The 10 Worst Unbreakable Records in Sports

There are moments in sports that we’d all like to forget. From winless seasons to literally unbelievable blowouts and stats, some things are better left unsaid when talking about legends in sports.

Here’s 10 of the seemingly impossible and unbreakable worst records in sports that you nor any athlete would ever want to be connected to:

10. The ’08 Lions and ’17 Browns Sweet 0-16s

How bad was the 2008 Detroit Lions? So bad they made the 0-14 Tampa Bay Buccaneers of 1976 look good.

How bad was the 2017 Cleveland Browns? Bad enough to make everyone forget about the 2008 winless Lions.

The first lone winless season in the NFL’s modern era helped the Lions finally find their quarterback of he future in Matthew Stafford who, in turn, made them relevant again. It’s also worth noting that Detroit was close to winning several times in October of that fateful year. They were leading the Vikings 10-9 in Week 5 before Ryan Longwell’s last-second, 26-yard field goal. They nearly rallied back from a 21-3 halftime deficit against Houston the week after. Dan Orlovsky brought the Lions within five points with six minutes left at the Redskins before they kicked a field goal to ice the win, and Rex Grossman’s one-yard touchdown run put Chicago ahead over Detroit with just over five minutes left in Week 9.

In the regular season finale, Detroit came within three points of the Packers, 24-21 midway through the fourth quarter before Aaron Rodgers hit Donald Driver for a 71-yard touchdown pass, handing the Lions the big goose egg for the season.

The Browns had it worse. They didn’t just go 0-16 in 2017, but also started the season 0-2-1 before defeating the Jets on Thursday Night Football for their first win in nearly two years. Their 19-game winless streak matched the Lions who went 0-19 between the 2007-09 seasons. The 2017 Browns lost by double digits nine times and came close to winning once in December against the Packers.

Given the range of talent with today’s NFL, it’s mathematically possible for a team to repeat 0-16, but highly unlikely.

9. David Carr’s forgettable 2002 rookie season

The older and more forgettable of the Carr brothers, David had a lot of promise to start his NFL career.

He was coming into a newly-founded Houston Texans team that picked up several great players in its expansion draft –most notably offensive linemen like Tony Boselli and Ryan Young.

While Carr was supposed to be protected like none other, the opposite became true as the season went on, and their problems were compounded by injuries suffered early on in the campaign. He was sacked for an NFL record 76 times and fumbled 21 times; the experience resulted in Carr being shellshocked every year afterward, including later on in stints with the Panthers and the Giants where he won a ring behind Eli Manning.

The first Carr was a lemon. The second, newer one in Oakland, however, seems to be okay so far.

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8. Air Jordan’s 7-59 season

Michael Jordan is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. The key word there is players. We’re going to talk about him as an owner. However great Jordan was on the court, he couldn’t evaluate talent off of it.

His then-Charlotte Bobcats went 7-59 in the strike-shortened 2011-12 campaign. Seven wins out of 63 games. They were “led” by Gerald Henderson’s 15.1 points per game, followed by D.J. Augustin’s 11.1 points per game. Glorious.

The NBA’s newest low barely edged the nine-win Philadelphia 76ers from 1972-73, who went 9-73 in an 80-game season.

7. Four Failures of Buffalo

In the early 90’s, the run-and-gun Bills led by Jim Kelly had one of the best offenses in the NFL, one that won four straight AFC championships, went to four straight Super Bowls … and lost every one.

The Bills lost in epic fashion each time as well, highlighted by Scott Norwood’s missed field goal that would’ve beaten the Giants in Super Bowl XXV. That epic loss was followed by a loss to the Redskins the year after and back-to-back blowouts by the Cowboys.

The Bills’ failures on football’s biggest stage were highlighted in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary called “Four Falls of Buffalo.”

6. 92-0, Pray for Thailand

Let’s make this clear right now. With distant and recent history, Thailand might want to reconsider doing anything in team sports.

Their 13-0 blowout by the United States in the 2019 Women’s World Cup doesn’t even come close to their 92-0 loss in the 1998 IIHF Asian Oceanic Junior U18 Championships – yes, just 21 years ago.

South Korea put 71 shots on net by the first intermission and scored once every 33 seconds to go to back the locker rooms for the first time up 36-0. Song Dong-hwan scored 30 goals for the South Koreans on the day and tallied five assists because why not. In the final two periods, South Korea outshot their opponents 105-1.

