DETROIT — The Buffalo Bills handed the Detroit Lions a rare loss and did so in a way never before seen in NFL history.
The Bills outscored the Lions 48-42 at Ford Field, snapping Detroit's 11-game win streak. It also marked the first time ever that an NFL game has ended with that exact final score.
The Lions, now 12-2, had not lost a game since a 20-16 loss to Tampa Bay on Sept. 15.
In NFL fan circles, the historic final score has become known as a "Scorigami," thanks to a website that tracks the final score of every game in NFL history in search of the next "unique" final score.
Scorigami explained
According to the NFL Scorigami account on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Scorigami concept was first suggested by Jon Bois, with a website charting every final score in league history developed by Dave Mattingly.
In the same way fantasy football has fans across the country occasionally cheer against their own favorite team if a rival can score a few points, posts to the Scorigami account are full of replies of fans who claim to only be cheering for the uniqueness of a final score.
If you're curious, the most frequent final score in NFL history before last week's, according to Mattingly's site, is 20-17, which has happened 297 times in league history, more than 60 games ahead of it's closest competition, the 27-24 final, which has happened 236 times in the NFL.
While there hasn't been a 0-0 final score since the Giants and Lions went scoreless on Nov. 7, 1943, there have been 73 games in NFL history where neither team registered a point.
The lowest possible scores to not yet "hit" are the 4-0 and 2-2 finals, though five teams have won games 2-0 and three more have won with 5-0 finals. On the other end of the spectrum is the Chicago Bears' 73-0 shutout of Washington on Dec. 8, 1940, and the highest-scoring of the 1,090 unique final scores in NFL history — Washington's 72-41 win over the New York Giants on Nov. 27, 1966.