Most Losses in NFL History: The Full Franchise Leaderboard

The Arizona Cardinals have the most regular-season losses in NFL history, 826 through the 2025 season. The Detroit Lions sit second at 717, and both totals reflect a combination of being among the league’s oldest franchises and enduring long stretches of losing.

Total losses rewards two things at once: how long a team has existed and how often it has come up short. The oldest franchises naturally pile up the biggest numbers, so this list is as much about longevity as futility. Below is the full top-15 leaderboard, regular season only, through the 2025 season, per Pro-Football-Reference and Wikipedia’s franchise win-loss records.

The full leaderboard: most losses in NFL history

Rank	Team	Losses	Franchise since
1	Arizona Cardinals	826	1920
2	Detroit Lions	717	1930
3	New York Giants	676	1925
4	Washington Commanders	660	1932
5	Chicago Bears	652	1920
6	Philadelphia Eagles	645	1933
7	Green Bay Packers	611	1921
7	Los Angeles Rams	611	1937
9	Pittsburgh Steelers	592	1933
10	New York Jets	573	1960
11	Cleveland Browns	560	1946
12	San Francisco 49ers	531	1946
13	Tennessee Titans	529	1960
14	Atlanta Falcons	521	1966
15	Indianapolis Colts	519	1953

Nine of the top 15 date to the NFL’s earliest decades (1920s-1930s), and every team on the list has played close to a century of football. Green Bay and the Rams are tied at 611, both having played almost exactly the same number of seasons.

1. Arizona Cardinals — 826 losses

The Cardinals trace back to the Chicago Cardinals of 1920, the oldest continuously operating team in the NFL. That head start means more games played than almost anyone, and losing decades in St. Louis in the 1980s and Arizona in the 2000s pushed the total to 826, the most in league history. The Cardinals are not the worst team ever by rate; they combine the longest tenure with enough struggle to lead the raw count.

2. Detroit Lions — 717 losses

The Lions have played since 1930 and spent much of the 2000s and 2010s rebuilding, capped by the 0-16 season in 2008, the first winless 16-game season in NFL history. Ninety-five seasons of football and frequent coaching changes have put Detroit within striking distance of the Cardinals.

3. New York Giants — 676 losses

A counterintuitive entry: a franchise with four Super Bowl titles and eight championships overall still ranks third in all-time losses, purely because it has played since 1925. It is the clearest example on this list of longevity outweighing quality in a counting stat.

4. Washington Commanders — 660 losses

Washington entered the league in 1932 and, like the Giants, has a championship pedigree (three Super Bowl wins) alongside a high loss total, with multiple rebuilding stretches under different owners since the 1990s adding steadily to the count.

5. Chicago Bears — 652 losses

The Bears are tied with Arizona as one of the NFL’s two “charter” franchises still playing under the same name since 1920, and hold the record for most ties in league history (42) on top of 652 losses. Their win total (809) is still second all-time, underscoring how much game volume drives this list.

6. Philadelphia Eagles — 645 losses

The Eagles joined the league in 1933 and, despite Super Bowl titles decades apart, have accumulated 645 losses across nine-plus decades, including a long championship drought between them.

7 (tie). Green Bay Packers — 611 losses

The Packers hold the all-time wins record (819) and still show 611 losses, a reminder that even the league’s most successful franchise racks up losses simply by playing over 1,450 games since 1921.

7 (tie). Los Angeles Rams — 611 losses

The Rams, dating to 1937, have relocated twice (Cleveland to Los Angeles to St. Louis and back) and endured a long down period in St. Louis in the late 2000s, landing them level with Green Bay despite a shorter history.

What this record measures — and what it does not

Every team in the top nine has existed for roughly 90 to 100 years. Because losses accumulate one game at a time, the franchises that have simply played the most games tend to have the most, regardless of era. The Giants and Eagles prove it: both are championship-winning teams that rank in the top six purely because of tenure.

The better lens for how bad a team has actually been is all-time winning percentage and single-season futility, covered in our look at the worst record in NFL history, the two 0-16 seasons (Lions 2008, Browns 2017) that mark true rock bottom. Sustained losing also tends to pair with missed playoffs, the theme of the longest playoff droughts in the NFL. At the biggest stage, futility looks different: heartbreak in title games rather than empty seasons, covered in our most Super Bowl losses breakdown. For the flip side of this list, browse the american football hub.

Could this record change?

The gap between the Cardinals (826) and Lions (717), 109 losses, is not one that closes quickly at a typical rate of 8-9 losses a season for a struggling team, so Arizona is likely to hold the top spot well beyond 2026. Lower down, the Giants, Commanders, Bears and Eagles are separated by only 31 losses across four spots, so a prolonged slump by one or sustained success by another could reorder the middle of the top six within a few seasons. Expansion-era teams like the Jets and Browns remain the closest challengers from the post-1960 group, but they are still decades of seasons behind the Cardinals’ head start.

The short version: the Arizona Cardinals have the most losses in NFL history at 826, ahead of the Detroit Lions at 717, with the Giants, Commanders, Bears and Eagles rounding out the top six, all totals shaped as much by longevity as by losing, through the 2025 season.