Nothing is guaranteed in the NFL — not even a trip to the Super Bowl despite a team’s status as the best in the conference or the league. Balls take funny bounces, established teams can be taken apart by upstarts, and individual performances can usurp the efforts of others. As such, there have been several surprise results in conference championship games. Here are the biggest such upsets in NFL history.
January 10, 1982: San Francisco 49ers 28, Dallas Cowboys 27
Was the game that gave us “The Catch” and marked the beginning of Bill Walsh’s 49ers dynasty an upset? Based on past performance, it would appear to be so. Tom Landry’s team hadn’t missed the playoffs since 1974, and the 49ers hadn’t made the playoffs since 1972, with only one winning season in that time before their surprising 13-3 campaign in 1981. Dallas came into the game as three-point road favorites, and they had a 27-21 lead before Joe Montana found Dwight Clark in the back of the end zone with 51 seconds left in the game. Walsh beat Paul Brown, his former mentor, in Super Bowl XVI two weeks later, 26-21. It was the first of three Lombardi Trophies for Walsh, perhaps the greatest offensive mind in NFL history.
January 11, 1981: Oakland Raiders 34, San Diego Chargers 27
No wild-card team had won it all until the Raiders beat the Eagles, 27-10, in Super Bowl XV. At the time, Al Davis’ team was in a fight with NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle over the franchise’s eventual move to Los Angeles, and on the field, the Raiders were in transition from the John Madden era. Coached by Tom Flores, the 1980 Raiders beat the Oilers at home in the wild-card round, and then beat the Browns in Cleveland in the divisional frame. That set up a conference title matchup with Don Coryell’s Chargers, the most explosive offensive team of the era. The Chargers won the AFC West over the Raiders that year, and were four-point favorites at home, but Jim Plunkett’s two passing touchdowns and one rushing touchdown gave Oakland just enough to get by Coryell’s squad. San Diego tried furiously to come back from a 28-7 first-half deficit to no avail.
January 18, 2004: Carolina Panthers 14, Philadelphia Eagles 3
The 2004 Panthers under head coach John Fox were just two seasons away from a 1-15 disaster of a season in 2002, but under Fox, an underrated defense, running back Stephen Davis, and the aerial attack of Jake Delhomme to Steve Smith and Muhsin Muhammad allowed an impressive re-engineering. Still, the Panthers were road dogs to an Eagles team that had been in, and lost, the previous two NFC Championship games. Andy Reid’s third-straight such loss came about primarily through the efforts of cornerback Ricky Manning, who came away with three interceptions on the day. Philly quarterbacks Donovan McNabb and Koy Detmer combined for four picks, and the Eagles would have to wait one more year for their Super Bowl trip. Not that things went any better for the Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII — they played the Patriots close, but lost on a last-second 41-yard field goal from Adam Vinatieri.
January 22, 2012: New York Giants 20, San Francisco 49ers 17 (OT)
Very few people expected the 9-7 Giants to beat the 13-3 49ers in this conference championship game — Tom Coughlin’s team had already lost to Jim Harbaugh’s squad, 27-20, in Week 10 of that season. But the Giants would not go away in this game, and in overtime, San Francisco receiver Kyle Williams’ fumbled punt return set kicker Lawrence Tynes up for a game-winning field goal halfway through overtime. It was Tynes’ second overtime game-winner in a conference championship game, matching his effort in the 2007 season. The Giants’ ultimate result that season was also eerily similar: A Super Bowl win over an allegedly better Patriots team.
January 20, 2013: Baltimore Ravens 28, New England Patriots 13
This was the penultimate postseason performance for Joe Flacco on a hot streak few quarterbacks have ever seen. Baltimore’s then-franchise quarterback threw 11 touchdown passes and no interceptions in four playoff games that season, and he threw three of those to get the Ravens away from a game Patriots team favored by 7.5 points. New England had a 13-7 advantage at the half, at which point Flacco hit tight end Dennis Pitta once and receiver Anquan Boldin twice with scoring darts. The Ravens continued their successful season, and picked up the second Super Bowl win in franchise history, with a 34-31 win in Super Bowl XLVII. Flacco, the game’s Most Valuable Player, threw three more touchdown passes, leading to a massive contract the franchise would come to regret in time.
