Who Will Be The Worst Team in the NFL?

[Texansfan713]

Even with Luck I think the Colts will be the worst team in the NFL this season.  I expect him to miss some games as well. 

[Shanedorf]

Here's the bottom of the barrel in terms of Point Differential from the 2017 season

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2017/

Browns     - 176

Giants      - 142

Colts         - 141

Dolphins   - 112

Texans       - 98

Broncos     - 93

Who did the best job of bolstering the Defense and putting more Octane in their Offense this offseason ?  Opinions vary

 

The top of the 2017 PD chart goes to Eagles and pats who both came in at  +162  for the season

[AlNFL19]

7 minutes ago, Shanedorf said:

Here's the bottom of the barrel in terms of Point Differential from the 2017 season

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2017/

Browns     - 176

Giants      - 142

Colts         - 141

Dolphins   - 112

Texans       - 98

Broncos     - 93

Who did the best job of bolstering the Defense and putting more Octane in their Offense this offseason ?  Opinions vary

 

The top of the 2017 PD chart goes to Eagles and pats who both came in at  +162  for the season

I think the return of Beckham Jr. will definitely help the Giants here, as will having a real coach, and the Texans and Broncos will almost certainly not be this low on next year's listing. My vote for worst team in football is Buffalo. LeSean McCoy is their offense, and A.J. McCarron is only a spacefiller at quarterback. They'll want to get Josh Allen in early to save their season and I don't think he'll be ready for it. Their offensive line fell apart this offseason, and their defense is lackluster at best. 

[Danger]

On 7/18/2018 at 2:44 PM, cddolphin said:

lol

here is each division's win % against non-division teams since 2001:

(you can basically throw out 2001, as that was before the divisional re-alignment)

Wow has the AFC South really been that bad for that long? Also AFCE is misleading because the Patriots offset that. NFCW was super bad for a long time too.

[Danger]

On 7/19/2018 at 8:55 AM, SBLIII said:

Giants

I don't know how anyone can say that. Look at how everything went wrong for them last year. It was a worst case scenario. Now they have better coaching, more talent, and law of averages says that not everything that can go wrong will go wrong this time around.

[cddolphin]

8 minutes ago, Danger said:

Also AFCE is misleading because the Patriots offset that.

I was waiting for this response; if you were to take out the strongest performer in each division over that time span, I'm sure all the divisions could be called "misleading". Especially when the top team accounts for 25% of the data set.

Unless you pulled each top team from each division, re-crunched the numbers, and could show that it would make a significant difference in the relative rankings of the divisions, (like the AFCE dropping from 3rd to 8th) then you can just say "Well but the AFCS is misleading because of the Colts" and so on and so forth.

[Danger]

Just now, cddolphin said:

I was waiting for this response; if you were to take out the strongest performer in each division over that time span, I'm sure all the divisions could be called "misleading". Especially when the top team accounts for 25% of the data set.

But in no other division has the top performer been as consistently and as strongly one team.

I am not doing all the math for all the teams but RAW winning percentages for this period (2001-2017)
Patriots > 209-63 (.768)
Jets > 128-144 (.471)
Dolphins > 126-146 (.463)
Bills > 113-159 (.415)

That's over 17 seasons, and it's just mind-numbing. I don't need to do the exact numbers to see that the Patriots completely skew that divisions numbers. 3 out of 4 years, that division is a cake walk that they just want to get through the regular season healthy.

[Danger]

For arguments sake, I did the math on the AFC East.

Patriots Non Divisional win % > 128-40 (.761)
Rest of AFC East Non divisional win % > 239-265 (.474)

The patriots alone raise the cumulative non divisional winning percentage by about 7.2% over 17 seasons. (from .474 to .546)

I don't particularly feel like doing this over for all 7 other divisions. But I guarantee it's nowhere near as much.

[cddolphin]

Just now, Danger said:

For arguments sake. 

Patriots Non Divisional win % > 128-40 (.761)
Rest of AFC East Non divisional win % > 239-265 (.474)

That patriots alone raise the cumulative non divisional winning percentage by about 7.2% over 17 seasons. (from .474 to .546)

For arguments sake, the same thing would have to be done with the other divisions before you could say that phenomenon is unique to the AFCE. I'd be especially curious about the AFCS, AFCN. I don't think it would be strong enough of an effect to drop the AFCE from the 2nd or 3rd strongest division over 17 seasons, to the worst or second worst division, as many are implying.

[Danger]

24 minutes ago, cddolphin said:

For arguments sake, the same thing would have to be done with the other divisions before you could say that phenomenon is unique to the AFCE. I'd be especially curious about the AFCS, AFCN. I don't think it would be strong enough of an effect to drop the AFCE from the 2nd or 3rd strongest division over 17 seasons, to the worst or second worst division, as many are implying.

The problem is, 1 team hasn't dominated any other division for nearly as long as the Patriots. Pick any other 1 division and I'll do that one for you to prove my point. I'll save you a bit of time, the next highest win % overall is the Pittsburgh Steelers at ~66% (Patriots 78%) 

I mean, that should be easy right, They have the Browns to water the rest of their division down to. Breaks in your favor.

