So the Lions are losing right now and this will make them 0-5. If they win every single game remaining this year, that might give them a shot at the playoffs(maybe not, I don’t follow football).
What are the biggest single season turnarounds a team has managed in sports? What is the worst start an eventual champion team has ever had?
Example: Has an 0-10 team in MLB won the World Series that year? Been to the World Series?
Just curious what big turnarounds have occurred. I have zero faith in the Lions, of course.
The 2018-19 St Louis Blues were dead last in the NHL standings on January 2, 2019. They proceeded to win 30 of the final 45 games, finishing third in their division, and eventually won the Stanley Cup, defeating the Boston Bruins in seven games.
The 1978 Yankees were 14 games behind Boston going into July 20, then came back to tie Boston for the AL East and won the 1 game playoff, in which Bucky Dent gained a new middle name.
At roughly the half way stage the score stood 8-1 to the Kiwi team and the winner would be the first team to reach 9. That’s a hell of a deficit, especially in a sport as capricious as sailing but of course the USA underdog roared back and took the win.
In the EPL the most notable case was when Newcastle were top of the league and clear by 12 points over Manchester United after 23 games played in the 1995/96 season. With just 15 games to go Newcastle were in a cruising position to win their first title in 70 years. Manchester United ended up winning the title finishing 4 points above Newcastle.
Newcastle’s final 15 games: 7 wins, 3 draws, 5 losses. 24 points out of a possible 45.
Manchester United’s final 15 games: 13 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss. 40 points out of a possible 45.
They played each other during that last stretch of the season and Manchester United won away at Newcastle 1-0.
As @Velocity noted, no team that started a season 0-5 has ever made the NFL playoffs. But, that said, if the Lions were to run the table from here on out, that’d give them a 12-5 record (the NFL has added a 17th game to the schedule starting this season), and that sort of record nearly always gets a team a spot in the playoffs, and probably would give them a very good shot at winning their division, as well.
The Lions are much more likely to beat another record they set in their 2008 season.
What a godawful game that was. The offense shows flashes of a little something sometimes, but Dan Campbell’s judgement calls suck. What’s with the constant going for it on 4th down? Sure, that has its place, but at one 4th down they were only down by 6 points, a makeable (47 yard?) FG would have put them within 3, and Campbell goes for it and they fail and turn it over on downs.
And going for 2 points when they scored a TD with 37 seconds left to go up by 1 and try for a win without going into OT? I don’t care that they actually did it, that was a ridiculously reckless call. He seems to be getting increasingly desperate to put up a W and is just trying to force it.
I know, everybody’s an armchair QB, but I do not like Campbell’s coaching. At all.
And then the tissue paper D letting the Vikings march down the field and kick the winning FG in the remaining 37 seconds, Christ.
The twice-defending champion Pittsburgh Steelers lost 4 of their first 5 games in 1976. They then won their last nine, surrendering a total of 28 points over that stretch.
They did go down to the eventual champs, the Raiders, in the AFC final.
The Lions have two modes- start off fast and then blow it in the last month of the season or dig themselves a huge hole early in the season and then nearly climb out of it in the last month. Either way they always just miss the playoffs. Doesn’t matter who the coaches or players are.
The latter mode was exactly how their former head coach, Wayne Fontes, seemed to manage to hang onto his job in the early '90s. They’d start out terrible, then go on a hot streak in the second half of the year to squeeze into the playoffs, before usually losing in the first round. (To be fair, they did make it to the NFC Championship Game for the 1991 season, a season in which they did start out 5-1.)
It’s probably a testament to the Lions’ long stretch of mediocrity (or worse), that Fontes is the franchise’s all-time winningest coach.