January 12, 1986: New England Patriots 31, Miami Dolphins 14
Never mind the Bears; this was an impressive win by Raymond Berry’s Patriots before they got destroyed by Buddy Ryan’s defense in Super Bowl XX. An unexpected result for a team that finished behind the Dolphins and Jets in the AFC East, and had to beat the Jets, Raiders, and Dolphins on the road in the playoffs to even arrive at their Super Bowl slaughter. No wonder they were worn out! The conference championship win wasn’t even close, though. Patriots quarterback Tony Eason threw three touchdown passes on just 12 attempts, while Dan Marino threw two touchdowns and two interceptions in 48 attempts. Playing from behind will do that, as the Pats rolled to a 24-7 third-quarter lead, and the desperate Dolphins lost four of their five fumbles.
December 29, 1974: Pittsburgh Steelers 24, Oakland Raiders 13
“We’ve been striving to find out who we were all season long. Now we know we are a good football team, because we beat a good football team.”
That’s what Steelers all-time defensive tackle Joe Greene said after a 24-13 conference championship win over the favored Raiders — a win that sent Pittsburgh to it first of four Super Bowl wins in the 1970s. This was a defensive battle all the way. Ken Stabler threw three interceptions, and Terry Bradshaw completed just eight of 17 passes for 95 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. In the end, it was the Steel Curtain defense, and the 50 rushing attempts by the Steelers for a total of 224 yards and two touchdowns that swung things in Pittsburgh’s direction. It was the start of something big for Chuck Noll’s team, and yet another conference championship frustration for John Madden’s squad. From 1970 through 1977, the Raiders lost five conference championship games.
January 15, 1995: San Diego Chargers 17, Pittsburgh Steelers 13
While the 49ers were finally getting one over on the Cowboys to get back to the Super Bowl in the most intense rivalry of the time, things were a bit calmer in the AFC. Bobby Ross’ Chargers came into Three Rivers Stadium as six-point underdogs to Bill Cowher’s Steelers, a team they had beaten, 37-34, in Week 17 of the regular season. The conference championship was less explosive; more two great defenses trading haymakers. Pittsburgh held a 13-3 lead in the third quarter, but San Diego quarterback Stan Humphries — who completed just 11 of 22 passes in the game — threw late touchdown passes to tight end Alfred Pupunu and receiver Tony Martin to advance to Super Bowl XXIX. The only Super Bowl appearance in Chargers history turned out to be a nightmare, as Steve Young threw six touchdown passes in a 49-26 romp.
January 23, 2000: Tennessee Titans 33, Jacksonville Jaguars 14
Tom Coughlin’s 1999 Jaguars finished the regular season 14-2, and went 1-1 in the playoffs. The only team they lost to all season was the Titans, who beat them three times — 20-19 in Week 3, 41-14 in Week 16, and 33-14 in the AFC Championship game after the Jags had taken the Dolphins apart, 61-7, in what was Dan Marino’s final game. Despite their own 13-3 record, and their record of success against Jacksonville, the Titans came into the championship round as seven-point underdogs. The game wasn’t close for long — Mark Brunell hit tight end Kyle Brady for a seven-yard touchdown pass as the Jags drew first blood, and went up 14-7 in the second quarter, but it was all Titans after that. Brunell threw two interceptions, and though Titans quarterback Steve McNair’s passing day wasn’t great against the NFL’s top defense (14 of 23 for 112 yards, one touchdown, and one interception), he did run for two one-yard touchdowns. Tennessee faced the “Greatest Show on Turf” Rams in Super Bowl XXXIV, and famously came up one yard short from tying the game, which the Rams won, 23-16.
January 27, 2002: New England Patriots 24, Pittsburgh Steelers 17
This was Drew Bledsoe’s last stand with the Patriots after losing his job to a second-year quarterback from Michigan as the result of an early-season injury. That other quarterback — Tom Brady, who you may have heard of — left the game in the first half with a leg injury, and Bledsoe led his Patriots for the last time to a close win at Heinz Field over a Steelers team favored by 10 points. Bledsoe, who had signed a 10-year, $103 million contract in the previous offseason, was all set to be New England’s all-time quarterback until a brutal hit from Jets linebacker Mo Lewis changed everything in Week 2. He still had a decent amount in the tank, throwing a touchdown pass in Brady’s stead as the Patriots benefited from three Kordell Stewart interceptions to head to the franchise’s third Super Bowl, this time against the St. Louis Rams. It was the first Super Bowl the Patriots won, very much not the last, and the start of the NFL’s most enduring dynasty. Bledsoe was gone after the season, traded to the Bills for a 2003 first-round pick.