It kind of goes without saying South Korea won the championship that year and their Thai counterparts ended 0-5 with a -214 goal differential.

5. All of the home runs Jamie Moyer allowed

For what it’s worth, Jamie Moyer pitched for what seemed like forever, tossing for 25 years in major league baseball. He wasn’t a great, overpowering, dominant pitcher by any means. However, Moyer makes the list here for his ability with the long ball. Not hitting it, but allowing it.

His 522 home runs allowed are the most in baseball history and while he was able to adapt his pitching over time, he wasn’t able to stop the ball from leaving the park, constantly. The only man who came anywhere close to Moyer’s record was Warren Spahn, who gave up 434.

In his last four seasons with the Phillies from 2007-10, he allowed 97 home runs while his strikeout total plummeted year after year.

4. 222-0

This was probably a football game that should’ve never been played at all. In 1916, Georgia Tech beat an insanely inferior Cumberland College team 222-0, easily the most lopsided win by any program in the history of college football.

There is a little story to this, as explained in this New York Times feature on the game. Cumberland had originally discontinued its football program prior to the season, but they weren’t allowed to cancel their game against Tech. Cumberland’s baseball team had also beaten Tech 22-0 the year before, which many believe what led Georgia Tech coach John Heisman (yes, like the trophy) to the Yellow Jackets running up the score and aiming for the exact “222” score.

It’s also worth noting that even though this game happened just over a decade after the original iteration of the NFL legalized the forward pass, the Yellow Jackets ran all game. They racked up 522 yards and 18 touchdowns on 26 carries. Tech never let Cumberland past the 50-yard-line, never let them get a first down and held them to -42 yards on the day.

Georgia Tech dropped 63 points in the first quarter and took a 126-0 lead at the half. They let off of the gas pedal a bit in the second half, scoring “only” 54 points in the third quarter and 42 in the fourth.

Even in an era where top, AP-ranked teams are playing these lower, non-conference teams early in the season, we’ll never see anything close to this.

3. Brett Favre’s 336 career interceptions

Brett Favre was known for a lot of things – wild on the field with a hell of an arm, tough as nails, played until he literally couldn’t anymore, and throwing a ton of touchdowns, especially in the days before this pass-happy era of the league.

The one thing that isn’t brought up with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time? The amount of interceptions he threw. Favre tossed 336 throughout his career.

Favre led the league in interceptions thrown in 1993 (24), 2005 (29) with Green Bay, and in 2008 (22) in his one-and-done out of retirement stint with the Jets. In his 19 years as a full-time starter, Favre recorded double-digit interceptions in every season except one – 2009, as the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings where he tossed just seven picks to 33 touchdowns.

Favre’s 336 interceptions easily eclipse George Blanda’s 277 for his career.

Eli Manning and Drew Brees are the only active players to eclipse the 200+ interception mark, while Favre is the only one with over 300 in NFL history.

2. The Chicago Cubs 108-year World Series-less streak

There was a point in our generation where we repeatedly asked everyone and anyone a single question at the start of the spring: “Is this the Cubs’ year?”

For an entire century that spans during our generation and the generation before us, and before them, the answer was said and proven to be no.

Now the question is: “Where were you when the Cubs won the World Series?” The Cubs ended their century-plus-long drought after an epic series where they not only took down the Cleveland Indians in seven games but came back down 3-1 in the series, becoming the first team to come back down 3-1 and win both Games 6 and 7 on the road since the 1979 Pirates.

It’s hard to imagine we’ll ever see a century-long championship drought like Chicago’s again.

1. Cy Young’s 315 career losses

Cy Young is the winningest pitcher in the history of baseball, and one of the greatest to ever play the game. His ability to pitch seemingly every other day is a feat we’ll never see in baseball today, and the total time he spent on the mound made his 22 years in the Majors makes Jamie Moyer’s 25 seem like child’s play.

However, for as many games that Young did win (511), he also lost more than his fair share. In fact, more than anybody’s fair share.

Young’s 315 career losses are the most by any pitcher in the history of the game. Despite the total, Young only lost more than 20 games in a season just twice, and while he recorded double-digit losses every year, he also pitched and started in between 30-50 games per season as well, inflating the numbers a bit.