The New England Patriots may have won as many Super Bowl titles as any other team, but they’ve also lost as many as any other team too.
Sometimes it’s okay to cry … even in sports.
Ask even the burliest, meanest, toughest people on the planet, and there’s a very good chance that each and every one of them has shed a few tears at least once, if not on multiple occasions throughout their life.
For many, many years, the New England Patriots were one of the worst teams in professional football. Across the first 11 years of their existence as the Boston Patriots, this franchise made the postseason but once and had a losing record more times than a winning one.
The Pats were similarly bad throughout the majority of the 80s and 90s before finally gaining some degree of respectability under Bill Parcells, Pete Carroll, and then ultimately Bill Belichick of course.
With the arrival of Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, New England finally established a winning culture — one that spawned arguably the greatest dynasty in the history of professional sports over the past 20 years.
But as much as the Patriots have now won, they’ve also lost quite a bit as well — especially on the game’s greatest stage.
New England simultaneously holds two very different distinctions right now as having both won and lost the most Super Bowls in NFL history. The Patriots are tied for each record — they and the Steelers have each won six Lombardi Trophies, while they and the Broncos have each lost five Lombardi Trophies.
But not all losses are created equal.
Let’s take a look at all five Super Bowl losses, starting with the one that hurt the least and finishing with the one that still keeps fans up at night.
5. Super Bowl XX vs Chicago Bears (1985)
Not that it’s ever easy to lose in the championship of any sport, but if you have to lose, you may as well do it to a legendary team of destiny.
Sure, some might argue that this loss stings more because the ’85 Bears are such an iconic team, and because of that, the Patriots will always be remembered for coming up short on the other end of that situation.
But honestly, who really expected New England to win this game even then?
The Patriots entered the playoffs that year as the No. 5 seed with an 11-5 record, whereas the Bears were the No. 1 seed at 15-1.
Of course it was impressive that New England won three straight playoff games en route to their first Super Bowl appearance. And yes, it would have been the ultimate David versus Goliath Cinderella story if the Pats had somehow found a way to defeat Mike Ditka and Buddy Ryan’s Bears.
But the ’85 Bears are on that same exalted level of NFL existence occupied by teams like the ’72 Dolphins and the ’07 Patriots (more on them later).
Even as Patriots fans, it would have been anticlimactic and frankly unfair for a team as talented and historic as Chicago was that season to ultimately come up short just because they played poorly for three random hours during Super Bowl Sunday.
As we all know, the Bears did not play poorly — they clobbered the Pats 46-10.
Moving on…
4. Super Bowl XXXI vs Green Bay Packers (1996)
Now, here is a game that the Patriots and their fans had every right to feel sad and bad about when it was all over.
New England entered this Super Bowl again with an 11-5 record, but the AFC as a whole wasn’t as strong this year, so they were the No. 2 seed in their conference. They also had a much better head coach and quarterback tandem at the helm in Bill Parcells and Drew Bledsoe.
Unfortunately, their opponent — the Green Bay Packers — had an even better tandem in charge. Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre had staked the Pack to the No. 1 seed and the best record in the NFL (alongside Mike Shanahan and John Elway’s Denver Broncos) at 13-3.
The Patriots fell behind early by a 10-0 margin, but came roaring back at the end of the first quarter with back-to-back touchdown receptions by Keith Byars and Ben Coates.
Green Bay answered with a touchdown of their own at the top of the second quarter and then went into halftime up 27-14 thanks to a field goal and a two-yard touchdown run from Favre.
Curtis Martin’s touchdown run brought the Patriots within six, but that was as close as they’d get.
Desmond Howard’s 99-yard kickoff return touchdown sealed a 35-21 Packers victory, and the Patriots fell to 0-2 in Super Bowl appearances (both losses interestingly came down in New Orleans at the Superdome).
