A 16-0 regular season, a record-setting offense, and a Super Bowl that turned in its last 150 seconds.
New England's 2007 season is usually remembered by its last game, but the earlier ones are the better story. The Patriots won every regular-season game by at least three points, and four of those wins were decided by four points or fewer. A team that finishes 16-0 looks inevitable in hindsight. This one needed late comebacks to get there.
In April 2007 the Patriots sent a fourth-round pick to the Raiders for wide receiver Randy Moss. Moss had just come off two lean years in Oakland: 60 catches for 1,005 yards in 2005, then 42 catches for 553 yards in 2006, so 102 receptions across the two seasons. In New England he caught 98 passes for 1,493 yards and 23 touchdowns in a single year.
The Patriots also added Wes Welker from Miami. Welker had caught 67 passes in 2006, his career high to that point, and caught 112 for 1,175 yards in 2007.
Brady's 50 touchdown passes broke Peyton Manning's total of 49, set in 2004, three seasons earlier. Manning took it back in 2013 with 55. The 589 points were an NFL record at the time and were passed in 2013 as well, when the Broncos scored 606. Moss's 23 touchdown catches are the one mark that has lasted: they broke Jerry Rice's 22 from 1987 and remain the single-season record, with Davante Adams' 18 in 2020 the closest anyone has come since.
One figure that gets repeated is Brady's 4,806 passing yards. It was a career high at that point, but not a league record: Dan Marino had thrown for 5,084 in 1984.
New England opened at the Jets on September 9 and won 38-14. Brady went 22 of 28 for 297 yards and three touchdowns without an interception, and Moss had nine catches for 183 yards and a 51-yard touchdown. The Patriots scored at least 34 points in each of their first eight games.
The scoreboard from the other twelve games reads like a blowout schedule: 56-10 over Buffalo, 52-7 over Washington, 49-28 at Miami. The games below are where the perfect record was actually at risk.
| Date | Opponent | Score | How it was decided |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 4 | at Indianapolis | 24-20 | Trailing 20-10 with 9:42 left, Brady threw touchdown passes to Welker and Kevin Faulk. Moss finished with nine catches for 145 yards. |
| Nov 25 | Philadelphia | 31-28 | A three-point win at home. |
| Dec 3 | at Baltimore | 27-24 | Down 24-17 early in the fourth quarter, New England cut it to 24-20 on a field goal and won on Brady's 8-yard pass to Jabar Gaffney with 44 seconds left. |
| Dec 29 | at NY Giants | 38-35 | Brady threw for 356 yards and two touchdowns, and Moss caught two scores, in a season finale that ended 16-0. |
The Colts game is often described as the closest of the year, but by margin it was not: three games were decided by three points.
As the top seed, New England had a first-round bye. It beat Jacksonville 31-20 in the divisional round and San Diego 21-12 in the AFC Championship Game, both at home, to reach Super Bowl XLII at 18-0.
The Patriots were 12.5-point favorites at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, against a Giants team that had finished 10-6 and won three straight road playoff games, at Tampa Bay (24-14), at Dallas (21-17) and at Green Bay (23-20 in overtime).
The game was close from the start. With 2:42 left in the fourth quarter, Brady found Moss for a 6-yard touchdown and New England led 14-10. The Giants answered with a drive that included a 32-yard completion from Eli Manning to David Tyree, who held the ball against his helmet, and finished it with 35 seconds left on a 13-yard touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress. The Giants won 17-14.
The Giants sacked Brady five times for 37 yards. Brady finished 29 of 48 for 266 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions. Moss caught five passes for 62 yards. Manning was 19 of 34 for 255 yards, two touchdowns and an interception, and was named Super Bowl MVP.
The 1972 Dolphins went 14-0 in a 14-game regular season, beat Cleveland 20-14 and Pittsburgh 21-17 in the playoffs, then won Super Bowl VII 14-7 over Washington, for a 17-0 finish. That is still the only complete undefeated season, playoffs included. The 2007 Patriots played 19 games and won 18 of them, and the one they lost was the last. They had beaten the same Giants 38-35 five weeks earlier.
In 17-0, Randy Moss is in the player pool both as a 1990s Vikings receiver and as a 2000s Patriots receiver, and Tom Brady appears in the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. Quarterback carries the heaviest position weight in the simulation, so a Brady pick moves your team rating more than any other single slot.
Play 17-0How we verified this. Scores, dates, records and player stats come from the 2007 New England Patriots team page, the game box scores for Weeks 1, 9, 13 and 17, and the player pages for Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, all on Pro-Football-Reference. The 1972 Dolphins figures are from their team page there. The Moss trade details and Super Bowl XLII narrative come from the Wikipedia articles on Moss and the game.