[Danger]

Found this via Reddit, this is from 2002-2016 seasons (since realignment before last season)

 

Non-Divisional Records

Team	W	L	T	PCT
New England	115	35	0	0.767
Indianapolis	93	57	0	0.620
Pittsburgh	91	58	1	0.610
Denver	90	60	0	0.600
Green Bay	87	63	0	0.580
Philadelphia	85	64	1	0.570
Atlanta	84	65	1	0.563
Dallas	84	66	0	0.560
Baltimore	83	67	0	0.553
Seattle	82	68	0	0.547
New Orleans	81	69	0	0.540
LA Chargers	81	69	0	0.540
NY Giants	79	71	0	0.527
Carolina	77	72	1	0.517
Cincinnati	75	72	3	0.510
Tennessee	74	76	0	0.493
Kansas City	74	76	0	0.493
Minnesota	73	77	0	0.487
NY Jets	73	77	0	0.487
Miami	73	77	0	0.487
Chicago	72	78	0	0.480
Arizona	68	82	0	0.453
Buffalo	67	83	0	0.447
Washington	66	83	1	0.443
Houston	66	84	0	0.440
Tampa Bay	64	86	0	0.427
San Francisco	60	90	0	0.400
Jacksonville	59	91	0	0.393
Detroit	56	94	0	0.373
Cleveland	55	95	0	0.367
Oakland	55	95	0	0.367
LA Rams	54	96	0	0.360

[cddolphin]

5 minutes ago, Danger said:

The problem is, 1 team hasn't dominated any other division for nearly as long as the Patriots. Pick any other 1 division and I'll do that one for you to prove my point.

Right, so a drop off in the relative rankings are to be expected due to this fact. But from 2nd/3rd strongest division to.. last? 7th? Guess we would only know if someone had the time to crunch the numbers.

I'm curious about the AFCS.

[cddolphin]

Just now, Danger said:

Found this via Reddit, this is from 2002-2016 seasons (since realignment before last season)

 

Non-Divisional Records

Team	W	L	T	PCT
New England	115	35	0	0.767
Indianapolis	93	57	0	0.620
Pittsburgh	91	58	1	0.610
Denver	90	60	0	0.600
Green Bay	87	63	0	0.580
Philadelphia	85	64	1	0.570
Atlanta	84	65	1	0.563
Dallas	84	66	0	0.560
Baltimore	83	67	0	0.553
Seattle	82	68	0	0.547
New Orleans	81	69	0	0.540
LA Chargers	81	69	0	0.540
NY Giants	79	71	0	0.527
Carolina	77	72	1	0.517
Cincinnati	75	72	3	0.510
Tennessee	74	76	0	0.493
Kansas City	74	76	0	0.493
Minnesota	73	77	0	0.487
NY Jets	73	77	0	0.487
Miami	73	77	0	0.487
Chicago	72	78	0	0.480
Arizona	68	82	0	0.453
Buffalo	67	83	0	0.447
Washington	66	83	1	0.443
Houston	66	84	0	0.440
Tampa Bay	64	86	0	0.427
San Francisco	60	90	0	0.400
Jacksonville	59	91	0	0.393
Detroit	56	94	0	0.373
Cleveland	55	95	0	0.367
Oakland	55	95	0	0.367
LA Rams	54	96	0	0.360

Perfect.

So the other two divisions I mentioned in my post above average (AFCS & AFCN) average about 1.4 wins less outside the division per season than the Pats.

[Danger]

Due to the complications that were the 2001 season and there being 31 teams, this will be from 2002-2017 seasons.
 

 

 

Notice how the only team division that flucuates in the rankings at all is the AFC East dropping two spots, and the other two teams rising accordingly? The Patriots are the biggest outlier making that division appear to be stronger than it actually is. I guess you can take solace in the fact that even without the Patriots you guys are still better than the NFC West combined.

	All Teams			Subtract Best			DIFF
AFC East	349	291	54.5%	226	254	47.1%	123	37	-7.4%
AFC North	321	315	50.5%	223	254	46.8%	98	61	-3.7%
AFC South	307	333	48.0%	212	268	44.2%	95	65	-3.8%
AFC West	318	322	49.7%	225	255	46.9%	93	67	-2.8%
NFC East	334	304	52.4%	241	238	50.3%	93	66	-2.0%
NFC North	310	330	48.4%	218	262	45.4%	92	68	-3.0%
NFC South	331	307	51.9%	241	238	50.3%	90	69	-1.6%
NFC West	286	354	44.7%	199	281	41.5%	87	73	-3.2%
	Before	After	Before	After
AFC East	54.5%	47.1%	AFC East	NFC East
AFC North	50.5%	46.8%	NFC East	NFC South
AFC South	48.0%	44.2%	NFC South	AFC East
AFC West	49.7%	46.9%	AFC North	AFC North
NFC East	52.4%	50.3%	AFC West	AFC West
NFC North	48.4%	45.4%	NFC North	NFC North
NFC South	51.9%	50.3%	AFC South	AFC South
NFC West	44.7%	41.5%	NFC West	NFC West

[DawgX]

On 7/17/2018 at 10:07 AM, Rockice_8 said:

This is quite easily a two team race between the Bills and the Browns.  I don't care how many FA's you sign or how high your draft picks are they just went 1-31 over the past two years.  BUF's OL and QB are easily among the worst in the league which is a recipe for disaster.

Dark horse worst teams are INDY (if Luck gets hurt only), WAS (downgrade at QB, tough schedule), TB (could start out really bad with Fitz and crumble), MIA (if they have QB issues they lack talent to make up for it).

So your team has no chance at picking #1? Right.

I don't think the Browns will be the worst team next year, but with Hue Jackson, it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility. I mean, he went 0-16 last year with a team that truly should not have gone 0-16. A big part of the blame goes to Kizer, for being just straight up garbage, but part of that blame also goes to Hue.