This game was a tough pill to swallow, but it also felt like the Packers ultimately were the better team and deserved to win. The Patriots had a great season that year and a solid team overall, but you’d be hard-pressed to win an argument that their team was better than Green Bay’s in 1996.
3. Super Bowl XLVI vs New York Giants (2011)
Here’s where the tears really start flowing.
The Patriots came into this matchup with the best record and the top seed in the AFC at 13-3. The Giants, on the other hand, were the No. 4 seed in the NFC after compiling a 9-7 record during the regular season.
Sadly enough, this wasn’t the first time these two teams met with a championship on the line and very unbalanced records … but again, more on that later. (Sniffle…)
New England knew not to underestimate New York — especially not after what had occurred just four years earlier.
Yet somehow, the Patriots still managed to get off to an embarrassingly sluggish and poor start — something they’d strangely become known for during their Super Bowl appearances in the Brady/Belichick era.
Brady got flagged for intentional grounding in the end zone to start this contest, leading to a safety and an early 2-0 lead for New York. Victor Cruz caught a touchdown from Eli Manning not long after, leading to some of his trademark salsa dancing and some major league nail-biting from Patriots fans who’d seen this movie before.
Touchdown receptions by Danny Woodhead and Aaron Hernandez in the second and third quarters, respectively, along with a Stephen Gostkowski field goal, managed to propel New England ahead 17-9.
The Giants answered with back-to-back field goals from Lawrence Tynes, bringing New York within two.
As is often the case with Patriots Super Bowls, the fourth quarter is where things really heated up and got interesting. Brady overthrew Wes Welker at a critical juncture, and a few of his other receivers — Welker included — dropped a few crucial passes, leading to Gisele’s famous “my husband can’t throw and catch the ball” comments after the game.
The defining moment of this Super Bowl, however, was the 38-yard reception by Mario Manningham on the edge of the sideline. Not long after, Belichick allowed Ahmad Bradshaw to score a touchdown with less than a minute left to play. The Patriots tried to win on a Hail Mary as time expired, but the pass was batted down.
For most teams in the NFL, this would easily represent the low-point for your franchise in terms of emotional heartbreak.
Unfortunately (in this instance at least), the Patriots are not like most teams in the NFL.
2. Super Bowl LII vs Philadelphia Eagles (2017)
Some people might make the argument that both Super Bowl losses to the Giants (XLVI and XLII) should occupy the “top” spots on this list simply because of the improbable catches made by Mario Manningham and David Tyree, and how each one felt like a hot spike going through your eyeballs while watching it happen.
I’d beg to differ though.
While there’s no question that the failed perfect season takes the cake as the single biggest moment of heartbreak in Patriots franchise history, I’d argue that New England’s loss to Philadelphia in Super Bowl LII is second on this list. A distant second, but second all the same.
Keep in mind that this exciting thrill-ride of a championship game featured numerous NFL records getting broken and then reset, including most yards gained in an NFL game by both teams combined (1,151), fewest punts from both teams in a Super Bowl (one), and most points scored by a Super Bowl losing team (33).
In short, it was like the polar opposite of Super Bowl LIII … a game the Patriots actually won. But ask most New Englanders if they’d rather have won Super Bowl LII or Super Bowl LIII, and I’m willing to bet almost all of them will say they’d rather have won this game.
It’s just more exciting and fun to say you won a shootout like this as opposed to the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in NFL history — which, if we’re all being honest, was objectively a bit boring at times (the second Rams game, not the second Eagles game).
Keep in mind: Brady threw for 505 yards and had three touchdowns, zero interceptions, and a 115.4 quarterback rating … and the Patriots lost. Meanwhile, Nick Foles — the Eagles’ backup QB — beat him and won Super Bowl MVP.
To be fair, Foles didn’t beat Brady. Foles beat the Patriots defense.
Strangely, just a year before New England’s defense put on a clinic in shutting down the L.A. Rams’ historic offense in Super Bowl LIII (something many analysts described as the greatest defensive performance in Super Bowl history), the Patriots D was Swiss cheese against the Eagles.
