Monday Night Football featured two 0-1 teams with thoughts of contending in their division, desperate to not fall into an 0-2 hole. One team came out incredibly motivated, tearing up huge chunks of the field on offense and playing stifling first-half defense. The other team won, though, and woke up today with a big win in the standings.
Now the Rams and their winless brethren face steep uphill odds of having a successful season.Only 22 of the last 177 teams to start 0-2 have come back to make the playoffs, as RamsHerd’s Derek Pease points out in his exhaustive game recap. Will any of this year’s crop make the leap? Who is the front-runner in the Andrew Luck sweepstakes? Let’s look at the field.
St. Louis Rams
Losses: 31-13 to Eagles, 28-16 to Giants.
The Rams knew the front part of their schedule was going to be difficult. It just gets worse from here, with games at Dallas and Green Bay, and home matchups vs Baltimore and New Orleans, all before Halloween. Throw in a resurgent Washington Redskins team, and you have a very tough slate for a team trying to take the next step forward.
Realistically, it’s hard to predict more than one or two wins between now and November for the Rams. But they will likely have the dubious honor of being the “best” one- or two-win team in the league. As they showed on Monday night, there is a potentially very good team lurking inside the shell of a historically very bad one. If they can resolve their identity crisis, success could come sooner than later.
End of year win prediction: 7.
Miami Dolphins
Losses: 38-24 to Patriots, 23-13 to Texans
Tony Sparano’s Dolphins are stuck in the Bill Parcells hangover. It happens to all of Parcells’ teams after he leaves, as the Giants, Jets, and Cowboys can attest. After a miraculous return to glory, the team crumbles to mediocrity as Parcells’ blue-collar “try-hard” guys break down and leave huge gaps in skill behind.
Unfortunately for Sparano, he is still stuck in the Parcells mindset, thinking that the team can get by with Chad Henne (Phil Simms-lite) at quarterback and win on defense and fundamentals. However, the early returns are not good, especially in the running game after the departure of Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams. They should have enough talent to become competitive again at some point in the season, though, taking them out of the top five picks.
End of year win prediction: 6.
Carolina Panthers
Losses: 28-21 to Cardinals, 30-23 to Packers
If there were any Cam Newton doubters after his first 400-yard game as a pro, they have gone into hiding after his second. Cam looks less like a football player, operating Rob Chudzinski’s high-powered offense, and more like some sort of action hero. Tom Cruise in Top Gun, or Chow Yun Fat in Hard Boiled.
The Panthers have not been good enough from opening kickoff to the game’s 60th minute to win either of their games so far, but the wins will come. Especially as the Carolina defense, its strong point last year, rounds back into shape. In an unsettled AFC South, the Panthers could be a dangerous wildcard at the end of the year, the team no one wants to play.
End of year win prediction: 6.
Minnesota Vikings
Losses: 24-17 to Chargers, 24-20 to Buccaneers
I’m sensing a pattern here. Two times in consecutive weeks, the Vikings’ offense rides Adrain Peterson heavily to a comfortable first-half lead. Two times, the crumbling defense begins to let the opposing team back into the game. Two times, Leslie Frasier’s offense abandons the run and puts the ball in the hands of Donovan McNabb and asks him to win it. Two times, McNabb fails and the Vikings give up an improbable come-from-behind victory.
One of two things needs to happen for this pattern to change: 1) petition the league to shorten NFL games to three quarters, or 2) give up on the veteran and jump-start Christian Ponder’s NFL career. On a team still denuded of talent from its 2009 Super-Bowl-or-Bust roster plan, they literally have nothing to lose.
End of year win prediction: 4.
Indianapolis Colts
Losses: 34-7 to Texans, 27-19 to Browns
One could make the argument that Peyton Manning is proving himself to be the most valuable player in football, while sitting on the bench. (In fact, we plan to make that very argument here on this site.) The entire Colts team is built on his excellence; without him, they and their fan base are in a state of shock and decay.
Contrary to popular belief, though, Kerry Collins is not wholly incapable of playing football. He isn’t very good, but he is capable of stealing a win here or there. And if you believe in miracles, there’s always a chance that Peyton’s European stem cell therapy will prove to be the magic pixie dust that makes his neck injury simply go away. But if Peyton does not return, and Collins does win a few too many games, the Colts will have missed out on a golden opportunity to find his heir apparent.
End of year win prediction: 3.
Kansas City Chiefs
Losses: 41-7 to Bills, 48-3 to Lions
No team in football can touch the awfulness of the Chiefs’ start to the season. You’d have to go back pretty far in the annals of history to find a start this catastrophic, a combination of injuries, coaching hubris, bad quarterbacking, bad omens, and complete inability to score or stop other teams… oh, no, wait. There’s the 2008 Rams. Never mind.
Like the Rams, there might be just enough talent left on this team to steal one or two wins that they have no business having. Maybe. But a brutal schedule doesn’t leave room for much more than that.
End of year win prediction: 2.
Seattle Seahawks
Losses: 33-17 to 49ers, 24-0 to Steelers
Now this is a bad team. A truly awful assemblage of unproven youth and unwanted parts. Your top skill players are Tarvaris Jackson, who ESPN’s Matt Williamson calls by far “the worst starting quarterback in the NFL,” dead-legged Marshawn Lynch, and Sidney Rice, who just discovered a torn labrum in his shoulder.
Rice is determined to try to play through the injury, he says, though I’m not sure why. His counterpart, Mike Williams, has been targeted only eight times in 108 offensive plays, and has netted only 43 yards receiving. This is a team with very little to play for, and even if they had motivation, they might face the most brutal schedule in football outside of their division.
Inside the division will be their only chance at victory, but every other member of the NFC West has improved itself in one way or another.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your #1 contender in the Andrew Luck sweepstakes.
End of year win prediction: 1.
