In Honor Of The Lions Outgaining The Jaguars By 475 Yards On Sunday, Here Is A Breakdown Of The Top 5 Yardage Blowouts In NFL History
NurPhoto. Getty Images.The Jaguars are a walking sad stat. We in Chicago can relate, Jags fans. 645 yards for the Lions vs 170 for the Jaguars. But to be honest, this is the best team in the NFL going against the arguable worst. What if the Bears and Jaguars just traded coaches? Like some sick Catholic Church transaction. While neither fanbase would be happy, it would be kind of interesting to experiment which one would actually improve the team so we can find out which coach is the actual worst. My vote is Eberflus. Pederson at least has precedence of success.
Anyway, I saw this tweet from Michael David Smith and figured I'd run it for every game with team total recordings on Pro Football-Reference to see where this ranks all-time. And as bad as a 475 yard difference is - it's just sixth worst ever.
Let's run down the top-5.
#5 Rams/Seahawks Week 10 1979 (482 yards)
PFR should have dug the knife in a little and labeled the first row "First Down(s)". Net passing yards certainly could have improved here. Jim Zorn went 2/15 passing for the Seahawks for 25 positive yards, but was killed by 55 yards worth of sacks. The Seahawks would at least go on to end the season 9-7. No playoffs, but a respectable season.
#4 - Falcons/Rams Week 13 1976 (488 yards)
I guess life comes at you fast for the Rams who were on the better side of this stat in 1976 only to be the bug on the windshield three years later in 1979. They won this one 59-0 at the Coliseum as 14-point favorites.
#3 - Bears/Giants Week 9 1943 (525 yards)
The Sid Luckman era for the Chicago Bears. Take that haters. Don't let ever let them tell you the Bears never had a good quarterback. All you have to do is go way back to the year they made pennies from steel to conserve copper for WWII. So we're between quarterbacks still. Whatever.
But I'm a bit surprised this wasn't the 73-0 Sid Luckman Bears vs Washington in the 1940 Championship game. The still standing largest margin of victory in NFL history. The yardage difference was just 288, so you have to think the turnover margin is what did Washington in if they lost by that much without getting completely steamrolled in yards. And you'd be right. Washington was a -8. One forced turnover to nine for Chicago. Six of which at the hands of Washinton quarterback Frank Filchock. A name that seems to keep coming up for me in lookups this year. None of which for good reasons.
By the way the Giants quarterback in this #3 of the list was named Tuffy Leemans. Tuffy is shooting up my list of all-time names. I think it works better for a coach to be honest, but you can never out tough Tuffy. You can however, outgain him in yards.
#2 - Yanks/Rams Week 1 1951 (569 yards)
Credit the Yanks for at least pulling off 13 points. Turnovers were the true killer here for this New York outfit coached by Jimmy Phelan. Would love to have heard his press conference after the game trying to explain what happened.
#1 - Packers/Eagles Week 9 1962 (574 yards)
574 yards. Just imagine how that would work out on a drive by drive basis. It's like if two evenly teams matched up except one team was given five 99-yard drives as a handicap along with an additional 79-yard drive. This wasn't against your everyday bum looking for something to do between his coal mining job either. This was Sonny Jurgenson that got plastered by the Bart Starr Packers.
Hope this was fun. And if you're a Jaguars fan, hope you learned that things could be worse. But you already knew that. Every week you know that.