Why Are There So Many Bad NFL Teams?

In looking at the NFL standings and examining the first five weeks of the season, one thing is perfectly clear.

There are a lot of really, really bad teams.

I'm not just talking about good teams that might go 6-10 and have a down year. I'm not talking about teams that have been wrecked by injuries and are suffering from bad luck. I'm not even talking about teams that just can't win a close game. I'm not talking about a league of parity where the worst teams supposedly always have a chance to win on any given Sunday.

I'm talking about The Terrible 10.

1) I'm talking about a league where a team loses a game in which the opposing QB completes 2, yes 2 passes!! (Buffalo)

2) I'm talking about a team that celebrated like they won the Super Bowl because they ended a 19 game losing streak, the second longest in the sport's 85+ year history. (Lions)

3) I'm talking about a team that traded their best WR, has effectively given up on a 1st Round QB after 6 starts, and has a Head Coach that is as popular as Mussolini. (Browns)

4) I'm talking about a team that has won 5 out of 32 games and is more concerned about a political talk show host possibly having a share in ownership than the on-field product which is losing games by an average margin of over 22 points per game! (Rams)

5) I'm talking about a team that has a losing record while not even facing a team that had a win. (Redskins)

6) I'm talking about a once consistently proud franchise that is 6-31 the past 2.25 seasons who fired their offensive coordinator in the preseason... and is last in defense. (Chiefs)

7-8) I'm talking about two teams that are coming off 1st Round Byes last season and now feature a combined record of 1-8. (Panthers & Titans)

9) I'm talking about a team with a rookie head coach who also fired their offensive coordinator, who has played 2 QBs already, and who will no doubt play a 3rd before the season is over. (Bucs)

10) I'm talking about a team who is bad beyond bad. This team is so bad it defies logic. In fact, this team alone deserves an entire article about its suckiness. A team that averages less than 200 yards per game on offense that features 3 Top 5 picks: a #1 QB, a #2 LT, and a #4 RB. Oh, and their head coach is under investigation for assaulting an assistant... and they're owned by Al Davis. (Raiders)

That's 10 teams, 10! That's almost 1/3 of the NFL! And they all are terrible, terrible football teams! Would you want to be a fan of any of these teams? Are you kidding? Heck, even the Bengals are 4-1 this year! The BENGALS!! And yet these teams are reprehensibly bad. These teams could be coached by Lombardi, Landry, Walsh, and Rockne and struggle to get to 4 wins. That's not to mention teams like Houston, Jacksonville, and Seattle who only look good by playing these teams. Just examine some of the games that have been played between The Terrible Ten...

Week 2 - Raiders 13 Chiefs 10

-KC loses a game in which they outgain their opponents by 243 yards! They possessed the ball for 39 minutes! They lost at home... to the Raiders!

Redskins 9 Rams 7

-The Skins manage to win at home without scoring a TD! They were booed off their home field by their home fans... after a win!

Bills 33 Bucs 20

-The teams combine for 20 penalties and 4 TOs. That's not good football.

Week 3 - Lions 19 Redskins 14

-The teams combine for 17 penalties as Matt Stafford wins in his 3rd career start.

Week 4 - Redskins 16 Bucs 13

-Washington (are you sensing a theme here?) turns the ball over 4 times... and wins! The teams convert 22% of their 3rd downs.

Week 5 - Browns 6 Bills 3

-Derek Anderson was 2/17 and won! The MVP of the game was Punter Dave Zastudil. Oh my.

Panthers 20 Redskins 17

-The Panthers come back from a 17-2 deficit to win. The teams combine for 446 yards of offense. 4 teams average above 400 yards per game. These 2 combined for 446.

My God. If you were to put bad football games in a time capsule for future generations to see so that they may never duplicate the mistakes of the past, you would take these 7 games. But, we here at RSS are on the cutting edge. We pride ourselves in going deeper. Let's go beyond the suckiness and examine the reasons why there are so many bad teams in a league where every team supposedly has a chance to win the Super Bowl. Let's investigate 5 reasons to explain the madness...

1) Draft Busts

-These teams are filled with them. Would the Raiders be better off with Joe Flacco, Adrian Peterson, Haloti Ngata and Larry Fitzgerald then JaMarcus Russell, Run DMC, Michael Huff, and Robert Gallery? What if Detroit wouldn't have drafted Mike Williams and Charles Rogers? What if Cleveland got something out of Wililam Green, Tim Couch, Courtney Brown, or Gerard Warren (above)? Where would Tennessee be if Vince Young carried on his Texas magic? The draft is a crapshoot at times, but these teams have suffered for taking projects with high ceilings that run a high risk of busting. In some cases, teams don't draft busts, but just a ton of average players. Who is the last Chiefs draft pick to become a star? Who is the last guy from Buffalo who made you say, "Wow, that's a really good player." The draft can build championship teams, or ruin teams for years. In most of these teams' cases, it has been the latter.

