(Originally Published on September 21, 2019)
As we enter the 3rd week of the NFL season, there are nine teams that have yet to win a game. As early as it is, this typically brings about what I call “panic analysis”. This is not always a bad thing. In 1993, an 0-2 start is what prompted Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to cave to the holdout of running back Emmitt Smith and sign him to a new deal. The “Boys” would go on to repeat as Super Bowl Champions and win again after the 1995 season. That was the exception. For the most part, it’s basically Chicken Little/the sky is falling type of talk. While it is true that starting 0-2 does not bode well for a team’s playoff hopes, some just get carried away with the doom and gloom. The fact is, if a team can figure out WHY it is winless, there is enough time and football remaining to correct the problems…provided you have a decent amount of talent and GREAT coaching.
Now, of the nine teams, the Dolphins and Jets are in especially dire straits. The Dolphins have lost their first two games by a combined score of 102-10. Both games were at home. Even with the addition of the great LeVeon Bell, the Jets were already offensively challenged. Now they are down to their 3rd QB. Las Vegas sees the futility of these two teams, making them both over 3 touchdown underdogs. It is extremely rare for any NFL team to be a 3 touchdown underdog. In my nearly 40 years of being an investor on some level or another, I cannot recall two teams being this big of underdogs in the same year, let alone the same week.
With all of that said, there are historical examples that provide hope for all 9 teams to include the Dolphins and Jets to make the playoffs.
1989 Pittsburgh Steelers: This is the 30th anniversary of one such example. My Steelers had not made the playoff in 5 years and only had 1 winning season during that span. This was the longest drought in the tenure of Hall of Fame head coach Chuck Noll, whose teams won 4 Super Bowls in 6 years in the 1970s. He is still the only head coach of the Super Bowl era to repeat twice. They opened up the 1989 season getting trounced by the Cleveland Browns at home, 51-0. The team then went to Houston to lose to the Oilers 41-10. The spoiled fan base of Steeler Nation was calling for the legendary Noll’s head.
Then he turned it around.
The Steelers would go to Cleveland and beat the same Browns team that had throttled them in the season opener, 17-7. The team finished the season 9-7 and made it to the playoffs, earning another trip to Houston, where the Oilers awaited. Houston had swept the season series from the Steelers. The Steelers would win 26-23 in overtime. It would have been especially satisfying for Noll given that he absolutely detested Oilers coach Jerry Glanville.
The next week the Steelers would go to Denver and come up just short of John Elway and the Broncos, 24-23.
A team that had one of the worst starts in NFL history ended up winning 10 games, to include a road playoff victory. I considered it to be Noll’s single greatest coaching job, which is to say a lot. When the all-time greatest coaches are mentioned, Chuck Noll’s name is omitted too often.
1992 San Diego Chargers: This team started the season 0-4. It had gotten so bad that head coach Bobby Ross was introduced by the team’s play-by-play announcer as the director of the Laurel and Hardy Show.
Then he turned it around.
The Chargers would go on to win 11 of the final 12 to make it to the playoffs, where they would beat the division rival Chiefs before bowing to Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins in the conference semi-finals. That Chargers team is the only team in NFL history to start a season 0-4 and still make the playoffs. NOTE: My Steelers would have pulled the trick in 2013 but for a bad call between the Chiefs and Chargers, even by the league’s admission.
This is just but one reason (in addition to his college record at both Maryland and Georgia Tech) why I consider Bobby Ross to be the most underappreciated coach in football over the past 50 years.
Of the nine teams, the one with the best chance to turn things around, in my mind, would be the Carolina Panthers. They have the best QB, when healthy, enough proven players on the defensive side from the 2015 conference champions, and are in a relatively speaking weaker division.
Does all of this mean that there is hope even for the Jets and Dolphins?
HELL TO THE NAW! LMAO
