In National Football League (NFL) terms, a team is said to have completed a ‘perfect’ season if it goes through the entire season, including playoffs, without losing or tying a game. Nowadays, the NFL season consists of an 18-week, or 17-game, regular season, followed by four rounds of playoffs, the last of which, of course, is the Super Bowl.
In the early days of the NFL, or the American Professional Football Association (APFA), as it was known for the first two years of its existence, several teams were named champions after completing undefeated, but not ‘perfect’ seasons. Playoff games did not become a feature of the NFL until 1933 and the first Super Bowl was not played until 1967 but, even so, Akron Pros (1920), Canton Bulldogs (1922, 1923) and Green Bay Packers (1929) went through whole campaigns without losing a game. They did, however, draw at least one game on each occasion.
Likewise, the Chicago Bears (1934, 1942) and the New England Patriots (2007) completed ‘perfect’ regular seasons, but lost in the playoffs. Thus, the only team in NFL history to complete a ‘perfect’ season remains the Miami Dolphins who, on January 14, 1973, beat the Washington Redskins 14-7 in Super Bowl VII at the Los Angeles Coliseum to finish the 1972 season 17-0-0. Placed first in the American Football Conference (AFC) East, unsurprisingly, with a record of 14-0-0 – having clinched the title in week 10 – the Fins subsequently beat Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs en route to the Super Bowl.