the flip side of these moments, the results nobody saw coming, see our ranking of the biggest upsets in sports history.

What unites every entry here is the same emotional turn: a game that looked lost becoming, in minutes, the most memorable win of a season. That is why comebacks endure in sports memory long after the final scores fade.

The short version: basketball owns the largest single-game point comeback at 36, the NFL’s record is the Bills’ 32-point rally in The Comeback, and Liverpool’s night in Istanbul is soccer’s most famous, each the defining reversal in its own sport as of 2025.