Acme Packing Company
When the final whistle blew on the Green Bay Packers’ game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday afternoon, the scoreboard showed a weird pair of numbers. The Packers won the game 27-18, which is a final scoreline that the team has become oddly familiar with this season. After all, this was the second game that the Packers have played in that featured that final score — they beat the Washington Commanders 27-18 in Week 2, making it twice in five weeks for Green Bay.
Here’s a weird part: there has only been one other game in NFL history that ended 27-18, dating back to 1920. So while the Packers did not set a new Scorigami with these games, they were awfully close to it. The fact that they did it twice in just over a month when it had only happened once in the past 100-plus years speaks to the bizarre nature of this sport.
Want to get even weirder? The Packers also were one of the teams involved in the only other 27-18 game in NFL history! That took place in 2000, when Green Bay lost to the Buffalo Bills 27-18 in upstate New York.
All three of these games came about their final scores in somewhat similar fashion: with a touchdown and two-point conversion from the losing team in the last few minutes of the fourth quarter. In the cases of the 2000 Bills-Packers game and this year’s Green Bay win over Washington, both losing teams were down 27-10 in the final minutes, then scored touchdowns late and converted two-point conversions to close the gap down to 9 points instead of kicking a PAT to get within ten. In 2000, it was Antonio Freeman scoring a touchdown on a pass from Brett Favre, who then hit tight end Tyrone Davis for the two-pointer to close the game to nine with 35 seconds left.
This Sunday’s game came about the final score a bit differently, however. Instead of being down by 17, the Bengals were down 24-10 when they scored their touchdown and two-pointer. Going for 2 in that situation would have been unheard of for most of NFL history, as analytics departments have only recently started pushing coaches to attempt a two-point conversion in that situation, but that’s what Zac Taylor did after a Ja’Marr Chase touchdown. But after Chase Brown converted for two, the Packers drove down the field and kicked a field goal to return the game to a 9-point margin at that final score of 27-18.
