If you’re building or analysing a sports simulation system, there’s an important principle that often gets overlooked:
Just because something is extremely unlikely doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
And in the NFL, nothing illustrates that better than the 2–0 final score.
Why 2–0 Is So Special
Most NFL games involve multiple scoring plays: touchdowns, field goals, extra points, maybe the occasional safety.
But a 2–0 game requires something very specific.
The only scoring play in the entire game must be a safety.
That means:
• No touchdowns
• No field goals
• No extra points
• No two-point conversions
• Just one safety, and nothing else
Given modern offences, kicking ranges, analytics-driven play calling, and rules designed to increase scoring, that outcome is almost absurdly rare.
But it has happened.
A Quick Stat Box
Rarest NFL Final Score: 2–0
- Total occurrences: 5 games
- Last time it happened: 18 September 1938
- Years since the last 2–0 game: 87 years
- Teams involved in the most recent game: Chicago Bears vs Green Bay Packers
- Winning score came from: A single safety
In other words, the rarest possible realistic NFL score happened before World War II.
Every 2–0 Game in NFL History
There have only been five such games in the entire history of the league.
| Date | Winner | Loser |
| Nov 29, 1923 | Akron Pros | Buffalo All-Americans |
| Nov 21, 1926 | Kansas City Cowboys | Buffalo Rangers |
| Nov 29, 1928 | Frankford Yellow Jackets | Green Bay Packers |
| Oct 16, 1932 | Green Bay Packers | Chicago Bears |
| Sep 18, 1938 | Chicago Bears | Green Bay Packers |
The last time it happened was 1938.
That means it has been 87 years since the NFL saw a 2–0 final score.
The Bears Connection
As a Chicago Bears fan, I find this statistic especially entertaining.
The Bears appear twice in the list.
• Losing 2–0 to the Packers in 1932
• Winning 2–0 against the Packers in 1938
If you’re going to have bizarre historical trivia, doing it against your biggest rival feels about right.
Somewhere in the long, strange history of the Chicago Bears vs the Green Bay Packers rivalry, there’s a game where the entire scoreboard was produced by a single safety.
The Simulation Lesson
If you build sports simulations (which I spend a lot of time thinking about), the takeaway is simple.
When you model a sport, you usually focus on the most likely outcomes.
But the edge cases matter too.
A 2–0 result is incredibly unlikely, but it’s not impossible. It has happened. Multiple times.
So if you’re simulating NFL games, you should always sanity-check your model:
• Does the simulation allow a safety as the only score?
• Could the game realistically end 2–0?
If the answer is no, your model might be accidentally removing real outcomes from the game.
Even the weird ones.
And sometimes the weird ones are the most interesting.….