NFL - Winless Teams Holding on to a Sliver of Hope

Photos

Titans vs Rams

see larger image

uploaded by Joe Hachem

Can Any Of These Winless Losers Make It To Playoffs?

The funny thing about optimism in the NFL is that hope can still linger in the air even after your team hasn’t won a game in a month. Of all the teams listed, the most surprising is Tennessee. My editor has asked me to diagnose whether any of these teams have a chance in high hell of making the playoffs. The sad part about this whole thing is that I thought a couple teams might have a chance. But upon further review, things are as bad as they seem.

St. Louis Rams (0-4)

The Rams have been shutout twice this season by Seattle and San Francisco. The team formerly known as “The Greatest Show On Turf” has become “The Crapshow With No Betting Worth” and Marc Bulger is faking injuries again just so he doesn’t have to trot on to the field to get sacked.

The question isn’t whether St. Louis is going to make the playoffs – it’s whether or not they’re going to trade Steven Jackson to a contender by the end of the season. Braylon just went to New York for four players. Imagine what S-Jax is worth!

The Rams are the most penalized team in football, leading the league with 32 penalties for 243-yards against. Considering that this team is in the hands of Kyle Boller and Marc Bulger (who checked out mentally three years ago), I’d say the Rams are better of tanking the season.

Remaining Challenges: Finding suitors for Steven Jackson

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-4)

Forget anything I ever said about the Bucs being Wildcard contenders. Wipe it from your memory banks. The Bucs have had chances to win at least two games this season against Dallas and Washington, and crapped the bed in the fourth quarter like a lactose intolerant baby.

Josh Johnson has taken over for Byron Leftwich, and hasn’t been much of an improvement. They’re ranked 26th overall in first-downs, and have the second worst third-down completion of any team in the NFL. With Kellen Winslow, Antonio Bryant, Cadillac Williams and Derrick Ward, they’re supposed to be better than that. Way better.

The only saving grace for the Bucs is that they have yet to lose to a divisional opponents. They did happen to go 3-3 last year, including an untimely overtime loss to Atlanta last year so there’s hope for them yet, but they have to pray for some serious collapses in the NFC to get in to the Wildcard hunt.

Remaining Challenges: New England, Philadelphia, Green Bay, New Orleans (2), Atlanta (2), New York Jets

Kansas City Chiefs (0-4)

This is exactly what happens when you give a guy who had one good season, $63 million. Have you learned nothing from the NBA, Pioli? Nothing?! On top of getting murdered by the spread in every game, they’ve watched the raggedy corpse of Larry Johnson stumble down the field aimlessly like he was dragging a colostomy bag behind him. The Chiefs will be lucky to get to four wins this season. Did I mention that they’ve only converted 9 third-downs this year? To put that in perspective, the Miami Dolphins had 9 converted third-downs in the Week 4 NFL Season alone.

Remaining Challenges: Convincing their blood thirsty fans that everything’s going to be alright…

Tennessee Titans (0-4)

Here’s my thing about the Titans. In 2008, they weren’t supposed to be good, and they ended up stunning everyone by going 13-3 with the best record of any team. The year before, they were 10-6 . So maybe 2009 is more about the Titans being par, than being bad.

In terms of strength of schedule, the Titans have had it worse than just about any team in the NFL. In the first five weeks of the season, they faced teams with a total of two losses (Houston and Jacksonville). At this point, it doesn’t really matter if they win or lose. They’ve already lost to two division opponents, and face the Colts this weekend with a momentum that’s equivalent to Tom Arnold’s acting career.

Their defense can’t stop anyone, and their offense could only keep up with the Texans. I don’t know what’s more tragic: that Vince Young is still on the bench at this point, or that Kerry Collins is sucking back on a $15 million contract extension he signed this summer.

Remaining Challenges: Indianapolis (2), New England, San Francisco, Houston, San Diego, Arizona

Cleveland Browns (0-4)

The Browns have dispatched their two best receives in Winslow (Bucs) and Edwards (Jets) and are stuck trying to settle on who’s better between Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn. The problems for Cleveland extend throughout the entire roster, but their schedule is one of the most difficult in the league. They have back-to-back games against Kansas and Oakland at the end of the season, but aside from that they’re facing a bunch of teams that are within arms length of the playoffs.

Cleveland gets Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Chicago, Baltimore, Cincinnati, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Jacksonville this year, and they also have to play in Detroit in Week 11. So unless the Browns can beat up Kansas or Oakland, they’re pretty much screwed. I know the team is named after Paul Brown, but this is also what happens when you name your team after the same color that poop is. They might as well change the team name to the Cleveland Steamers.

Biggest Challenge: Realizing how dumb it was to hire Eric Mangini as a coach

Carolina Panthers (0-3)

Making fun of Jake Delhomme this season is about as enjoyable as making light of Paris Hilton. They’re both overrated, seize way too much media attention and get screwed every weekend.  Aside from having an unreasonably tough schedule, that includes divisional matchups with Atlanta and New Orleans, they face the Patriots, Jets, Vikings and Giants at the end of the season. They also face Arizona, a team which obliterated Jake in the playoffs last year for five picks.

They’re not a complete write-off just yet, though. We still don’t really know how solid Atlanta is going to be for the rest of the season, since Michael Turner reminded us why he was second-fiddle to LDT in San Diego, and Matt Ryan has fallen back to Earth. At just 0-3, they’re just two games back of Atlanta…which is how sad the state of affairs is in the NFC South.

That being said, I’m willing to give Jake the benefit of the doubt for now since he’s had a bye week to figure out if $20 million is enough to justify being ridiculed by the entirety of the NFL community. That’s how much he got guaranteed in an extension he signed this summer after he threw five picks in the playoffs. Oakland wasn’t even that stupid with Rich Gannon after his five-picks in the Super Bowl. And that’s just how piss poor the situation’s gotten in Carolina: they’re dumber than Oakland.