Highest-Scoring Super Bowl Games in NFL History

Super Bowls are the matchups between the NFL’s best two teams of the year, and as such, they can be a dry and gritty struggle for any points at all. At other times, it feels like you’re watching Wimbledon, with touchdowns and field goals being scored left and right by the best passers, receivers, and kickers in the league.

The average number of total points scored in a Super Bowl by both teams combined is 46 points. The games covered on this page of high-scoring Super Bowls had scores of about 20 to 30 points higher than the average.

But before we take a look at the highest-scoring championship games, let’s take a look at the lowest.

In 2019, the 53^rd Super Bowl was played in Atlanta between the Patriots and the Rams on a near-perfect 64-degree day. Fans paid record prices to attend the game ($5,000 for the “cheap seats”). One hopes they enjoyed their visit to Greater Atlanta as a whole, because they certainly did not get their money’s worth at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Neither team scored in the first quarter. At the end of the third quarter, the score was a ho-hum 3-3. In the final quarter, the Patriots finally achieved a touchdown—the only one of the game—to claim a final score of 13, which is the lowest winning score in a Super Bowl.  

Final score: 13-3, for a combined total score of 16. 

Fortunately, most Super Bowls tend to be a lot more action-packed than that, and we’ve lined up some of the best ones for you. Here are the highest-scoring Super Bowls in NFL history.

A whopping 75 total points were scored in Super Bowl XXIX, the highest-scoring Super Bowl game to date, which was played in 1995 between the San Francisco 49ers and the San Diego Chargers.

Passions were high since both teams hailed from the same state, unusual for a Super Bowl. This may have driven each team to push themselves to the limit, thus taking the Super Bowl score to new heights with a shocking 10 total touchdowns in the game.

Under the aegis of Quarterback Steve Young, San Francisco scored an intimidating 14 points per quarter in each of the first three quarters, forcing San Diego to chase like they’ve never chased before.

It is true that the Chargers did outscore the 49ers in the fourth quarter, but this paltry 8 points to the 49ers’ 7 points was just a drop in the bucket, gaining the Chargers nothing but exhaustion.

Ultimately, the San Francisco 49ers, under head coach George Siefert, a 15-year veteran of the franchise by this point, dominated with a winning score of 49 to the Chargers’ 26.

2018’s Super Bowl LII was another high-scoring battle, this time between the underdog Philadelphia Eagles and the favored New England Patriots playing under head coach Bill Belichick in yet another of his numerous Super Bowl appearances. 

Temperatures outside hovered between 9 degrees Fahrenheit and -4, but things were heating up inside Minneapolis’s billion-dollar U.S. Bank Stadium. The Eagles, playing with backup quarterback Nick Foles, had been written off as a threat when main quarterback Carson Wentz went down with an injury. However, Nick Foles proved himself and then some. 

The Eagles set up a merry chase for the Pats, controlling the game despite New England’s valiant 14-point third quarter and 33 total game points (the highest of any losing Super Bowl team). The final score in the second highest-scoring Super Bowl was 41 Eagles, 33 Patriots, for a combined total 74. 

Super Bowl XXVII was meant to be a pitched battle between the Buffalo Bills and the Dallas Cowboys, but it ended up being a Wild West-style massacre, with the Cowboys decimating Buffalo left, right, and center. 

Some of the highest-scoring Super Bowl games were a fight to the death between the two sides, but this game was distinctly one-sided, with the Cowboys scoring 52 of the 69 total game points. 

The Bills could have opened a bakery with the number of turnovers they handed to Dallas. The Bills were regulars at the Super Bowl in the early ‘90s, a fact that would seem to make them a real contender in any football matchup. 

However, the Bills, under head coach Mark Levy, slunk away from Rose Bowl Stadium with a game score of 17, less than one-third of the points scored by their opponents. The Cowboys were favored to win by 6 ½ points but ended up beating Buffalo by 35 in this high-scoring Super Bowl.

In 2003, a Super Bowl newbie turned the tables at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, surprising critics and fans alike in a high-scoring, 69-total-point game.

