What constitutes the “worst” loss of all-time? It would have to be one where defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. One where the win is already assumed and being celebrated, and then all of a sudden it’s gone.
One where losing was so mathematically improbable that you can’t even wrap your brain around it happening. We just witnessed the worst loss in college football history this weekend. NC State lost a game where they had the ball, were winning, and had 6 seconds on the clock. Where did it all go wrong?
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Let’s set the stage: NC State has the ball, 4th and 7, at their own 5-yard line. They are leading by 3 points, and there are 6 seconds on the clock. If they are able to take a safety and run all 6 seconds off, they win the game by 1 point. That’s clearly the goal here. Quarterback CJ Bailey takes the snap and rolls to the right in his own end zone. Well, for Vanderbilt, desperate times call for desperate measures.
Vanderbilt’s defenders eschew trying to tackle Bailey for trying to pry the football from his grasp. They rip it out, the ball bounces on the turf, and Vanderbilt’s Cayden Daniels falls on it to secure a touchdown and a 35-31 win for Vanderbilt.
Mathematically, before the play started, NC State had a 99.9% win probability. That means that one time out of 1000, they are expected to lose. Honestly, that feels generous, and it is probably closer to 1-in-a-million. The literal only scenario where Vanderbilt could have possibly won was exactly what played out.
Here’s what NC State could have done instead, with the math on how likely a TD was to be scored:
A standard punt would have had a 0.01% chance of being returned for a TD by Vanderbilt. It would have been possible to punt out of bounds and run the clock out. If there was time remaining on a punt out of bounds, Vanderbilt would have had around a 5% chance of completing a Hail Mary.
CJ Bailey could have dropped back and launched the football as far and high as he could. This likely would have taken all 6 seconds off. An intentional grounding penalty would have resulted in a harmless safety.
CJ Bailey could have just sprinted out of the back of the end zone for a safety (also known colloquially as an “Orlovsky”), even if time was left on the clock. Why is this not a bad strategy? Safety punts are returned for a touchdown, on average, less than 1 out of 1000 times.
To make matters worse, most teams practice this exact scenario. Teams will practice “take a safety” with their punt unit for this exact situation. Why with the punt unit? Using a long snapper gets the ball further away from the defense and closer to the back of the end zone. Which begs the question — why didn’t NC State do it this way? Why was Bailey on the field? These are questions that don’t have good answers.
To compare this loss to other incredibly improbable losses, this one is the worst. There were actually two 99.9% win probabilities that had already been dashed in the 2026 season. Temple blew a 14-point lead in the final 2:23 to lose to Toledo, and Army blew a late 4th-quarter lead to South Florida. NC State’s loss is much worse than those.
Those two losses required actual playmaking and scoring from an opposing offense, and all Vanderbilt had to do was strip a football. Back in 2023, Miami lost a game where they statistically had a 100% win probability and could have kneeled the clock out against Georgia Tech. Naturally, the Canes called a run play, and the Miami RB fumbled, and Haynes King led a ferocious final-minute drive for Tech to win. Again, this was actual playmaking by the opponent.
The stat that was widely shown on ESPN after the game was that teams with the lead and less than 10 seconds to play were 1046-1 in the last twenty years. That one loss was the infamous “Whoa, he has trouble with the snap!” game between Michigan and Michigan State, where Michigan’s punter dropped the snap, and Michigan State scooped up the loose ball to score.
NC State’s loss is worse than that. After Michigan’s punter dropped the snap, a tackle of the punter right there would have allowed the Spartans a chance to kick a (long) game-winning field goal, or throw a Hail Mary for the win.
This NC State defeat was so sudden, so inexplicable, so mind-boggling that it simply has to be considered the worst loss of all-time. When you think about how many different scenarios could have seen NC State win the game, and how they opted to play out none of them, this is the most heartbreaking loss in the history of college football, and it could end up costing Dave Doeren his job at NC State.
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