Interesting question. I felt compelled to look this up. During the first half they beat a 4-12 Oakland, a 8-8 Minnesota, a 7-9 Chicago (twice), a 9-7 Tampa Bay, and a 7-9 Denver. They also lost to a 8-8 Philadelphia, and a 9-7 Washington.
After that half they lost to a 8-8 Arizona, a 10-6 NY Giants, a 13-3 Green Bay (twice), that 8-8 Minnesota (so a split there), a 11-5 San Diego, and a 13-3 Dallas. They picked up their only win against a 4-12 KC.
So in the first half they only faced two winning teams and split against them. In the second half they only faced one losing team and beat it. Pretty much they played exactly to their 7-9 record. Lost to better teams, split the games with teams with similar records, and beat the worse teams. The only difference between the two halves of the season was the quality of the opponents.
To answer the OP. No, I highly doubt they can achieve a second 0-16 record. Even the most hapless pro team seems to be able to snatch a couple during the season. Too many games are just one good play or two apart. Luck will usually give you a couple of breaks somewhere in the season.
The Lions are playing the Redskins next. The way the 'skins have been playing I would not be surprised to see the Lions break their losing streak on Sunday.
Well, I mean, yeah, they probably shouldn’t have drafted Calvin Johnson. If spectacular offense is your thing, they could have had the best offensive player in football, who went into their own division five picks later. But for the overall health of the franchise, the Calvin Johnson pick should have been used on Joe Thomas.
He better be able to make his own holes. The Lion line is not able to create room and defend blitzes. They work on it every year, but the coaching and player turnover keeps them from playing like a unit. I hope the Schwartz proves himself and we commit to him for a long time. They need continuity.
We had Rogers, who was the best in the game and did not have enough of a team to justify paying him what he is worth. A lineman will not solve Lion problems.
It is perverse but many Lion fans are hoping they break the record. Otherwise we have just been crappy for a long, long time. It seems a waste not to go all the way. It is a sick kind of pride to point to the longest losing streak of all time. Saying i was there, i saw them get their horns honked week after week. That is something. A long horrible losing team that does not break records is just a big waste, a nothing. we want a something. We deserve it.
Actually, if you treat football games as a coin toss, given the number of games that have been played in all of history, you would expect winning and losing streaks that are much longer than the longest streaks ever witnessed. If you’re a Lions fan, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
Eh, one player isn’t going to fix the Lions. I just find the logic of “they can’t draft a WR, they did it in the last 2 years!” to be faulty given the the last two aren’t even on the team. If Johnson was the BPA at a needed position, he was a good pick. Thomas or Peterson would’ve been fine picks too, but I don’t think the Lions screwed that up.
I’m glad that someone other than me is saying this. If Charles Rogers and Roy Williams were the superstuds they were supposed to be, Mike Williams wouldn’t have been drafted, and probably not Megatron.