Super Bowl XXXVII, played between the favored Oakland Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was supposed to be a solid Raiders win. Instead, the game became a humiliating defeat as the Raiders couldn’t even score half the points of the Buccs. 

Tampa Bay, in their first-ever visit to the Super Bowl, tied the Raiders in the first quarter with a score of 3-3. However, things tilted rapidly after that, with the Buccaneers dominating the second, third, and fourth quarters. 

At one point in the third quarter, the game score was an astonishing 34-3, setting the Raiders up not just for defeat but for some serious shame. The Raiders did manage to score late in the third quarter and had a decent 12-point fourth quarter, but there was just no way they could catch up to Tampa Bay’s lead. 

This game was called the “Pirate Bowl” because both teams are named for the scourge of the seas. But the Buccaneers proved to be the tougher pirate crew as they plundered and pillaged their way to a final score of 48 to Oakland’s 21.  

In 1979, back when the Super Bowl was still a relatively new phenomenon, the Steelers faced down the Cowboys at Super Bowl XIII in what should have been called the “Déjà vu Bowl” since it involved the same two teams that played each other at Super Bowl X just three years earlier, facing off in the same stadium—Miami’s Orange Bowl. 

The Pittsburgh Steelers were the favorites to win this match, and fans hoped for a repeat of Super Bowl X when the Steelers beat the Cowboys by 4 points. Pittsburgh played exactly to the odds as they achieved another 4-point victory at the Orange Bowl. 

However, the Cowboys gave a hard chase, keeping the spectators unsure of the winner until the last moments of the game. In the first quarter, both teams scored 7 points, but Pittsburgh pulled ahead in the second quarter, with 14 quarter points to Dallas’s 7. 

Although Pittsburgh scored no points in the third quarter to the Cowboys’ 3, they still had a comfortable lead as the teams headed into the fourth quarter, where both teams played their hearts out, each scoring 14 points. 

At the final whistle, MVP Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw had led his team to a 35-31 victory over the Cowboys, for a total game score of 66.

Not only is this game one of the highest-scoring Super Bowls in history, but it’s the highest score by any one team in the Super Bowl. The San Francisco 49ers were 12-point favorites going into this match against the Denver Broncos. The 49ers came out of the game 45 points ahead of a very depressed Denver team.

Joe Montana and Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers were a magical combination, creating a 49ers dynasty in the 1980s. This game, toward the close of that era, showcased their genius.

San Francisco scored 13 points in the first quarter to the Broncos’ three. The 49ers just ran away with the game after that, scoring 14 points in each of the next three quarters.

Jerry Rice was similar to a Weebles toy, in that you could knock him around, but you just couldn’t knock him down, as Denver’s defensive line learned over and over during this game.

There were an astonishing eight touchdowns made in this game by San Francisco, compared to the one touchdown made by John Elway for the Broncos. Truly one of the most memorable games in history.

It’s yet another appearance for San Francisco in our list of the highest-scoring Super Bowl games.

This was a tough, close fight in New Orleans between the Ravens and the 49ers. Both teams were Super Bowl veterans, and both teams had been undefeated in their previous Super Bowl appearances.

The Ravens electrified their fans by gaining seven points in the first quarter, while only giving up three. In the second quarter, the Ravens doubled that, gaining 14 points while again only giving up 3. By the end of the first half, the score was 21-6, giving the Ravens a very comfortable—or so they thought—15-point lead.

The third quarter put the fear of God into the Ravens as the 49ers came back with a massive 17-point quarter with two touchdowns and a successful field goal.

The Ravens made only seven points in the third quarter. The 49ers beat the Ravens in the fourth quarter as well, 8-6.

But Baltimore had established too big of a lead in the first half, and the 49ers just couldn’t catch up, despite striving mightily in the second half.

The game ended with a close 34-31 victory for the Ravens and the first-ever Super Bowl defeat for the San Francisco 49ers.

You just never know how a Super Bowl is going to go. Like a boxing match, it could be a TKO, like the 49ers vs. Broncos 55-10 game at Super Bowl XXIV, or it could go the full 12 rounds, like Super Bowl XLVII, where the winner was a mystery until the last minutes of the game.

The only thing you can be sure of is that there’s always going to be something to talk about when it’s over.