The Biggest Blowouts in NFL Playoff History

The biggest blowout in NFL playoff history is the Chicago Bears' 73-0 win over Washington in the NFL Championship Game on December 8, 1940 — a 73-point margin that is still the largest in any NFL game and, by most accounts, in the history of major American team sports. The biggest Super Bowl blowout is Super Bowl XXIV, when the San Francisco 49ers beat the Denver Broncos 55-10 on January 28, 1990, a 45-point margin.

Below is the complete list of every postseason game decided by 35 points or more, a separate table for the largest Super Bowl margins, and a look at why games like these have become much harder to find.

Every NFL Playoff Game Decided by 35+ Points

The table covers NFL and AFL postseason games only. The 1948 AAFC Championship, in which Cleveland beat Buffalo 49-7, was played in a rival league and is not counted here.

The Largest Super Bowl Margins

Denver appears three times in the top six as the losing team, which is why the Broncos of the 1980s are the standard reference for a team that kept reaching the game and kept getting flattened in it.

73-0: The Game That Still Defines the Word

The 1940 NFL Championship Game at Griffith Stadium in Washington was a rematch. Washington had beaten Chicago 7-3 three weeks earlier, and owner George Preston Marshall had called the Bears "crybabies and quitters" in print. George Halas taped the clippings to the locker room wall.

Bill Osmanski scored on a 68-yard run on Chicago's second play from scrimmage and the Bears never stopped. They ran the T formation with a man in motion, a scheme Clark Shaughnessy had helped modernize, and Washington had no answer for it. Chicago led 28-0 at halftime, added four touchdowns in the third quarter, and intercepted eight passes, three of which came back for scores. Late in the game, officials asked George Halas to run or pass for the conversions after his last two touchdowns: so many extra points had been kicked into the stands that the crew was down to its final football.

The final was 73-0 in front of 36,034 fans, on 11 Chicago touchdowns. It remains the most points any team has scored in an NFL game, regular season or postseason, and the T formation it showcased was adopted league-wide within a few years.

The Modern Record: Jaguars 62, Dolphins 7

The largest postseason margin since the 1940s came on January 15, 2000, when Jacksonville beat Miami 62-7 in an AFC Divisional game. The Jaguars led 24-0 after one quarter and 41-7 at halftime, gained 520 yards to Miami's 131, and forced seven turnovers. Fred Taylor's 90-yard touchdown run in the first quarter set the tone.

It was Dan Marino's last NFL game; he retired two months later. It was also Jimmy Johnson's last game as Miami's head coach. Jacksonville, a 14-2 team in its fifth season of existence, then lost the AFC Championship Game to Tennessee, the only team that beat it all year.

At 55 points, it is the largest margin in a modern-era playoff game and the closest anything has come to the 1940 record in 80 years.

The 1950s Championship Games Nobody Talks About

Three of the seven largest postseason margins came in NFL Championship Games between 1954 and 1961, and they all involved the same small group of teams.

Cleveland beat Detroit 56-10 on December 26, 1954, a year after losing the title game 17-16 to the same opponent. Otto Graham threw three touchdown passes and ran for three more, a feat no player matched for 70 years. Detroit turned the ball over nine times, six of them Bobby Layne interceptions. Three years later the Lions returned the favor with interest: on December 29, 1957, Detroit beat Cleveland 59-14 behind Tobin Rote, who was filling in for the injured Bobby Layne and who had already brought the Lions back from 20 down in the conference playoff a week earlier. It is still Detroit's most recent NFL championship.

In between, the Giants beat the Bears 47-7 at Yankee Stadium on December 30, 1956, on a frozen field where New York switched to sneakers for traction, a trick it had used against the same opponent in 1934. And on December 31, 1961, Green Bay shut out the Giants 37-0 at what is now Lambeau Field, with Paul Hornung scoring 19 points. It was Vince Lombardi's first title.

The Most Lopsided Conference Championship Games

Since the 1970 merger created the AFC and NFC, seven conference title games have been decided by 30 points or more.

Buffalo's 51-3 win over the Raiders is the benchmark. The Bills gained 502 yards, ran for 202 of them, and Jay Schroeder threw five interceptions. Buffalo led 41-3 at halftime and went on to Super Bowl XXV, where it lost to the Giants by a point in one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history — the shortest possible distance from the most lopsided conference championship ever played.

