With the 2025-26 NFL playoffs quickly approaching, here’s a look at the notable postseason victory droughts intact around the league.
With the 2025 calendar year coming to a close, football fans across the United States are preparing for this year’s postseason, with 13 of the 14 playoff teams determined heading into Week 17’s Sunday action.
Although every season of every professional sport features twists and turns, this NFL season has been an unpredictable, riveting journey for many fans, with a playoff field that looks wildly different than most would have imagined in September.
Despite all entering the season with high expectations, the Kansas City Chiefs, Cincinnati Bengals, Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings will all miss out on the postseason this year, with the Baltimore Ravens needing one more win and two losses from the Pittsburgh Steelers to secure a playoff spot.
This has created a relatively unforeseen playoff picture, featuring three teams from a powerhouse NFC West division while only the division champions from the NFC East and NFC South will find themselves playing football into mid-January.
For some teams in this year’s playoff picture, the 2025 season presents a golden opportunity to finally capture a long-awaited Super Bowl title. Fans of the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers have seen their teams come up brutally short numerous times in recent years, while Chicago Bears fans are hoping their team makes the most out of an unexpected division title.
Yet most of the teams that have been grappling with postseason disappointment for the longest are already well out of the conversation when it comes to the playoffs in 2025.
Of the five teams with the longest postseason victory droughts, only the Bears are involved in this year’s postseason, with fans of other clubs in long-term suffering hoping that their franchise turns a corner after a dismal season.
While some teams’ fans have been waiting over a decade for a playoff win, the league has been blessed with a healthy dose of parity in recent years. Of the league’s 32 teams, 17 have won at least one playoff game in the 2020’s, with all but two clubs having won at least one postseason contest since the 2010 season.
With just days remaining until this year’s postseason kicks off, here’s a look at the five teams who have gone the longest without winning a game in the playoffs:
5. Arizona Cardinals – 2015 NFC Divisional Round (26-20 win over Green Bay Packers)
Holding the longest championship drought in major North American professional sports, it’s also been quite some time since the Cardinals have won a playoff game, dating back to their sensational win over the Packers in the 2015 NFC Divisional Round.
The Redbirds triumphed over Green Bay in overtime of that game, surviving a buzzer-beating Hail Mary touchdown pass from Aaron Rodgers at the end of regulation that tied the game and forced overtime.
Arizona quickly finished the game in the extra period, with franchise icon Larry Fitzgerald totaling 80 receiving yards and a game-winning touchdown in the win.
The Cardinals have been seldom successful in their franchise history, having last won a championship as the Chicago Cardinals in 1947, with just one Super Bowl appearance since moving to the desert from St. Louis in 1988.
The Cardinals barely edge out the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos for this spot, as both teams have also been without a playoff victory since the 2015-16 postseason.
Arizona went on to get blown out by Cam Newton and the Panthers in the 2015 NFC Championship Game, while the Panthers lost to the Broncos in a rather unremarkable Super Bowl two weeks later.
4. (tie) Chicago Bears – 2010 NFC Divisional Round (35-24 win over Seattle Seahawks)
The lone 2025 playoff team on the drought list, the Bears have weathered a decade-and-a-half of forgettable football, having only made the postseason twice since their loss to the Green Bay Packers in the 2010 NFC Championship Game.
The 2010 Bears were the best iteration of the Jay Cutler-era Bears, having gone 11-5 in the regular season while securing a division title and first-round bye. Perhaps drawing a favorable card in the Divisional Round, the Bears were matched up against the Seahawks, who went 7-9 in the regular season and had just completed an unreal upset over the heavily favored New Orleans Saints in the NFC Wild Card Round.
Chicago scored the game’s first 28 points, ultimately proving to be enough to withstand a three-touchdown fourth quarter from the Seahawks while closing out a 35-24 victory.
After falling to the Packers the following week, the Bears have been left with just two postseason appearances since 2010 before this season – a back-breaking Wild Card Round loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018 known to fans as the “Double Doink” along with a forgettable defeat to the Saints in the 2020 Wild Card Round.
