The Pittsburgh Steelers are just the 11th team, at least since 1940, to have scored at least 24 points in each of their first 10 games of a season, according to Pro Football Reference. That also includes the New Orleans Saints from the 2020 season as well, who have also managed to put up at least 24 points in every game so far.
They are just the fourth team to have accomplished this feat while going undefeated during that stretch. Only three other teams had done it previously, all within the past 15 years. The feat was most recently accomplished by the Green Bay Packers in 2011. The Saints in 2009, during their Super Bowl season, and the New England Patriots in their undefeated-until-the-Super-Bowl 2007, are the only other teams to manage it.
And so the question is, of course, how narrow does the company get as time goes on? How many teams have reached 24 points in each of their first 11 games? The answer would be 11, and that includes the Saints, Patriots, and Packers teams as mentioned above, continuing to win. The Steelers can join them if they defeat the Baltimore Ravens tomorrow while scoring at least 24.
The same eight teams also all went 12 games with 24 points. It’s not until 13 games that we lose one, but the Packers, Saints, and Patriots all remained undefeated and scoring 24 or more points per game through that measure.
But that’s as far as it goes. All three of them failed to score 24 points in game number 14, though they all continued to win. The Saints would ultimately finish their run at 13 wins, and the Packers as well, while the Patriots, of course, went undefeated.
New Orleans didn’t even hit 20 points in each of their final three games. They also lost all three of them. But they won the Super Bowl. The Packers? They would ultimately score at least 24 in 15 games, going 15—1, the only loss being the one in which they scored 14. They were upset by the New York Giants in the Divisional Round.
And then, of course, there was the Patriots. They scored 24 or more in 15 games. They won every game in the regular season. They would finish 18-1, again, courtesy of Eli Manning and the Giants. So the moral of the story is, don’t score a lot of points until Manning retires, and fortunately he has.
As for the more global business of 24 points? There were actually two teams in NFL history to go a full 16-game season while scoring 24 points in every game. Those would be the 12-4 Kansas City Chiefs of 2018 and the 15-1 Minnesota Vikings of 1998, during Randy Moss’ rookie season.
In case you’re wondering, nobody scored 24 or more points in every game of a 14-game season. In fact, the earliest that any team had done it in even 13 games was the Washington team that went 13-2 in a strike-shortened season. They actually scored 24 in every game that year—it’s just that they only played 15 games.
