What's even rarer than the Rams and 49ers scoring the most points ever in a Thursday Night Football game? A 41-39 game.
The Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers exceeded every expectation, though there weren’t many before the game.
The game captured everyone’s attention as early as the first play when the Rams deferred the kickoff and Brian Hoyer threw an interception. Los Angeles capitalized on the error and scored just a few seconds later thanks to Todd Gurley, who would score two more touchdowns and rush for 113 yards.
But the Rams and 49ers accomplished something no other teams have done in an NFL game: They ended with a score of 41-39. It’s scorigami, or a score that has never happened before in the over 90 year history of the league. According to Pro-Football-Reference, there are still 405 scores that have yet to be reached.
This unique score almost didn’t happen for a few reasons, but this game was destined to end with a score that no other NFL game has had.
The 49ers scored late in the fourth quarter on a Carlos Hyde touchdown with 2:13 left in the game to reach what would be the final score. Successfully scoring an extra point would’ve done nothing for the 49ers’ chances of winning, but 41-40 would have also been scorigami. San Francisco opted to go for two, and Hoyer was intercepted by Michael Brockers.
The 49ers could have maintained scorigami status had they scored on the two-point attempt and then gone to overtime, only to exhaust fans and players by not scoring a damn thing (just like last season’s Seahawks-Cardinals game). The 41-41 score has never happened.
A 49ers touchdown after the recovery still would have been scorigami. The additional six points and a PAT in regulation would have given the 49ers a 46-41 win.
And just because we’re exhausting all possible scenarios here, if the 49ers wanted to add insult to injury by going for two after a touchdown in regulation, that would’ve extinguished our beloved scorigami. That 47-41 score has already happened twice. Once was in 1983 between the Falcons and Packers. It also happened six years later when the Bills defeated the Oilers in 1989. Both of these matchups ended in overtime.
Had Aaron Donald and the Rams’ defense failed to prevent the 49ers from entering field-goal range, the 42-41 final would also not have been scorigami. This score has also appeared only twice in the league’s history. Per Pro-Football-Reference, a score of 42-41 has only happened in 1965 and 1986.
The Rams and 49ers gave us more than just an unusual and thrilling game nobody expected. They gave us an equally rare score. Scorigami was almost bound to happen. It was just a matter of how.