WHAT WE LEARNED: NFL WEEK 15

BY ADAM GREENE

As the final whistle sounded on Week 15, we learned plenty as teams make their case for the postseason. Here’s what I’ve picked to talk about this week.

IT’S HARD TO GO 0-16

I’ve written it plenty of times and it remains true today. It’s almost as hard to go 0-16 in the NFL as it is to go 16-0. Over the last three weeks, we’ve seen attempts at both falter. For the latest to fail in their quest at history, the New York Jets, the achievement was right in their grasp and they blew it.

They were facing the league’s best defense in the Los Angeles Rams. They were on the road. Even their own fanbase wanted them to lose out and secure the No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick in April 2021 so they could select Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence.

But it’s so hard to lose every game in the modern free agency era of the NFL that even a team as awful as the Jets, with the worst roster and one of the worst coaching staffs in all of sports, couldn’t do it.

It really makes you appreciate that the 2008 Detroit Lions and 2017 Cleveland Browns were able to close the deal.

With the NFL’s worst picks first draft set up, losing teams are primed to improve just by making good selections. The NFL’s free agency system allows every team to bid around on each available player, regardless of how successful you’ve been in the past. The salary cap keeps good teams from stockpiling talent on their depth chart and, more importantly, the salary floor keeps cheap teams and penny pinching owners from sabotaging their own franchises from within. It’s the perfect system.

Bad teams, if they pick the right players and coaches, become good teams. With the exception of the Seattle Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers, every team currently qualified for the NFL’s postseason has had a losing record at some point in the last five or six years. Some of them had a losing record last season. In fact, one of them – the Miami Dolphins – was one of the worst teams in the league in 2019. They’re currently 9-5 and hold the seventh seed in the AFC.

That’s how hard it is to be bad and remain bad. You have to actively pursue it. Mess up your drafts in spectacular ways, sign dumb free agents and most importantly, hire awful head coaches and general managers.

The aforementioned Rams, who the Jets beat to avoid 0-16, are currently in a stretch of four consecutive winning seasons thanks to their 9-5 record. The last time they, as a franchise, could boast that feat was from 1983-1986. Their last winning season before hiring Sean McVay as head coach was in 2003.

Why did it take so long? Because in between the Rams good eras (and there was one between the 80s run and the current, the Greatest Show on Turf teams from 1999-2004 that also had four winning seasons, just not consecutively) they did exactly the things you cannot do. Hired horrible head coaches and messed up their personnel decisions.

After they fired Mike Martz in 2005, LA (then St. Louis) hired Scott Linehan, then Steve Spagnuolo and Jeff Fisher all in a row. I’ll tell you what all those men have in common today. None of them have been, to this point, hired as an NFL head coach again. In that horrid span they had exactly one .500 season (under Linehan) and never went better than 7-9 again until McVay.

So this is what I’m saying. There’s no excuse to be 0-16. There’s no excuse to continue piling up losing seasons year after year. At some point, you are mismanaging your team on purpose. So for the Jets, there’s hope. You have to nail this next hire. You have to ace this coming draft, whether you pick No. 1 or not. And two years from now you can be like the Dolphins, already enjoying a winning season and a playoff run with a highly touted rookie QB.

A PLAYOFF LOOK

There were no major shake ups as far as who is in the playoffs last week, but we had plenty of seeding shuffle. Here’s where we sit as of this writing;

AFC

1. Kansas City Chiefs (13-1)

2. Buffalo Bills (11-3)

3. Pittsburgh Steelers (11-3)

4. Tennessee Titans (10-4)

5. Cleveland Browns (10-4)

6. Indianapolis Colts (10-4)

7. Miami Dolphins (9-5)

The Baltimore Ravens (9-5) and the Las Vegas Raiders (7-7) are both still alive for a postseason berth, though the Raiders are hanging on by a thread. Every other team in the AFC has been officially eliminated.

NFC

1. Green Bay Packers (11-3)

2. New Orleans Saints (10-4)

3. Seattle Seahawks (10-4)

4. Washington Football Team (6-8)

5. Los Angeles Rams (9-5)

6. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (9-5)

7. Arizona Cardinals (8-6)

Outside of the NFC East, every team but the Chicago Bears (7-7) and Minnesota Vikings (6-8) missed the cut. For the Vikes to make it, they need a lot of help over the next two weeks.

Every team in the NFC East is still alive, could win the division and host a playoff game if they win out. For the NFL’s sake, we’re all rooting for the WFT so we don’t have a team with a losing record in the postseason. It’s always a bad look.

Our current Wild Card Weekend match ups would be;

AFC

Dolphins at Bills

Colts at Steelers

Browns at Titans

NFC

Cardinals at Saints

Buccaneers at Seahawks

Rams at WFT

The key games this week are the Vikings at Saints, 49ers at Cardinals, Dolphins at Raiders, Giants at Ravens, Colts at Steelers, Eagles at Cowboys, Rams at Seahawks and Titans at Packers. Any result in those games will reshuffle the order for some, knock others outside the bracket and for teams like the Raiders and Vikings, completely eliminate them from contention.

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