This game had it all. Points, yards, lead changes, replay drama.
The Patriots fell behind early like they usually do in these situations — they were down 15-3 midway through the second quarter — before rallying to come within three.
With 34 seconds left until halftime though, Eagles head coach Doug Pederson had a little sideline coversation with Foles about something called the “Philly Special” — two words that will forever traumatize Patriots fans everywhere now — and a trick play later, the Eagles were up by 10 at the half.
New England didn’t lead in this game until they went ahead by one, 33-32, on a four-yard Rob Gronkowski touchdown reception with 9:22 left in the game. Philadelphia answered with a touchdown catch from their own tight end, Zach Ertz, to go up 38-33 with just over two minutes left (they failed on a two-point conversion attempt).
The game essentially ended with a Brandon Graham strip-sack of Brady that was recovered by Derek Barnett. The Eagles kicked a field goal that made it 41-33, meaning the Patriots would need a touchdown and a two-point conversion to tie it and force overtime.
Never say never — especially not just one year after their improbable comeback against the Falcons in Super Bowl LI — but it was not meant to be. After all that excitement and adrenaline, the Eagles won their first Super Bowl title, and the Patriots’ record in Super Bowls fell to 5-5.
Thanks to their win one year later over the Rams, New England improved that mark to 6-5 — the record it currently maintains at present. Still, this game was a real tear-jerker for Pats fans.
1. Super Bowl XLII vs New York Giants (2007)
At last: The gold standard against which all other Patriots losses will forever be measured now.
Because of New England’s astounding run of success these past two decades, no one outside of the Northeast will ever feel sorry for this franchise when dark times befall it.
But if we’re going to objectively admit that the Patriots’ second Super Bowl victory over the Rams in Super Bowl LIII was a fairly boring game until the final quarter, then most football fans should be able to objectively agree that it’s positively gut-wrenching to go undefeated during the NFL regular season and win two more playoff games only to then lose in the Super Bowl.
It’s the classic question: Is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all?
While most Patriots fans would probably choose the former and do it all over again — even knowing that David Tyree would make that catch on his helmet and the final standings would be 18-1 instead of 19-0 and history — it’s still agonizing to this day to reflect on what could have been.
I remember reading a neutral column 12 years or so ago right after this game happened. The writer said something to the effect that he was glad the Patriots lost in the championship to the Giants — not because he didn’t like the Pats or because he liked the Giants, and not even because he wanted to root for the underdog or root against the juggernaut.
Quite simply, he argued that he was glad New England lost because if they’d won and posted the first-ever perfect 19-0 season, the Patriots would have essentially beaten football.
Think about that for a second.
His point is that there’s nowhere to go from there. Obviously, you still come back the following season and try to defend your title like you normally would, but wouldn’t every other season that ever came afterwards just feel a little bit less-than?
No matter how many more championships you’d manage to win, nothing would ever come close to that 19-0 season.
Because of that, this writer argued that it was a good thing for not only the Patriots, but for all the NFL, that New England lost to New York in this game.
This way, until and unless another team posts a 19-0 season, there will always be something left for all 32 teams to strive for: The mythical idea of completing the perfect season and setting a wins mark that’s never been done before.
Whether or not you agree with him, it’s impossible to deny the greatness of this New England team. Most Pats fans will tell you that the very best incarnation of their squad was the same one that didn’t win a championship, and that it was this one.
You can stack this team up against the 2001, 2003, 2004, 2014, 2016, or 2018 teams, and 99.9% of Patriots Nation will choose the 2007 version all the same, even without the accompanying Lombardi Trophy.
I’m not going to go through a play-by-play of how this Super Bowl went down because it’s still too painful to relive, even 12 years later. This is the game that keeps Bostonians up at night and has them spiking their clam chowdahs at suppah with the salt of their own tears.
If you really want to learn more about how it all went down, go ask a Giants fan.