October 5th, 1924 was not the most exciting day in pro football history. The Cardinals defeated the Packers 3-0 in a game that was representative of things to come. Elsewhere, the Duluth Kelleys beat the Minneapolis Marines 3-0, the Akron Pros won in Rochester against the Jeffersons by a 3-0 score, and the Milwaukee Badgers hosted and defeated the Kansas City Blues by the score of — you guessed it — three to zero. It was the only time in NFL history that four games all finished with the same score on the same day.

And then 98 years later, in in week 9 of the 2022 season, four games all ended with the same 20-17 score. The Jets hosted and upset the Buffalo Bills, the Vikings and Chargers pulled off road wins against the Commanders and Falcons, respectively, and the Chiefs won with an overtime field goal against the Titans. It marked just the second time in NFL history that four games on the same day all finished with the same final score. ^[1]If you broaden it to the same week, things don’t change very much. There was just one more week with four games that had the same score, a quartet of 0-0 games back in 1926.

The last time there were three NFL games in the same week that ended in the same score was week 4 of the 2015 season, when the Ravens, Broncos, and Redskins all won by a 23-20 score. But even that is rare: in the Super Bowl era, only 13 times had three teams all won by the same score in the same week. The most unusual set of scores? A trio of 38-7 wins in week 17, 2010.

From 2002 to 2021, only about 1 in every 60 games ended in 20-17 score. So far in 2022, we’ve seen 7 of 136 games end in that score, or more than 1 in every 20 games! Over the last 20 years, the most common score has been 23-20, followed closely by 27-24 and then 20-17. But for one week, at least, it was a week of 20-17s.