Is there any hope for the NFL's 0-2 teams?
Seven teams are still winless, and their playoff dreams are fading (but not dead yet). Plus, our picks for Panthers vs. Texans on Thursday Night Football.
This year, seven teams are headed into Week 3 with an 0-2 record. Although that mark does not spell certain doom for their playoff chances, it will be an uphill climb for all of them. Before the expanded playoff — i.e. from 1990 to 2019 — just 12 percent of 0-2 squads went on to appear in the postseason. Last year, even with seventh seeds per conference, none of the 11 teams that began 0-2 made the playoffs.
Now we have another factor added to the formula: a 17th game, which will grant this winless group an extra opportunity to secure a bid. In theory, anyway.
Their odds may still be long, but they’re not impossible. So let’s take a moment to believe in hope and figure out how confident each of these 0-2 teams can feel, despite their slow start to the 2021 season. Below, I ranked all seven of them from most to least hopeful.
(In full disclosure, I was planning to rank the seven 2-0 teams by how much I trusted them. Then, I discovered this article at The Ringer with an identical premise and in the exact order of how I was going to place them. So I decided to switch gears, but I still recommend reading their version.)
1. Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings have been snakebitten through the first two weeks of the season (or maybe it’s the universe’s karmic way of punishing them for their insolence this offseason). In Week 1, star running back Dalvin Cook lost a fumble in overtime that basically handed the game to the Bengals. In Week 2, Kirk Cousins led an efficient two-minute drill to get the Vikings within field goal range. Then Greg Joseph missed a gimme 37-yarder that would’ve won their back-and-forth contest with the Cardinals.
If just a couple of breaks had gone its way, Minnesota would be 2-0 and in first place in the NFC North. Instead, the Vikings are hanging out with the Lions in the cellar, while Mike Zimmer’s seat progressively reaches the shade of Bruce Arians’ face (Zimmer isn’t blameless here, but also I can’t help but feel bad for him).
The Vikings face an unforgiving schedule, which doesn’t bode well for their dreams of rebounding from a bad start. But with the Packers looking more vulnerable than they ever have in the Matt LaFleur era, the division is still up for grabs. Don’t count the Vikings out, so long as they can clean up the mistakes and figure out how to win close games again.
Plus, it’s an odd year, and if recent history is any indication, they’re fated to reach 2-2 and then go on a four-game win streak.
2. Indianapolis Colts
In each of their last playoff years (2018 and 2020), the Colts have been much stronger in the second half of the season. They also reside in one of the NFL’s worst divisions, where their only real competition, the Titans, have concerns of their own. While it would seem like they would be a no-brainer choice for No. 1 on this list, I just can’t trust the perpetually injured Carson Wentz or their quarterback depth after him. Maybe if Wentz had just one sprained ankle, but no, the poor bastard somehow sprained both ankles. My god.
If Wentz is healthy enough to play a majority of this season, though, the Colts have hope. They’re loaded with young talent all over the roster, from offense (like running back Jonathan Taylor not Thomas, wide receiver Michael Pittman), defense (the league’s highest-paid linebacker Darius Leonard, rookie pass rusher Kwity Paye), and special teams (kicker Rodrigo Blankenship, perfect so far this year).
With a little more luck, especially on the injury front, the Colts have the tools to play their way back into contention.
3. New York Giants
You know the rest of this list is bleak if the Giants are ranked this highly. In fairness to the Giants, they should be 1-1 right now. They were also an Eagles tank job away from winning the division last season, thanks in part to a competent second half of the season (5-3 finish vs. 1-7 start).
The Giants are better than they were a year ago, on paper anyway. Saquon Barkley is back in the lineup, Daniel Jones is sometimes good, and Sterling Shepard-Kenny Golladay is one of the better receiving duos in the league. Then you remember their OC is Jason Garrett and their coach is still Joe Judge, and it’s tempting to dismiss them outright.
But no team in the NFC East should be disregarded this early in the season, because they’re all capable of collapsing like my favorite baseball team in September or of stumbling their way to a division title.
4. Atlanta Falcons
This season, the Falcons have looked pretty bad and only like a real NFL team for one quarter, two if we’re being generous. That said, those 1-2 quarters showed just why Atlanta can be so frustrating. When the Falcons are in a groove, they can go toe-to-toe with anyone, even the defending champs.
