The Seahawks and Cardinals played to a messy 6-6 tie in Sunday night’s matchup. Their tie marks the first time since the NFL instituted overtime in 1974 that two teams have played to a 6-6 tie, and it also marks the lowest-scoring tie in the overtime era.
Seahawks-Cardinals was one of the strangest, most historic ties you’ll ever see
Seventy-five minutes of hell and just 12 points to show for it between the two of them.
Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images
The Cardinals seem to have a history with the 6-6 tie dating back to their time in St. Louis, however, as ESPN’s stats team pointed out.
Additionally, the Cardinals were involved in two more 6-6 ties in their history, in 1927 and 1937, respectively, when they still played in Chicago. In fact, because only one 6-6 tie occurred between 1937 and 1970, this means that the Cardinals have been involved in four of the last five NFL games to end in a 6-6 tie.
The previous lowest-scoring tie in the OT era came in 1997 when Washington and the New York Giants played to a 7-7 tie. That game also occurred on a Sunday night and included the notorious incident in which Gus Frerotte injured his neck by headbutting a wall after scoring Washington’s lone TD.
Sunday night’s matchup marks the first time an NFL game has ended in a tie since 2014, when the Carolina Panthers and Cincinnati Bengals played to the highest-scoring tie in the OT era. Appropriately enough, the Seahawks and Cardinals made sure that the next tie would be the lowest-scoring one.
Despite the dubious distinction of being such a low-scoring game, Sunday night’s matchup still saw the two teams score the same number of points in 15 overtime minutes as they did in 60 minutes of regulation.
The Seahawks and Cardinals also help add to the recent string of ties in the NFL. Sunday night marked the fourth tie game in the past five seasons. Prior to that, the NFL had seen no ties in four years and just two in the previous decade. Perhaps ties may continue to grow increasingly common thanks to the new overtime rules, but fans will presumably be thankful if the ties involve more offensive output than this one.
More historical nuggets
This is the first tie in Seahawks history. From 2012 to now, every team in the NFC West was involved in a tie game. In 2012, the Rams and 49ers’ first divisional matchup ended in a 24-24 tie.
The Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans are the only two franchises without a tie game in NFL history.
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