We’re three weeks into this weird season of the National Football League. We have six teams at 0-3, and dammit we already have a tie, forcing me to include an extra column already. Our winless contenders:
Philadelphia Eagles 0-2-1, -28 Cincinnati Bengals 0-2-1, -8 Minnesota Vikings 0-3-0, -27 Houston Texans 0-3-0, -38 New York Giants 0-3-0, -41 Denver Broncos 0-3-0, -25 Atlanta Falcons 0-3-0, -18 New York Jets 0-3-0, -57
There are some teams that are victims of bad luck. The Texans have played the three best teams in the AFC. The Broncos have been beset by injuries, as have the Eagles. The Bengals un-lucked into being the Bengals. I can’t really include the Falcons, because you almost have to lose like they have on purpose.
I’m not sure what to make of the Vikings. The Giants and Jets I’ve seen since I’m a 49ers fan. Both NYC teams are just spectacularly, aggressively terrible. No way two professional teams should lose that badly to a team missing starters at 10 positions.
Back to the Eagles for a sec. They’re my friend’s team, so I watch a bit more of them. The entire overtime was pathetic for both teams, but a false start on a game-winning kick attempt?
So, what are your thoughts? Discuss terrible teams of the past and present, top draft prospects, whatever.
The Jets and Giants are both fantastically bad. The Broncos, Falcons and Texans are all going to end up in that 6-10 to 8-8 range before the season ends. The Texans may even have a shot at 9-7. The Bungles I still haven’t watched yet, so we’ll see. Ditto the Eagles and Vikings.
Their defense is pretty bad. Both of their cornerbacks from last season (one of them a Pro Bowler) are gone, and they’re starting young players in their place. Also, Danielle Hunter, one of their best defensive players, is on injured reserve with a neck injury, and hasn’t played yet this season.
Kirk Cousins hasn’t been particularly good so far, either. His completion rate is only 59% (pretty poor by modern NFL standards), and he’s tied with Carson Wentz for the most interceptions thrown, with 6.
Still, with Cook, Mattison, Thielen and Jefferson and the still useful Rudolph, you’d think that offense would be not terrible. Is the O Line catastrophically bad?
I’m not an expert in evaluating offensive line play, but Football Outsiders currently has the Vikings offensive line ranked #2 for rushing, but down at #25 for pass protection.
At this point, I’m thinking both NY teams are the favorites to get the top two picks in the draft, just a matter of who goes first and who goes second. Both seasons are already over, it seems like, one game into week 4.
Can the Giants move on again after 2 years with a new GM, coach and QB, or will they hand massive draft capital to this same unimpressive-so-far front office?
The Jets for sure have to give up on Darnold, right? He’s clearly a bust? I’m seeing 3-13 with Darnold, tops. All I’ve been seeing and saying is that Darnold can’t throw the ball past the line of scrimmage and Aikman kept saying the same thing. Maybe Flacco would up their chances to 5-11 if they bench Darnold now, but the whole team is terrible. And it’s not like Flacco is good, but I bet he’s a bazillion times better than any other QB in NY right now.
Yeah, I’d say 60% is kinda the Mendoza line for football. I’d argue that the more important stat is turnovers, though (TD to INT/fumble ratio). If your QB is giving teams extra possessions, that’s a killer, especially if those extra possessions are in your own red zone.
To me the most telling is yards per attempt. I believe that is the stat most strongly correlated to success if you can only choose one stat in a vacuum.
Let’s consider that trainwreck of a Jets game last night against the Broncos and Brett Rypien’s first ever career start as a rookie. My takeaway just watching it was that Darnold and the Jets are really putrid, and that Rypien had 3 bad decisions (including a pick 6!) but he kind of looked halfway decent to pretty good the rest of the time. (Largely a function of the Jets’ awfulness in all phases, including defense.) First ever rookie start I forgive him a few picks.
TD to Turnover differential would rate then as follows:
+0 Darnold (no TDs, no picks, no fumbles lost)
-1 Rypien (2 passing TDs, 3 picks)
That doesn’t really correlate to how I would rate their performances. Let’s check Yards per Attempt:
Yep, now that paints the exact picture I witnessed, pretty much. 5.48 is like a giant warning claxon saying “Danger! Historically bad!” 8 is fine, 7.00 is really the Mendoza equivalent of 60% completions; not really good and below that line is bad.
