Longest Losing Streaks in NFL History

The longest losing streak in modern NFL history belongs to the 1976-77 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who lost 26 games in a row. The skid began with all 14 games of their 0-14 expansion season and rolled into an 0-12 start the following year before they finally won in Week 13 of 1977.

A losing streak spans games, not seasons, so the worst ones tend to bridge two or even three years of misery. The NFL’s longest skids belong to expansion teams finding their footing and established clubs hitting rock bottom. Here is how they rank, and the historical footnote that complicates the very top of the list. All figures are through the 2025 season.

The record holder: the 1976-77 Buccaneers

The expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost every game of their inaugural 1976 season, going 0-14, then opened 1977 with 12 more defeats for a total of 26 straight losses. The drought finally ended in Week 13 of 1977 with a road win over the New Orleans Saints, followed by a second win the next week. Coached by John McKay, the Bucs turned their futility into a grim kind of fame.

That 26-game streak is the recognized record for consecutive losses in NFL history. You can read the full story of how it started in our profile of the 1976 Buccaneers’ winless season.

The full leaderboard of NFL losing streaks

The table below ranks the longest losing streaks in modern NFL history.

Team	Seasons	Streak	Note
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	1976-77	26	Longest in modern NFL
Detroit Lions	2007-09	19	Included the 0-16 2008 season
Cleveland Browns	2016-17	17	Straddled 1-15 and 0-16 seasons
Chicago Cardinals	1942-45	20	Post-merger portion, war era
Houston Oilers	1972-73	18	Early-’70s collapse

The Buccaneers lead by a wide margin. The Lions and Browns follow, their streaks built around the two 0-16 seasons in league history.

The wartime asterisk

There is a complication at the top of the record book. The Chicago Cardinals lost 29 consecutive games from 1942 to 1945, which would be the longest streak of all. But that span crossed the 1944 season, when the Cardinals merged with the Pittsburgh Steelers to form “Card-Pitt” because of World War II manpower shortages. Because the streak ran through a temporary merged franchise, it is generally set aside, leaving the Buccaneers’ 26 as the accepted record.

It is a reminder that record-keeping sometimes depends on judgment calls about what counts as the same team.

The Lions and Browns: the 0-16 streaks

The two longest modern streaks after the Bucs both center on a winless season. The Detroit Lions lost 19 in a row across 2007-2009, a run that swallowed their entire 0-16 season in 2008. The Cleveland Browns lost 17 straight across 2016-2017, covering their 0-16 season plus the final game of a 1-15 year.

Both streaks show how a single winless season can anchor a longer skid, since a team that loses all 16 games almost inevitably drops a few on either end.

Where these streaks fit

Losing streaks are the flip side of the league’s best runs, and they overlap heavily with its worst seasons. Every team on this list also appears in the story of the worst record in NFL history. One record measures the worst single year; this one measures the longest unbroken run of defeats, which can stretch far beyond a single season.

Why these records matter

The longest losing streaks endure because they capture sustained futility, not just one bad Sunday. To lose 17, 19, or 26 games in a row, a team has to be bad for a long time and unlucky in the close ones. That combination is rare, which is why the Buccaneers’ 26 has stood for nearly half a century.

The short version: the longest losing streak in modern NFL history is the 1976-77 Buccaneers’ 26 games, with the Lions’ 19 (2007-09) and Browns’ 17 (2016-17) next. A longer wartime Cardinals skid is excluded for the Card-Pitt merger. Through the 2025 season, the Bucs’ record stands.