Every Undefeated NFL Team, Explained

Only four NFL teams have ever finished a regular season with no losses and no ties: the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears, the 1972 Miami Dolphins and the 2007 New England Patriots. Of that select group, only the 1972 Dolphins turned a perfect regular season into a championship, finishing 17-0.

An undefeated season is the rarest kind of dominance in football. The league is built for parity, injuries strike every roster, and a single bad afternoon can end a perfect run. That four teams reached the finish line unbeaten is remarkable; that only one of them lifted the trophy tells you how much harder the postseason is. Here is every undefeated NFL team and how each story ended. All figures are through the 2025 season.

The complete list of undefeated NFL teams

The table below shows every team to finish a regular season without a loss, along with how their year ultimately ended.

Team	Season	Regular season	Final result
Miami Dolphins	1972	14-0	Won Super Bowl VII (17-0, perfect)
New England Patriots	2007	16-0	Lost Super Bowl XLII (18-1)
Chicago Bears	1934	13-0	Lost NFL Championship Game
Chicago Bears	1942	11-0	Lost NFL Championship Game

Four teams, four different eras, and only one perfect ending. The list also reflects how the schedule has grown, from the Bears’ 11- and 13-game seasons to the Dolphins’ 14 games and the Patriots’ 16, which is why the 2007 team holds the record for most regular-season wins without a loss.

The 1972 Dolphins: the only perfect season

The 1972 Miami Dolphins are the reason this topic exists in the modern imagination. They went 14-0 in the regular season, then won three straight playoff games, capped by a 14-7 win over Washington in Super Bowl VII, to finish 17-0. It is the only completely perfect season in NFL history, and no team has matched it in more than fifty years. Our full breakdown of the 1972 Dolphins’ perfect season covers how they did it despite a mid-season quarterback injury.

The 2007 Patriots: perfect until the very end

The 2007 New England Patriots came within one game of joining the Dolphins. They went 16-0 in the regular season, the best regular-season record in NFL history, behind Tom Brady’s record-setting passing and Randy Moss’s record receiving touchdowns. But in Super Bowl XLII, the New York Giants upset them 17-14, ending the perfect run at 18-1. The story of the 2007 Patriots’ 16-0 season is the closest any team has come to matching Miami and falling short.

The early-era Bears: unbeaten but uncrowned

Long before the Super Bowl era, the Chicago Bears twice went through a regular season unbeaten. The 1934 Bears finished 13-0 and the 1942 Bears went 11-0, but both lost the NFL Championship Game, the title decider of their day. Those seasons are sometimes overlooked because they predate modern schedules, but they belong on any complete list of undefeated regular seasons.

It is worth noting that in the league’s earliest years, a handful of teams finished seasons unbeaten but with one or more ties, before the four teams above set the standard for a true no-loss, no-tie regular season.

Why undefeated seasons matter

An undefeated regular season is the ultimate statement of week-to-week dominance, but the NFL’s postseason is a separate gauntlet where a single upset erases everything. That gap between a perfect regular season and a perfect year is exactly why the 1972 Dolphins stand alone. For how these teams rank against the greatest single campaigns, see the best regular-season record in NFL history.

The short version: four NFL teams have gone undefeated in the regular season, the 1934 and 1942 Bears, the 1972 Dolphins and the 2007 Patriots, but only the Dolphins finished perfect at 17-0. Through the 2025 season, Miami’s championship run remains the sport’s one flawless year.