1972 Washington Redskins season

The 1972 Washington Redskins season was the 41st in the National Football League (NFL) and the 36th in Washington, D.C. The Redskins were trying to build on the success of the previous season, in which they had finished 9–4–1 and made the postseason for the first time in 26 seasons. They ultimately finished the year 11–3 (the best record in the Allen era).

Head coach George Allen, in just his second season with the team, took the Redskins to their first Super Bowl. The team, who had missed the postseason in the entirety of the 1950s and 1960s, won its first postseason game since 1943, and appeared in its first league championship game since 1945.

The NFC champion Redskins would ultimately lose a very close Super Bowl VII, 14–7, to the undefeated Miami Dolphins.

The 1972 season was the first in which the team wore its longtime logo, which featured a Native American head in profile within a gold circle. The logo would stay with the team for the next 48 seasons until both it and the team nickname were retired after the 2019 season.^[1] With the Washington Senators relocating to Texas in 1971, the Baltimore Bullets not relocating until the summer of 1973, and the Washington Capitals having their inaugural season in 1974, the 1972 Redskins were at the time the D.C. area's only team playing in one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.