Sports Reference Blog

Large Point Differential Wins and Losses

Posted by Mike on September 26, 2014

Because it's Friday and an interesting trivia question, I went and looked it up in the database - it's actually not as uncommon as you'd think to win and lose in the same season by the same large point differential. The big winners (and losers, of course) in this category are the 1988 Saints managed to beat the Broncos 42-0 and two weeks later lose to Minnesota, 45-3. Here are the top 25 teams with a large win and corresponding large loss in in the same season since 1970:

+------------+---------+------+------+-------------+---+
| name       | year_id | w    | l    | points_diff | c |
+------------+---------+------+------+-------------+---+
| Saints     |    1988 |    1 |    1 |          42 | 2 |
| Patriots   |    1993 |    1 |    1 |          38 | 2 |
| Lions      |    2007 |    1 |    1 |          37 | 2 |
| Giants     |    2009 |    1 |    1 |          37 | 2 |
| Bengals    |    1988 |    1 |    1 |          35 | 2 |
| 49ers      |    2009 |    1 |    1 |          35 | 2 |
| Broncos    |    1979 |    1 |    1 |          35 | 2 |
| Jets       |    1976 |    1 |    1 |          34 | 2 |
| Lions      |    1991 |    1 |    1 |          32 | 2 |
| Vikings    |    1977 |    1 |    1 |          32 | 2 |
| Patriots   |    2003 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Bengals    |    1986 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Vikings    |    1989 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Jets       |    1986 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Redskins   |    2014 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Bills      |    2003 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Saints     |    1976 |    1 |    1 |          30 | 2 |
| Buccaneers |    1992 |    1 |    2 |          28 | 3 |
| Ravens     |    2008 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Chargers   |    1984 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Packers    |    1992 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Buccaneers |    1979 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Chiefs     |    1985 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Vikings    |    1982 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Broncos    |    2004 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
+------------+---------+------+------+-------------+---+

Related posts:

  1. NFL Records After N Games
  2. Worst. Monday Night Football Matchup. Ever. (By combined winning percentage)
  3. Historical Western Conference vs Eastern Conference Disparity

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2014 at 9:34 am and is filed under Pro-Football-Reference.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Large Point Differential Wins and Losses”

  1. hscer Says: September 26th, 2014 at 11:33 am

    Hey, thanks for posting this! You even answered what might have been my next question with those '88 Saints pulling off the rout-and-get-routed feat it as quickly as the Redskins just did.

    Those '09 Giants almost did it in consecutive weeks too, beating Washington by 33 and then losing to Carolina by 32. That's *in addition* to the 37-point win and loss. What a crazy season.