As I sit here watching the Patriots annihilate the Chargers 44-Bupkis with five minutes left, it makes me wonder what the greatest comeback in NFL history might be. What is the greatest reversal in the shortest amount of time, in your opinion?
edited…45-Nada with 4 minutes left.
According to the SI.
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/09/06/biggest-comeback-nfl-history-buffalo-bills-houston-oilers
Nice lists, running_coach …but I could have Googled up lists myself. I am asking for your personal opinion as to which one NFL game was the best comeback in history.
The BIlls one instantly came to mind upon reading the title. My wife is from Buffalo, so I’m partial to it partly for that reason, but I also think it is the greatest comeback, though the Pats one does make it pretty tight, given that it was the Super Bowl.
Same here. I remember watching that game while sitting in the waiting lounge at a Midas service shop, having my wife’s car’s muffler replaced. Down by that much, and missing your starting quarterback? That’s a Hollywood-style epic comeback.
Patriots coming back from 28-3 against the Falcons in SB LI. There have been bigger comebacks, but not on a bigger stage.
It wasn’t a huge comeback by ordinary standards but the 1934 NFL championship game (the second such game ever) between the Chicago Bears and the New York Giants had some interesting circumstances. A freezing rain the night before at turned the Polo Grounds into a veritable skating rink and the Bears held a 14-3 lead in the 3rd period. Giants player Ray Flaherty suggested to head coach Steve Owen that sneakers would be better and Owen sent a friend to Manhattan college to get nine pairs from the basketball team. Arriving in the third period, the Giants rallied for 27 points to win 30-13 and the first Ed Thorp trophy (until I looked this up, I never knew the trophy had a name before Vince Lombardi trophy).
I’d still argue Bills. Hard to top that for the finest comeback. The main reason the Patriots beat Atlanta was because of atrocious playcalling by the Falcons. It was more a Falcons collapse than Pats win.
In the shortest amount of time? It’s hard to argue with the Heidi Game.
Short version: The Jets led the Chargers 32-29 with 1:01 left. The Chargers came back and scored two touchdowns to win 43-32.
But that’s not what anyone remembers. What they remember is that at the 1:01 point, NBC cut away from the game to broadcast the movie Heidi. Thousands of calls from viewers, both pro and con, literally blew out the NBC switchboard. NBC tried to recover by posting the final score onscreen. That elicited even more calls; football fans were enraged to find out what they hadn’t seen, while movie fans were enraged that a particularly poignant moment in the film was marred by plastering a football score across the screen.
All three networks made note of the event on their evening newscasts the next night. NBC played the final moments of the game in full. ABC showed clips of the game which anchor Frank Reynolds narrated by reading lines from the movie. CBS Evening News reported the final score as “Heidi married the goatherder.”
I’ll go with this one. I think it’s a much harder comeback on the huge stage as the Super Bowl especially with the non stop time outs for more commercials. This could have easily turned into one of those 1990s routs and both teams starting to focus on the parties and off-season
Objectively, I have to agree on the Patriots comeback in the Super Bowl, with a team rising to the biggest occasion.
But you asked for personal opinions. Personally, the one that sticks with me is the Raiders Vs. New Orleans on Monday Night Football in 1979.
The Saints went up 35-14 and knocked Ken Stabler out of the game in doing so. The crowd was going wild, the Saints defense was celebrating on the sideline, and the announcers had written the Raiders off, but I saw Stabler talking to Flores and buckling on his helmet and I remarked to the friends I was watching the game with “The Saints made a fatal mistake, they made it personal.”
Stabler came back into the game and led the Raiders to 28 unanswered points, winning the game 42-35.
It wasn’t a Super Bowl, it wasn’t a playoff game, it wasn’t even a win or miss the playoffs game, but it was the first game I personally witnessed where a player got up off the canvas and took his team with him to victory.
Except it was the Raiders who made the late comeback to beat the Jets.
The Bills. Because I was there in the stadium to watch it happen.
I haven’t been paying much attention to sports lately, so the only ones I remember on that list are SF-NO '80, the Bills-Oilers playoff, and the NE-Atlanta Super Bowl. Of these, the Niners-Saints game is notable for being the nadir of the “Aints” season, blowing a 28-point lead to go to 0-14 on the year. Also as a clear message from Joe Montana that his college career had been no fluke. The Aints did then made a bit of a comeback themselves, bouncing back to beat the Jets the following week at Shea. Unfortunately, that Jets team was too awful to call that game truly epochal.
I’d also make honorable mention of the Dallas-San Francisco NFC semi-final in 1972, where Staubach led the Cowboys to two touchdowns after the two-minute warning to pull out a 30-28 win. As for the Heidi-Bowl, I think it’s pretty easy to argue against overcoming a three-point deficit in 1:01 as the greatest comeback ever.
My actual vote I think would go to Buffalo-Houston, considering the high stakes, the largest deficit, and the backup quarterback.
Which is what made it so remarkable. To win a game that you are not even playing - now that’s a comeback.
Yeah, there’s that, and I was half-expecting the Pats to come back, anyway, being the assholes that they are. I never counted them out in that game, so the comeback wasn’t quite as surprising in my mind, despite the deficit and circumstances of being on the big stage.
I’m pretty partial to Super Bowl LIV. The Chefs were down 20-10 with a little over 8 minutes left in the game against one of the best defensive teams in the last several years. They got possession of the ball at 8:33, and scored 3 TDs to finish the game off.