This is a great idea that was not executed very well. Here is Adam Spencer's list of the worst losses in history for each NFL team. This project would have been more successful if it had been undertaken by someone who actually knows something about NFL history:
Arizona: Super Bowl XLIII -- Pittsburgh 27, Arizona 23
Atlanta: 2010 Divisional Playoffs -- Green Bay 48, Atlanta 21
Baltimore: 2006 Divisional Playoffs -- Indianapolis 15, Baltimore 6 (I think last year's loss to Pittsburgh was worse)
Buffalo: 1999 Wild Card Playoffs -- Tennessee 22, Buffalo 16 (I don't think this is even close to being Buffalo's most disappointing loss)
Carolina: Super Bowl XXXVII -- New England 32, Carolina 29
Chicago: Super Bowl XLI: Indianapolis 29, Chicago 17 (Chicago's multiple playoff losses in the 1980s were all worse than this).
Cincinnati: 2005 Wild Card Playoffs -- Pittsburgh 31, Cincinnati 17 (Super Bowl XXIII was worse)
Cleveland: 1988 AFC Championship -- Denver 38, Cleveland 33 (This was bad, but it wasn't as bad as the Brian Sipe interception against Oakland in the 1980 playoffs)
Dallas: 2006 Wild Card Playoffs -- Seattle 21, Dallas 20 (Not as bad as the loss to San Francisco in the 1981 NFC Championship)
Denver: Super Bowl XXIV: San Francisco 55, Denver 10
Detroit: Last game of the 2008 season -- Green Bay 31, Detroit 21 (Detroit finished 0-16)
Green Bay: 2003 Divisional Playoffs -- Philadelphia 20, Green Bay 17
Houston: December 6, 2009 -- Jacksonville 23, Houston 18 (Texans would have made the playoffs if they had won this game)
Indianapolis: Super Bowl III -- New York Jets 16, Baltimore 7 (Technically, Indianapolis did not lose this game. The most disappointing loss for the good folks of Indiana was in the 2005 playoffs, when Pittsburgh beat Indy at Indy and went on to win the Super Bowl).
Jacksonville: 1996 AFC Championship -- New England 20, Jacksonville 6 (Actually, this was a very happy season for Jaguar fans -- they were much more disappointed in later years).
Kansas City: 1995 Divisional Playoffs -- Indianapolis 10, Kansas City 7 (This is a pretty good choice, although the loss to Denver two years later hurt even more).
Miami: Super Bowl XIX -- San Francisco 38, Miami 16 (I would be very surprised if Dolphin fans listed this game as their most disappointing loss).
Minnesota: 2009 NFC Championship -- New Orleans 31, Minnesota 28 (Not nearly as disappointing as the home loss to Atlanta in the 1997 playoffs).
New England: Super Bowl XLII -- New York Giants 17, New England 14 (Hard to argue with this)
New Orleans: 2006 NFC Championship -- Chicago 39, New Orleans 14
New York Jets: 2004 Divisional Playoffs -- Pittsburgh 20, New York Jets 17 (I think losing the 1982 and 2010 AFC title games were worse)
New York Giants: Super Bowl XXXV -- Baltimore 34, New York Giants 7
Oakland: Super Bowl XXXVII -- Tampa Bay 48, Oakland 21 (Not nearly as painful as losing to New England on the tuck rule)
Philadelphia: Super Bowl XXIX -- New England 24, Philadelphia 21 (Not nearly as painful as all those losses in the NFC Championship)
Pittsburgh: Super Bowl XLV -- Green Bay 31, Pittsburgh 25 (My guess is that Steeler fans suffered much more over the loss to Dallas in Super Bowl XXX and in the recent playoff losses to New England)
San Diego: Super Bowl XXIX -- San Francisco 49, San Diego 26 (The Chargers were just happy to be there -- they were much more disappointed when they lost the 1981 AFC Championship in Cincinnati)
San Francisco: 2002 Divisional Playoffs -- Tampa Bay 31, San Francisco 6 (My guess is that most 49er fans don't even remember this game)
Seattle: 2003 Divisional Playoffs -- Green Bay 33, Seattle 27
St. Louis: Super Bowl XXXVI -- New England 20, St. Louis 17 (New England cheated to win this game)
Tampa Bay: Went 0-14 in 1976 (Still the worst uniforms in NFL history)
Tennessee: Super Bowl XXXIV -- St. Louis 23, Tennessee 16
Washington: Loss of Joe Theismann to injury on Monday Night Football. (It is impossible to overstate what a bad choice this is. In the first place, the Redskins won this game over the Giants, 23-21 -- so it wasn't even a loss. In the second place, the Redskins won two Super Bowls after Theismann's injury -- so it didn't hurt the Redskins very much. In the third place, many folks in the DC area hate Theismann because he's a jerk. I have lived in the DC area for almost 20 years, and I've never heard anyone complain about this game. Literally any loss to Dallas ever was more painful to Redskin fans than Theismann's injury. Personally, I would go with the Redskins' loss to the Raiders in Super Bowl XVIII.)
Does this guy know that the Bills played in the Super Bowl?
ReplyDeleteFrom reading the article, I don't think he actually saw any football game that was played before Tom Brady entered the league.
