As the NFL approaches its “Free Agent Season” and the “Trading Time” leading up to the Draft in late April, there are legions of reports out there focused on what teams that contended last year need to do to “get over the hump” next year. Here in Curmudgeon Central, we often look at the world through the other end of the telescope; so, I want to look at what I think was the Bottom Quarter of the league in 2024 and ask WTH3 where the acronym stands for:
- What The Hell Happened Here?
My list will be in alphabetical order; if anyone wants to make it a rank ordering, have at it:
- Browns: Two years ago, they were in the playoffs sporting an 11-6-0 record; last year they finished 3-14-0. That is not a fall from grace; that is akin to trying a long jump over the Grand Canyon. What happened here is pretty simple; the Browns scored the fewest points of any team in the NFL in 2024, and you can’t win if you don’t score points. The Browns scored 258 points; even the lowly Giants – – about whom we will hear of next – – scored 273 points in 2024. Moreover, the Browns’ defense did not shine last year either; the team’s point differential for the season was minus-177 points of a differential of more than 10 points per game.
- Giants: Last year at about this time, the Giants’ braintrust weighed their options and decided to let Saquon Barkley become a free agent. The football gods did not look kindly on that stupefying choice and conspired to make everything go wrong for the Giants in 2024. The icing on the cake for the football gods was when the Giants benched Daniel Jones and then released him. It was because of Jones’ contract that the Giants felt they could not afford to keep Barkley; now the team has neither player.
- Jags: Their misfortune in 2024 can be summed up in two words – – Trevor Lawrence. He only played in 10 games and when he played he regressed from previous performance levels instead of improving on them. The team fired head coach, Doug Pederson because he obviously became much dumber and far less competent than he was when his team in Philly won a Super Bowl game not so long ago.
- Jets: It would be easy and glib to pin the Jets’ inability to meet expectations on an aging Aaron Rodgers; granted Rodgers was a shell of his former self in 2024 but at least part of that mediocrity has to be attributed to an aging/awful offensive line. In addition, successful teams seem able to maintain a level of consistent behavior in the locker room throughout the season. Such was not the case for the Jets who fired their coach in October and then fired their GM in November.
- Pats: One thing is sure for Pats’ fans; few if any of them will remember fondly “The Jared Mayo Era”. The Pats’ offense was hardly a juggernaut; they scored 289 points for the season meaning they were one of only three teams to fail to score 300 points in 17 regular season games. The team did find a guy who appears to be their franchise QB; however, Drake Maye did not have the same ultimate success as some of the other first-round QBs from last year’s Draft, but he showed that he belongs in the NFL and is a foundation piece for the team. “Foundation piece” is an apt descriptor here because just about every other part of the structure needs to be rebuilt; the roster is deficient; new coach, Mike Vrabel, has plenty of work to do.
- Raiders: As is the case with Pats’ fans, I doubt that many Raiders’ fans will take kindly to future references involving “The Antonio Pierce Era”. Early in the season, Davante Adams engineered a trade to get out of town; the football gods intervened again. Adams left the Raiders who went 4-13 to ply his trade with the Jets who went 5-12. The Raiders also paid a price for that trade because they quickly embarked on a 10-game losing streak after agreeing to ship Adams to the Jets. The mishandling of Josh Jacobs’ contract from a couple of years ago saw the Raiders try to replace Jacobs with the likes of Ameeer Abdullah, Alexander Mattison and Sincere McCormick at running back. The only good news for the Raiders in 2024 was the presence of rookie tight end Brock Bowers who set an NFL record for receiving yards by a rookie tight end despite having sub-standard QBs to throw the ball to him.
- Saints: Derek Carr was injured in Week 5 and then injured again in Week 10 and missed the rest of the season. Spencer Rattler tried to step in and keep the ship on course, but in his 6 starts, the Saints went 0-6-0; he only completed 57% of his pass attempts, and he threw only 4 TDs with 5 INTs. Hey, at least he got game experience… The Saints also started Jake Haener once in 2024 meaning that there was no continuity at the QB position for the team. I read that the Saints have a cap problem to resolve in this offseason meaning that their roster from last year was being paid handsomely. That roster did not earn its lofty pay status in 2024.
- Titans: The Titans were more like Dwarves in 2024; they own the overall #1 pick in the Draft this April; they have a young QB who can be excellent at times and then dreadful a moment later. If you want to describe Will Levis’ performance in 2024 you would probably resort to adjectives such as random or haphazard or maybe hit-or-miss. And in the NFL, that is no way to run an offense. The Titans’ defense did not distinguish itself either; it gave up 460 points in the 2024 season.
Before I close this out, I suspect someone will wonder how or why the Bears do not appear on this list. The answer is rooted in mathematics; I set out to describe the “Bottom 25%” in 2024 meaning a list of 8 teams. As I constructed my list, the final choice came down to the Bears or the Saints. The two teams were both 5-12-0 for the season. The two teams had identical point differentials of minus-60 points. The deciding factor was this:
- The Bears won their final game of the season.
- The Saints lost their last 4 games of the season.
- Voila!
Finally, since today has been about failure for NFL teams, let me close with this perspective on failure by Thomas Edison:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………