2) Poor Management

-Matt Millen. Dan Snyder. Al Davis. Phil Savage. Bad ownership and bad player personnel decisions are crucial for these teams that are horribly bad. How much money has Dan Snyder spent this decade? His hundreds and hundreds of millions have bought 2 playoff wins in 12 years. Al Davis has quickly become a caricature of himself. I would throw in some jokes at his expense, but he's too easy of a target. Bud Adams and Ralph Wilson own the Titans and Bills and both are in their 80s. Heck, the Bills brought back Marv Levy this decade to run the team for a time! When was the last time that St. Louis made a big free agent signing? Is Scott Pioli's decision to bring in Matt Cassell going to work in KC? The Bucs shoved Jon Gruden out the door after back-to-back 9-7 seasons... to start the next one 0-5??

For all of these teams, the number of poor decisions that these teams have made far outweigh the few good decisions that have been made from a management and personnel front. Look at how New Orleans has turned around by adding a legit defensive coordinator and a veteran safety in Darren Sharper. They've gone from a bottom 5 D to a top 5 one in five weeks. It shouldn't be that hard for these teams.

3) Bad Coaching

-Jim Zorn is a head coach in this league. Jim Zorn?? This is a guy that was brought in to be a coordinator and then became a head coach when nobody else wanted the job. Rod Marinelli was given plenty of chances in Detroit... until he went 0-16. Dick Jauron is a Chicago retread who is back on the hot seat in Buffalo. Guys like Mike Mularkey, Scott Linehan, Steve Spurrier, Eric Mangini, Romeo Crennel, Tom Cable, Art Shell, Bill Callahan, and even Herm Edwards failed and failed miserably in their enviornments.

These three factors of poor coaching, poor management, and big draft busts are all actually interrelated. Does bad coaching cause draft picks to not realize their full potential? Or did management miss the boat on a player? Were they really busts, or just not given a chance to succeed with awful teams? It's tough to place the blame on the horridness of these teams on just one of these factors, rather it's a sick and twisted conglomeration of all three.

4) The Huh? Factor

-Then again, there are teams and players that just make you scratch your head. Jake Delhomme took a team to a Super Bowl earlier this decade. Then he threw 5 INTs against Arizona in the playoffs last season and hasn't been the same since. Why? Nobody knows. The Titans defense was one of the best units in the NFL and they sit at 0-5. Why? You have a better chance of answering whether there was a second gunmen on the grassy knoll (we're watching a JFK History Channel special of course). Larry Johnson was run into the ground in Kansas City and had his career effectively ended. Marc Bulger was a Pro Bowl caliber QB. There are just some instances when players and teams have gone from pretty good or average to decidedly awful.

5) Constant Rebuilding

-This is the biggest underlying factors to the sheer amount of teams that stink up the NFL. Teams would rather suffer through a period of playing young, untested players and rookies than trying to put together a decent team that might have a chance of going 8-8 but not much more. The truth is teams now depend on younger players, and some just aren't ready. Look at Tampa Bay for instance, instead of playing Byron Leftwich who might get a few wins, they immediately went to Josh Johnson (who had never started before), and will soon enough turn to rookie Josh Freeman.

Teams would rather rebuild for 2-3 years and be awful, stack up early draft picks, and hope to hit it big through the draft than work their way through a tough season and win a division or playoff berth. Of course, if that strategy doesn't work, they'll be stuck in the same cycle time after time. Teams are too guilty of trying to build the perfect team instead of letting the chips fall where they may and trying to find the right combination. Instead of rebuilding with a rookie head coach, rookie running back, and average quarterback, Denver is 5-0. Why? Because they're trying to win now.

Cleveland is a perfect example of failed projects. Chris Palmer, Butch Davis, Romeo Crennel, and now Eric Mangini have all been given the task of rebuilding the Browns. Have any succeeded? Are Jets backups now the secret to success? There's talk of starting over again in Cleveland and taking another 1st Round QB in 2010. You just took one 3 years ago!! Let me give Cleveland a hint... stop rebuilding! You have been rebuilding, you are rebuilding, you will be rebuilding. This is a memo to all the crappy NFL teams: Stop rebuilding and just win!

So, do we blame parity and the salary cap? Not exactly. The NFL should be jealous of the parity in baseball. The gap is wider than ever in the NFL. 9 teams have 1 loss or fewer after 5 weeks while 9 teams have 1 or fewer wins. That's not parity, is it? Parity in the NFL is a red herring. The truth is that teams hide consistently poor seasons and poor decisions behind the veil of parity and pretend that they can contend each year. For The Terrible 10, a league of parity means that they are lucky enough to build up meaningless wins against teams that are just as bad as them.

The truth is that there are a lot of bad teams in the NFL this season. I just hope you're not a fan of one of them. If you are, you might want to try the UFL, at least you'll see some better football.