When they’re not, well, then Matt Ryan throws two pick-sixes in the span of four minutes, both to the same player.
The defense was always going to be a problem this year, but it’s too soon to throw in the towel on the offense, even though it’s currently sitting dead last in offensive DVOA. Ryan, despite his costly turnovers, should not be given up on, particularly when you consider how little time he had against the Bucs’ blitz-heavy pass rush. Cordarrelle Patterson has been a bright spot on both fantasy rosters and the Atlanta offense alike. Kyle Pitts needs more targets because no one on the planet can do what he can:
If first-year coach Arthur Smith can get this team to play more consistently, and for closer to four quarters, then it can be competitive each time it takes the field. Even if, in true Falcons fashion, most of those instances end in heartbreak.
5. Detroit Lions
The Lions are not good, but boy do they try. After two weeks, it’s clear that the Dan Campbell knee-biting, fight-like-hell ethos has infected the entire team. That makes them a pesky out for anyone. If an opponent tries to phone it, the Lions will be ready to capitalize … or at least go down swinging.
They have yet to play a complete game, unless you combine their second half against the 49ers and their first half against the Packers.
That’s not how football works, though. It’s more likely that their multi-year rebuild takes, well, more than one year.
But, if they start putting it all together, for more than one half of football, then Campbell might just have this team ready to win ahead of schedule.
6. Jacksonville Jaguars
It’s no surprise, except to maybe Urban Meyer*, that the Jaguars are going through some growing pains. They have a new coach, a rookie quarterback, and for the fifth time in as many years, one of the league’s youngest rosters. Any expectations that the Jaguars would be a well-oiled machine at this point were unrealistic.
After a mistake-filled Week 1, the Jags cut down on the gaffes in Week 2 and looked a little better, if still a work in progress. Jamal Agnew provided the biggest highlight with his 102-yard kickoff return, while Trevor Lawrence offered a glimpse of why he can be a special quarterback in the NFL:
But the offense sputtered after that (the Broncos defense will do that to you!) and Lawrence continued to be plagued by turnover issues (he threw two more interceptions, upping his season total to five).
Still, Jacksonville plays in a winnable division and will face three of the other teams on this list at some point this season. If Lawrence and the offense find their rhythm, the Jaguars can start to make some noise … or at least stop being a laughingstock.
*This is not a defense of Meyer, who certainly deserves his share of criticism for past behavior, but I’m already exhausted by “speculation” that he’ll leave the Jaguars every time there’s a new opening in the college ranks (for example: USC). Those conversations are intellectually lazy and, like way too much about internet discourse, designed merely for folks to get their dunks off. Of course, it didn’t help that the Jags’ Twitter account set up this alley-oop, but it’s also been TWO weeks since the season began. Enough for now!
7. New York Jets
Take most of what I said about the Jaguars and now apply it to the Jets. Except the Jets entered the season with the youngest roster in the NFL, play in a much more difficult division, and have a quarterback who threw four picks in a 34-minute span Sunday.
Thankfully, they don’t have Adam Gase as their head coach anymore, so it’s not completely hopeless for them this season. Zach Wilson just needs to stop trying to force it too much, and if he can build more chemistry with his receivers, the offense can, I dunno, maybe start scoring points on a consistent basis?
Realistically, the Jets won’t be a finished product this season. Like with the Jaguars, it’s hard to preach patience to a fanbase that has been waiting years, sometimes a lifetime, for their team to accomplish anything. But the truth is, most progress doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, it takes work, and it takes commitment. The goal is that at some point this season, you’ll at least begin to see flashes of the team the Jets can be one day.
Thursday Night Football picks: Panthers vs. Texans
Before the season started, this game looked like a traditional Thursday Night Football stinker. It still kind of does … but only because one of these two overachieving teams will be forced to start rookie third-rounder Davis Mills at quarterback.
Despite some actual production on the field — more than we expected this season, if we’re being honest — we just can’t put much faith in the Texans, even against a Panthers team destined to fall back to Earth eventually.
I’m just going to refer you to what some smart guy named Christian D’Andrea said over at FTW:
Still, the Panthers are flying high thanks to some big-time production and some likely unsustainable numbers. This is very, very bad news for a shorthanded Houston team.
The tl;dr version: We all picked the Panthers this week.