January 20, 2008: New York Giants 23, Green Bay Packers 20 (OT)
The Giants under Tom Coughlin were able to beat the Patriots in two different Super Bowls despite seemingly overwhelming odds against them, and in both cases, the road to those Super Bowls carried them through conference championship games that went to overtime and were ultimately decided by Lawrence Tynes field goals. Tynes had missed a 36-yarder at the end of regulation, but in the first drive of overtime, Brett Favre threw a crushing interception to Giants cornerback Corey Webster, and Tynes made up for his previous miss with a 47-yard boot to send his team on. It was Favre’s lass pass for the Packers, while the Giants went on to shock the previously undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl’s biggest upset.
January 20, 1991: New York Giants 15, San Francisco 49ers 13
The 1990 49ers were as stacked as any team in NFL history. They’d beaten the daylights out of the Broncos, 55-10 in Super Bowl XXIV, and matched their 14-2 record from the year before. They finished first in points scored and third in points allowed, and it seemed that the 12-4 Giants were just another minor obstacle to be shooed away. Vegas agreed, making San Francisco eight-point favorites. But the Giants denied the 49ers the opportunity to become the only team to win three straight Super Bowls in a bruising game that perfectly fit the temperament of head coach Bill Parcells. Big Blue kept the ball for nearly 39 minutes, Matt Bahr kicked five field goals, and Joe Montana suffered a broken finger and bruised sternum late in the game that would have prevented him from playing in Super Bowl had the 49ers made it. As it turned out, Parcells’ Giants handed the Bills their first of four straight Super Bowl losses with a 20-19 heartbreaker when Scott Norwood’s potentially game-winning field goal went wide right.
January 4, 1976: Dallas Cowboys 37, Los Angeles Rams 7
The 1975 Cowboys were one year off their first missed postseason since 1965, and were a team in transition between the great teams of the early and late 1970s. Tom Landry’s team finished 10-4, second in the NFC East behind the St. Louis Cardinals, and their reward for beating the Vikings in a divisional round thriller in which the “Hail Mary” term was founded in an NFL sense was to face the Los Angeles Rams, the NFC’s best team that season. Chuck Knox’s Rams were especially known for a stingy defense, allowing just 135 points in the regular season and beating the Cardinals, 35-23, in the divisional frame. But these Rams had no answer for Roger Staubach, who threw four touchdown passes in just 16 completions, including three to Preston Pearson. Meanwhile, rookie quarterback Ron Jaworski was in over his head, completing half his passes and throwing two interceptions. When Staubach wasn’t riddling Ray Malavasi‘s defense with touchdown scores, the Cowboys were running the ball 50 times for 195 yards. Dallas went on to lose to the Steelers in Super Bowl X, the first truly thrilling Super Bowl.
January 17, 1999: Atlanta Falcons 30, Minnesota Vikings 27 (OT)
This was supposed to be a coronation for Dennis Green’s Vikings. An offense designed by Brian Billick and quarterbacked by Randall Cunningham, with Randy Moss and Cris Carter as its primary receivers, set a then-single season record with 556 points. The only game they’d lost was a 27-24 nailbiter to the Buccaneers. And in the conference championship game, they faced a Falcons team that did go 14-2, and was balanced on both sides of the ball, but was nowhere near as explosive. The Vikings were 11-point favorites, which the Falcons apparently ignored — they busted out to a 7-0 lead, and fought back from deficits of 17-7 and 27-17 to force the game to overtime. Gary Anderson’s missed fourth-quarter field goal assured that, and Morten Andersen’s 38-yard game-winner sent Dan Reeves’ Falcons to Super Bowl XXXIII, where Reeves was outdone by former pupil John Elway in Elway’s last game.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
