No teams this season scored the date of their game, despite 2024 being a good year for it

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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/TheManWithTheBigName on 2025-02-15 01:16:13+00:00.

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What I mean by “scoring the date of the game” is a 10-12 game occurring on October 12 for example. 2024 had a lot of potential for this, with Thursday and Sunday games in October all falling on potential football scores (10-3, 10-6, 10-20, 10-24, 10-27, etc.). On a couple occasions teams even reached such scores, but didn’t end on them.

This is, of course, an utterly meaningless stat. A search of the records shows that there have only been 13 such games in NFL history, which makes the lack of any games even in a ‘good’ year like 2024 less surprising. The 13 games were:

1. Bears 10 - Packers 3 on 10/3/1954

• Winning QB was 13/36 (36%) for 126, 1 TD, and 3 INTs. It was a different time.

2. Packers 10 - Bears 31 on 10/31/1965

3. Rams 10 - Colts 27 on 10/27/1968

• Colts attempted to run up the score at the end for tiebreakers, but failed to score in the fourth quarter.

4. Bears 10 - Falcons 13 on 10/13/1974.

• Norm Van Brocklin’s final win as a coach. JaguarGator9 did a video on a TV controversy involving this game, but didn’t notice the score trivia.

5. Broncos 10 - Raiders 17 on 10/17/1976

6. Chiefs 10 - Bengals 7 on 10/7/1979

• Winning QB Steve Fuller had 7 completions on 12 attempts. That’s real 70s football.

7. Browns 12 - Bengals 16 on 12/16/1979

• This game had 3 failed PATs. No clue why. Couldn’t find articles or highlights. Kickers weren’t great in the 70s, but these were 19 yard kicks.

8. Tampa Bay 10 - Eagles 20 on 10/20/2002

• Missed 29 yard field goal by Grammatica with 4:00 left sealed the loss and score. Buccs got their revenge in the NFC Championship game though.

9. Texans 11 - Jets 26 on 11/26/2006

10. Lions 10 - Vikings 12 on 10/12/2008

• This was the game Dan Orlovsky ran out his end zone on the way to 0-16

11. Cardinals 12 - Panthers 19 on 12/19/2010

• This was Carolina QB Jimmy Clausen’s only career win in 14 starts.

12. Football Team 10 - Packers 24 on 10/24/2021

13. Jaguars 9 - Chiefs 17 on 9/17/2023

 

Some General Notes:

• There are no repeats. Each of the 13 scores/dates has occurred once.

• Only September, October, November, and December are effectively possible.

  • August was barely possible under old scheduling rules. The NFL season started on August 31 in 1997, but no game ended 8-31 on that date. This is the only time the season started so early, and it cannot now unless the NFL extends the season again.
  • January is technically possible now. It became possible to score a 1-point defensive safety on a PAT starting in 2015, but no team has ever scored one, nor is one ever likely to.
  • February is possible. A team scoring only 2 points in the Super Bowl seems very unlikely though.

• I’m surprised that a November game happened before a September one. 11 points is quite uncommon as a final score, and was nearly impossible before the introduction of the 2-point conversion in 1994, occurring hardly a half-dozen times.

• 1979 is the only year when this has happened twice.

• The football gods made up for that unprecedented occurrence by not allowing any additional ones for 23 years, the largest gap in the set by a factor of 2.