Will a team ever go undefeated in the NFL again?

We’ve often seen elite college football teams run through their schedule without a loss to capture the national championship. Despite only having a few more games on its schedule, that level of dominance has seldom been seen in the NFL. We’ll take a closer look whether an NFL team will ever go undefeated again. All statistics are sourced from Football Reference.

The only team to ever go undefeated in an NFL season is the 1972 Miami Dolphins. They went 17-0 and beat the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII. The Guardian points out that the Dolphins gained more yards and scored more points than anyone in the NFL that season, and also gave up the fewest points and the fewest yards in the league. It was a supremely dominant campaign.

The closest anyone has come to an undefeated season since the 1972 Dolphins was the New England Patriots in 2007. They were 18-0 heading into the Super Bowl, but were stunningly defeated by the New York Giants. Former Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich said on ESPN that they likely lost because the pressure of the moment got to them.

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With a strong team and a favorable schedule, it can be relatively simple to start off without a loss for a month, or perhaps even two months. However, once a team reaches the 10-0 or 11-0 mark, the weight of history starts to get intensified. Opponents tend to give the undefeated team their best shot in order to break the streak.

Of course, staying healthy for an entire NFL season is next to impossible given the physicality of the sport. It’s not realistic to think that everyone who is critical to a team’s success is going to make it through the campaign unscathed. There needs to be an element of good luck involved if a team is going to make it through without getting too banged up.

The NFL released a summary of the injuries suffered during the 2023 season. Their study reported that there was a decrease in lower body injuries, while the number of concussions suffered increased. In the day and age we live in, the chances that a player will continue to play with a serious injury or that they will be able to conceal one is slim to none.

When the Dolphins stormed through the NFL in 1972, the regular season slate was only 14 games. The league then bumped up their regular season schedule to 16 games in 1978, and then to 17 games in 2021. Anyone can see which direction this trend is heading, and the league seems intent on adding games in the future.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has openly acknowledged that expanding to an 18-game season is within the league’s long term plans. Of course, the greater the total of games in an NFL season, the more likely it is a team riding an undefeated streak is likely to get knocked off.

NFL training camp and its preseason isn’t what it used to be. Franchises are more concerned with keeping their best players out of harm’s way, as opposed to putting them in situations that will get them ready for the regular season. It’s not a criticism, but simply a paradigm shift that prioritizes health and availability.

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Unfortunately, this lack of familiarity and time together often affects the connection teammates have when the games that matter actually begin. Tom Brady told Stephen A. Smith on his podcast that rookie quarterbacks are often thrown in without the tools they need to succeed. It speaks to the amount of corners that teams cut these days before they step on to the field.

Quarterbacks are making more money than they ever have before. Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys once again reset the market in September 2024, as this has continued to be the trend. While quarterback is the most important position on the team, the amount of capital being invested now changes the way NFL general managers can construct their teams.

Since quarterbacks are making so much money, a relatively low amount of salary cap funds are left over to sign and acquire talented players in other areas. This has made NFL teams relatively top-heavy, meaning that if their best players became unavailable, there isn’t much quality depth to replace them.

The NFL has played regular season games outside of the United States since 2007, and the volume of contests held internationally has only increased since. Commissioner Goodell has a committed strategy to growing the game in different continents, which has created some interesting logistics challenges for teams.

For example, A To Z Sports chronicled the process that the Green Bay Packers went through in order to get ready for their game in São Paulo, Brazil, in September 2024. They had to dedicate time and resource to plan out the trip, to understand where they would practice, and where they would stay. This added layer of complexity is another obstacle in the way of NFL teams going undefeated.

It might take a radical thinker to implement a strategy that is so foreign to what teams have done in the past to get a team on the path to a perfect season. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but the preparation and attention to detail with the novel idea would once again come into question.

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