So I guess MNF tomorrow is Dallas-Giants. (Shows how interested I am that I have to guess). I can remember when that would have been a high-stakes divisional game. Today, I doubt many outside the respective markets are expecting much of the game, with the Cowboys at 1-4.
Time and parity have made it so I can’t name a team who’s never been reasonably good within my memory.
I was wondering if there were, though, a particular combination or matchup of teams that has never within your/my memory been one that anyone would prospectively say, “Hey, I’m definitely setting aside time to watch that one.” I use “prospective” to reduce the variables, so if there was a matchup that looked lopsided but turned out to be a barnburner, I don’t want to count that – I’m talking one that would interest, at the outset, only the respective team fans and the hardcore I’ll-watch-anything zealots.
I can’t think of one but then I’m having a hard time remembering/comparing who was good when.
Why is this a new thread? Is there’s a question or discussion here that wouldn’t be better served in the Weekly NFL thread?
Back in around 1977 in a Barney Miller episode, someone was saying he was going to see the New York Jets play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Jack Soo said, “why?”
The Bucs have fielded a few good teams since then, as have the Jets, but not at once.
Houston Texans vs. Buffalo Bills is one possibility, though the Texans were OK last year.
(A) this hurts you how?
(B) I’ve never had the impression the weekly NFL thread was a mandatory destination for all posts related to the NFL during the season. Instead, I and probably most view it as a place to discuss events and games specific to each week.
My question isn’t )(it was merely inspired by one game this week, which is NOT responsive to my OP). I could have asked it any time of the year. Why would I pollute a thread discussing current events with a question that is intrinsically historical?
I have the Lions in mind. IIRC, their handful of playoff seasons in recent memory were mid/late '90s. Anyone they played who was bad during those seasons? Were the Saints out of the cellar yet?
How good is “reasonably good”? If 9 wins is good enough, then the Lions-Bucs just barely miss this (and they were in the same division for a long time too); the bucs had their first winning season in almost 2 decades in ‘97, which was the Lions’ second-last winning season thus far.
New Orleans doesn’t work; the early Barry Sanders years overlapped with the Bobby Hebert/Jim Mora period of respectability.
Aha. Lions/Bengals. Neither team has made the playoffs in the same year except for 1982, when the Lions got in with a 4-5 record, and 1970.
It does depend on what you mean. I don’t think there was any team that wasn’t good at some point in its history. If you mean, did they match up, that’s different.
The Chicago/St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals have a dismal won-lost record over their history and were never a good team at the same time as the Lions.