The Giants' 41-0 win over Minnesota in January 2001 was similar in kind: Kerry Collins threw for 381 yards and five touchdowns, and the Vikings were held to 114 total yards — their first shutout and worst loss in postseason history. Philadelphia's 55 points against Washington in January 2025 are the most any team has scored in a conference title game.

Why Playoff Blowouts Have Become Rare

Sixteen of the 24 games in the list above were played before the 1994 season, when the salary cap took effect. That is the single clearest pattern in the data, and there are structural reasons for it.

Talent used to pool. Before unrestricted free agency arrived in 1993 and the salary cap in 1994, a well-run franchise could keep a roster together indefinitely while a poorly run one had no mechanism to catch up. The 1954-57 Browns and Lions, the mid-1960s Packers, and the 1980s 49ers all played opponents who simply had fewer good players.

The draft actively pushes teams together. Draft order is set worst-to-first, and the compensation system, roster limits and cap all work to compress the range of team quality. The roster rules cap how much depth any one team can hoard.

Playoff fields are better. With 14 teams in the bracket and division winners seeded 1 through 4, the postseason still admits some mismatched pairings, but the reseeding rules explained in NFL Playoff Seeding and Bracket Format, Explained mean that by the divisional round most matchups are between genuinely good teams.

The rules favor the trailing team. The two-point conversion, adopted in 1994, plus clock rules and passing-game protections, mean a 25-point deficit is no longer terminal. Some games that would once have ended 45-10 now end 45-31, and a few end up on the greatest comebacks list instead.

The Super Bowl shows the trend most plainly. Since Seattle's 43-8 win in Super Bowl XLVIII after the 2013 season, no Super Bowl has been decided by more than 22 points. The last five, in order, finished by 3, 3, 3, 18 and 16. Seattle's 29-13 win over New England in Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026 was decided by 16, roughly a third of the Super Bowl XXIV margin.

The One Category That Hasn't Changed

Earlier rounds still produce them. The Jets shut out Indianapolis 41-0 in a wild-card game in January 2003. New England beat Denver 45-10 in a divisional game in January 2012 and Indianapolis 45-7 for the AFC title in January 2015. Seattle beat San Francisco 41-6 in the divisional round on January 17, 2026 on its way to the title.

What has essentially disappeared is the 45-plus-point playoff margin. There has not been one since the 1999 season. Even the biggest single-game outbursts now tend to come in high-scoring shootouts rather than one-sided routs, which is why the highest-scoring games list and this one barely overlap.

FAQ

What is the biggest blowout in NFL playoff history? The Chicago Bears' 73-0 win over Washington in the NFL Championship Game on December 8, 1940. The 73-point margin is the largest in NFL history in any game, and the 73 points are still the most any team has scored in a single NFL game.

What is the biggest blowout in Super Bowl history? Super Bowl XXIV on January 28, 1990, when San Francisco beat Denver 55-10 for a 45-point margin. Joe Montana threw five touchdown passes and won his third Super Bowl MVP.

What is the largest margin in a modern playoff game? Jacksonville's 62-7 win over Miami in the AFC Divisional round on January 15, 2000 — a 55-point margin, and Dan Marino's final NFL game.

Has a playoff team ever been shut out by 40 or more? Yes, three times: the Bears' 73-0 in 1940, the Giants' 41-0 over Minnesota in the NFC Championship Game on January 14, 2001, and the Jets' 41-0 over Indianapolis in a wild-card game on January 4, 2003.

Which team has lost the most lopsided Super Bowls? Denver. The Broncos were on the wrong end of Super Bowl XXIV (45-point margin), Super Bowl XXII (32) and Super Bowl XLVIII (35), three of the five worst Super Bowl defeats ever.

Has any Super Bowl been a shutout? No. The fewest points by a losing team is three, done twice: Miami in Super Bowl VI (Cowboys 24-3, January 16, 1972) and the Rams in Super Bowl LIII (Patriots 13-3, February 3, 2019). Super Bowl LIII is the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever played.

Why don't blowouts happen as often anymore? Free agency, the salary cap and worst-to-first draft order compress the talent range across the league, and rules changes since 1994 make big deficits easier to close. Sixteen of the 24 largest postseason margins came before the cap era began.

Does a blowout in one round predict anything about the next? Not much. Buffalo won the 1990 AFC Championship Game by 48 and lost the Super Bowl by one. Carolina won the 2015 NFC Championship Game by 34 and lost Super Bowl 50. Jacksonville won by 55 in January 2000 and lost the next week.

This page is reviewed after each postseason, and the tables update whenever a game qualifies.