The Bears last appeared in the Super Bowl in 2006, losing to the Indianapolis Colts, while they last won the championship on the heels of their 15-1 campaign in 1985.
3. (tie) New York Jets – 2010 AFC Divisional Round (28-21 win over New England Patriots)
Perhaps the first team that comes to the minds of NFL fans when thinking of a futile franchise, the Jets take the higher spot on this list in a tie on virtue of the team having not made it back to the postseason since their defeat in the 2010 AFC Championship Game.
Prior to that loss, the Jets looked like one of the league’s rising teams, with an elite defense headlined by prime Darrelle Revis alongside an unproven but promising young quarterback in Mark Sanchez.
After making a run to the AFC title game in 2009, the Jets repeated the feat the following season, toppling the Indianapolis Colts in the Wild Card Round to avenge their loss from the previous year before pulling off an unreal upset over Tom Brady and the 14-2 Patriots in the Divisional Round at Gillette Stadium.
New York went on to narrowly lose to the Steelers in the AFC title game the following week, with 2010 serving as the peak of the era as opposed to the opening act of a perennial playoff contender.
Not only have the Jets not returned to the playoffs since 2010, they’ve been outright bad in the process of trying to get back, managing just one winning season in the interim, a 10-6 campaign in 2015.
The franchise has weathered a carousel of both head coaches and starting quarterbacks in the last 15 years, and currently hold a 3-12 record in 2025 with two games left to play. The Jets remain without a Super Bowl win since Joe Namath led the team to a historic upset in 1968.
2. Las Vegas Raiders – 2002 AFC Championship Game (41-24 win over Tennessee Titans)
One of the most futile franchises in professional sports in the 21st century, the Raiders have been among the league’s cellar dwellers since making a run to the Super Bowl during their time in Oakland on the heels of MVP quarterback Rich Gannon and Hall of Fame cornerback Charles Woodson in 2002.
The Raiders, who were on their third consecutive postseason appearance at the time, went on to get blown out by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in that year’s Super Bowl, and have not made it anywhere close in the 23 years since.
The team has made it back to the playoffs just twice since their Super Bowl run, with both trips (2016, 2021) ending in Wild Card Round losses to the Houston Texans and Cincinnati Bengals, respectively. The latter appearance stands as their lone playoff berth since the franchise moved to Las Vegas ahead of the 2020 season.
The Raiders are wagering on a high draft pick paving the way for more success in the future, with Las Vegas holding a dismal 2-13 record with two games left to play. The team remains without a Super Bowl win since 1983, when they defeated the then-Washington Redskins as the Los Angeles Raiders.
1. Miami Dolphins – 2000 AFC Wild Card Game (23-17 win over Indianapolis Colts)
Standing alone as the longest playoff victory drought in the NFL, it’s been a quarter-century since the Dolphins have won a playoff game, dating back to their 2000 AFC Wild Card Game win over the Colts with Jay Fielder at quarterback.
The 2000 season was notable for Miami, with the franchise aiming to stay competitive following the retirement of Dan Marino upon the conclusion of the 1999 season. Though holding a rather middling offense, the Dave Wannstedt-coached Fins held the NFL’s third-best defense, key to them winning the AFC East title that season.
After toppling Peyton Manning and the Colts in the Wild Card Game, the Dolphins were obliterated by the Oakland Raiders 27-0 in the Divisional Round, beginning a long string of winter disappointments in South Florida.
Though Miami returned to the postseason the following year with Wannstedt and Fiedler at the helm, they were blown out 20-3 by the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens, beginning a rebuilding period for the franchise.
The Dolphins have made it back to the playoffs four times since their 2001 Wild Card Game loss, sustaining Wild Card losses in 2008, 2016, 2022 and 2023. At a 6-9 record and out of playoff contention in 2025, the Dolphins enter the upcoming offseason with plenty of questions regarding the futures of head coach Mike McDaniel and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
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