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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/Pan_no_Kami on 2025-06-22 19:35:16+00:00.
Hello, I was inspired by this post from TormundIceBreaker:
old.reddit.com/…/what_are_the_best_examples_of_a_…
In that post, he and the commenters listed “cursed” wins, i.e. wins that ended up hurting a franchise in the long run. However, I also think there are “Karmic Wins”, or wins that seem to hurt the team’s future, but actually were beneficial in the long run (Karmic because the team still worked hard enough to win in spite of the benefits of losing, which provides good karma from the football gods).
My favorite example is 2003 Week 17, in which the Cardinals only needed to lose to the Vikings to clinch the #1 overall pick. However, they famously won on a crazy 4th and long pass with no time remaining to knock the Vikings out of the playoffs. Due to this, they fell to the #3 overall pick, which they used to select Larry Fitzgerald, one of the greatest receivers of all time who also solely played for Arizona. One could argue that AZ would’ve benefitted from Eli Manning more, but AZ has a pretty terrible history of actually developing young QBs, so I would say that what happened in reality was the best possible result.
What other examples are there of this?