ReplyDeleteYou are very correct about Miami fans.
ReplyDeleteSince 1995 or so, there have been about 10 Miami losses in which the opponent scored a touchdown when it returned a turnover where some Dolphins offensive player is standing nearby and acting as though he believed the play had already been whistled dead. In fact, all of these losses have been worse than that loss to San Francisco in the Super Bowl. Whenever there has been a play where one or more Dolphins are acting all non-chalant and baffled as eight or nine of the opponents are gleefully parading to the other end zone with the ball, it has taken a couple of dozen days off my life expectancy and a couple of percentage points off my will to live.
Then there was the Jimbo Elliott loss to the Jets on Monday Night Football. And there was the loss to the John Riggins Redskins--after which, 13-year-old me lay in my bed, literally praying for the individual members of the Dolphins by name that Bob Kuechenberg, Ed Newman, Don McNeal and the rest wouldn't feel too badly about the outcome.
There was a loss to the Seahawks in the playoffs in which Miami finally took a lead on a sloppy field, only to have Seattle come back in the last minute as Steve Largent caught about three long passes against a prevent defense.
There was a loss to the Chargers in the playoffs when Miami led at halftime and then had no power in its locker room at San Diego's stadium. Because the NBC reception was so bad from Nashville on our Bowling Green rabbit-ears TV, I had rented a room at the local Econolodge to watch this game. I had intended to just watch the game and then go back to my apartment, but I was so mad that I just stayed in my $35 Econolodge room until checkout the next day to sulk.
There's also the Kellen Winslow Chargers loss. Awful, of course. ...
... However, I must say that, for me, none of these was quite as bad as the Dec. 21, 1974, "Sea-of-Hands" loss to the Raiders in the AFC playoffs.
ReplyDeleteMy first football-on-TV memory is the Larry Seiple punt return in the 1972 playoffs against Pittsburgh. But the first game I can actually remember watching with any sort of real clue about what was transpiring was the following season's Super Bowl win over the Vikings.
By the time of the Dolphins' 1974-season-ending loss to Oakland, however, I was 6 and fully engaged with everything going on with the Dolphins. I knew what the World Football League was doing to my team. My oldest brother had gotten me Bob Griese's autograph during his appearance at an Evansville, Ind., Sears. I had already checked out Lou Sahadi's Miracle in Miami: The Miami Dolphins Story from the Paducah Public Library about five times.
We were living in Paducah at the time and had gone to Evansville to visit family in the days leading up to Christmas. We were at my dad's sister's house, and I watched the game in the basement with an older cousin who didn't much care about sports (though he did have a Dallas Cowboys helmet plaque on his bedroom wall). When Stabler completed that pass to Clarence Davis, I thought Miami had simply been robbed--and I knew that the Dolphins' dynasty was being artificially abbreviated. I cried all the way home in the car to Paducah, and I was mad at my parents for having scheduled a visit to see family against the backdrop of that game.
To this day--and this didn't occur to me until right now--I still have lived with this sense that the Dolphins' dynasty would be rightfully resumed. David Woodley, Dan Marino, Jay Fiedler, Chad Pennington, all of them ... I believed in all of them. It's been 36 years and change, and it honestly still feels raw and unclosed. That says all kinds of stupid and wrong-headead about me, I know, but it is true. And I doubt I'm alone.
My favorite loss by the Cardinals was a game in 1977 when Bob Griese threw about a dozen touchdown passes. I felt so superior to my Concord Elementary School classmates who were St. Louis fans.
ReplyDeleteThanksgiving, 1977: Miami 55, St. Louis 14
ReplyDeleteGriese went 17 for 25 for 207 yards and six touchdown passes.
I can see why you were so thrilled.
For what it's worth, I keep thinking the Dodgers will come back.
ReplyDeleteI was on a "Dolphin Cruise" (looking for the mammals and not former NFL players) in Perdido Bay a couple of summers ago. I noticed a very large house on Perdido Island, and one of the locals told me that it was Ken Stabler's house. I wanted to moon his house, and if my butt cheeks had been painted aqua and orange I would have. Dolphin cruise. Ken Stabler. It just seemed wrong, like the forces of good and evil had aligned themselves right there on the Florida-Alabama state line.
ReplyDeleteI remember watching the 1977 T-day game between the Dolphins and the Cardinals. I remember Miami pounded them. Conrad Dobler had several meltdowns during the games, including one in which he tossed his helmet skyward on the sidelines. He was fined.
My wife is a Cowboys fan. I almost didn't marry her because of it. She watched the Thanksgiving game between Dallas and Miami when Leon Lett touched a botched field goal and allowed Miami to score and win. My wife had taunted a house full of Dolphins fans -- ones steeled by living and being born in Miami -- and she paid for it afterwards.
Leon Lett is still my favorite all-time Dallas player.
I was headed back from Paducah to Bowling Green to work at The Daily News the next day, and I was furiously scanning the AM dial to pick up bits and pieces of Westwood One broadcasts of that Dolphins-Cowboys game. I was filling up for gas at a truckstop in Cadiz when that Leon Lett occurred, but the signal was so scratchy that I didn't let myself actually believe Miami had prevailed until I was almost to Princeton. What a terrific win.
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