Sorting QBs by YPA right now on, I can’t say with confidence that the guys on top are the best. Mahomes is only at 7.4 while Goff and Allen lead in the 9s. But the bottom of that list looks pretty damn accurate, at least in terms of the shitty QBs in my orbit:
6.6 Baker Mayfield (ranked 29th)
6.2 Daniel Jones (ranked 34th)
5.7 Sam Darnold (ranked 36th)
Yeah that looks exactly right, and 5.7 is really friggin’ bad. Just bad bad bad.
And wtf with Carson Wentz at 5.6?! Is he really that bad? Yikes.
The two teams that tied both won, so I don’t have to worry about that much for a while. The Eagles, Bengals, Broncos, and Vikings all decided they didn’t want to win this competition.
Houston Texans 0-4-0, -46 New York Giants 0-4-0, -49 Atlanta Falcons 0-4-0, -32 New York Jets 0-4-0, -66
The Texans fired their coach, whose decision to trade two 1st-Round picks for an underperforming tackle leaves them with no reward for tanking.
The Jets didn’t fire their coach. I’d say he must have dirt on the owner, but the owner is apparently just fine with the team sucking ass. I really feel sorry for Frank Gore.
The Falcons’ coach is so good at losing leads they should keep him on to help their draft position.
The Giants’ coach is new. He is NOT Bill Belichick, no matter how hard he tries.
The Giants and Jets are without question the 2 worst teams. The only competition I see is Washington. Even perennial doormats like Cincy and Detroit have enough talent, with competent QBs, to stay out of the basement. The Texans are a shit show but Watson will get them a handful of wins, though I don’t see a Crennel-led turnaround happening. The Falcons and Vikings are just snakebit, bad defenses but too much firepower to not win a handful of games.
Sleepers who might be one or two more injuries away from 2-14 or 3-13. The Chargers, Cowboys, Panthers, Bengals and Broncos.
Yes. Sorry about that. The Dolphins also own Houston’s 2nd Round pick this year, too. But, hey, Miami gave the Texans their 6th Rounder, so it’s all even.
They’re just so, so bad. How bad are the two NY teams? I see Joe Flacco starting this week for the Jets as a pretty significant upgrade, and would feel the same if he were starting for the Giants. Joe Flacco, in 2020, coming off neck surgery, looks like a clear improvement to me. Doesn’t get much worse than that.
I have some faint hope that maybe the Giants defense is starting to figure something out. They were high energy and pretty darn effective against the Rams last week. And in the second half the offensive line began to be able to run the ball for the first time all season, even including before Barkley went down. (Gallman rushed 6 times for 45 yards with a long of 26. A glimmer of hope, maybe?) I’m not really seeing that translate into beating the Cowboys, but I am thinking that 0-16 is starting to look unlikely. More like the 2-14 to 5-11 range, I think.
The Jets are hopeless in all phases. 0-16 is hard to pull off but if anyone can…
Connor Orr from SI put together a consolidated “best of” team between the Giants and Jets rosters (Jiants? Gets?), and ran that team through the Giants’ 2020 schedule on Madden to see if even the consolidated team could win any games.
Jiminy, I get apathetic for a week and we lose all our teams to pathetic notches in the win column. It’s all the Jets, now.
I’ve done these bad-football celebrations for a while, now, and I’ve never seen a team as bad a these Jets. They should be renamed the Kites. Prop Planes implies the existence of power; Gliders implies independent airworthiness.
I just saw a stat: their current point differential is worst in the league (obviously). Not just that, their -110 is as bad as the next two worst marks of Jacksonville (-56) and Washington (-54) combined. It’s also the worst through six games ever and puts this New York squad on pace to break the ‘76 Bucs’ record.
If say they should go the Dolphins’ recent strategy of selling off what talent they have for future picks, but they don’t have any talent to sell.
They already have 2 wins, so they likely can’t catch the Jets, but holy smokes did the Dak-less Cowboys look bad against the Cardinals this week. I think they should be considered back in the running for Trevor Larry.