The Franchises With the Most NFL Losses

The Arizona Cardinals have the most losses in NFL history, with roughly 826 through the 2025 season. The Detroit Lions sit close behind at about 812, and both totals reflect a combination of being among the league’s oldest franchises and enduring long stretches of losing.

Total losses is a record that 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. Here is the full leaderboard of the most NFL losses, with the context that makes the numbers make sense, all figures approximate and through the 2025 season.

The record: the Cardinals at the top

The Cardinals franchise traces back to the Chicago Cardinals of 1920, making it the oldest continuously operating team in the NFL. That head start means more games played than almost anyone, and a history dotted with losing decades has pushed the loss total to roughly 826, the most in league history.

It is worth stressing what that does and does not mean. The Cardinals are not the worst team ever by rate; they simply combine the longest tenure with enough struggle to lead the raw count. Longevity is doing a lot of the work.

The full leaderboard of most losses

The table below ranks the franchises with the most all-time losses. Figures are approximate and through the 2025 season.

Rank	Team	Losses (approx.)
1	Arizona Cardinals	~826
2	Detroit Lions	~812
3	New York Giants	~709
4	Washington	~663

The Cardinals and Lions lead by a clear margin. Below them, the Giants and Washington round out the top four, all of them franchises that have played for the better part of a century.

Why the oldest teams dominate

Every team on this list has been around 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 losses, regardless of how good they have been in any given era. The Giants, for instance, are a historically successful team with multiple titles, yet they rank third in losses purely because of their long history.

That is the key to reading this record correctly. It is a marker of endurance first and struggle second, which is why a proud franchise can sit near the top.

Losses, records and quality

If you want to measure how bad a team has been rather than how long it has existed, the better lenses are winning percentage and single-season futility. Those show up in our look at the worst record in NFL history, the two 0-16 seasons that mark true rock bottom. Sustained losing also tends to travel with postseason absence, the theme of the longest playoff droughts in the NFL.

At the biggest stage, futility takes a different shape, the heartbreak of falling short in title games, captured in the most Super Bowl losses. Those are separate records from raw franchise losses, and they measure separate kinds of pain.

The short version: the Arizona Cardinals have the most losses in NFL history at roughly 826, ahead of the Detroit Lions at about 812, with the Giants and Washington next, all totals shaped as much by longevity as by losing, through the 2025 season.