Expert Analysis
11/15/24
5 min read
With Playoff Hopes Dwindling, What’s Left for 11 NFL Teams Playing Out the Season?
It’s bad — really bad, and it will only get worse.
That was my reaction watching teams like the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets get blown out on Sunday. This effectively closed the door on any realistic playoff hopes at this point despite outsized expectations for both coming into the season.
Having been in a couple of different locker rooms where a team was out of the hunt late in the season, and change was impending, I know first-hand just how uncomfortable things can get in NFL facilities once it gets to the point where a team is essentially just playing out the string.
What makes this season so unique and, frankly, concerning for the NFL is the sheer volume of teams already in this situation.
Going into Week 11, there are 11 teams with three wins or less. 11!
For every team that people thought would be an afterthought, like the Patriots, Titans, and Panthers, there is a franchise with a handsomely paid quarterback that has fallen far below their expectations, like the Browns, Saints, Jets, and Cowboys, to name a few.
And while the message from many of them will be that if they “win out” or “go on a run,” they can be in the race for the seventh seed at the end of the season, the truth is those odds are infinitesimal.
Instead, those teams have to go to work for eight more weeks, knowing that they have little to play for other than pride — and their jobs, but we’ll get to that.
I can’t remember an NFL season in which this many teams were seemingly a lost cause with this much of the season still left to play. It’s not good on many levels.
From a league standpoint, the more teams in the playoff race, the better. They can’t be happy that this many fan bases have already tuned out or are simply fuming and calling for change as their inept squad takes the field week after week.
While the NFL will rightfully tout the Any Given Sunday nature of NFL football, and although upsets can and will happen, it still doesn’t lend itself to having as many compelling matchups on a week-in and week-out basis.
Like this week, for example, in some cases, you have multiple teams in this category going head-to-head, like the Raiders vs. the Dolphins or the Browns vs. the Saints. In other cases, you have “have-nots” facing off against heavily favored “haves” like the Jaguars in Detroit to take on the Lions or the Titans hosting the Vikings.
While matchups between teams with “something to play for” vs. teams that are out of it are commonplace in December and January, they are extremely rare in mid-November, and there will be a lot more where that came from moving forward.
A few disclaimers, if you will:
Out of all the teams with three wins or less, the Dolphins look like the most capable of going on a streak and making a run at this thing. They have played much better offensively since Tua Tagovailoa returned and are coming off an impressive win in Los Angeles on Monday night over the Rams. Plus, they have a favorable schedule coming up. If anybody can go from out of it to in the mix, it’s Miami.
Secondly, it doesn’t mean the games won’t be entertaining. They most certainly can be, and a lot of them will be. Just a few weeks ago, I was in the booth for CBS as the Browns notched their second win of the season against the Super Bowl contender Ravens.
Even this past Sunday, the Saints got their first win in two months by taking down their division rival Falcons. There will be more of those, to be sure. They just aren’t the most compelling matchups going into the game.
The last note in the disclaimer section is the intentional “something to play for” in quotation marks above. One of the biggest mistakes some players make is thinking that the games late in the season for a team that isn’t in the thick of the playoff race aren’t as important to them because there isn’t anything on the line for their squad.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Having been in that situation as a starter multiple times with the Cowboys in 2002 and the Bills in 2003, I would argue those games are more important for individual players than those involving the teams jockeying for playoff positioning. Why?
There is going to be change, and lots of it. It is incumbent upon the players on those teams to put their best foot forward so that they either aren’t part of the change or, if they are, played well enough to get picked up somewhere else.
Fortunately, I fit into each of those categories after those lackluster seasons and kept my career afloat. Many players, including the ones who skipped curfew before the last game in Dallas in 2002, were not so fortunate.
I don’t have an answer to why there aren’t as many middle-of-the-pack teams this year as we typically see in the NFL. All I know is that even if fan interest might be diminished for teams on the outside of the playoff picture looking in, that better not be the case for the players on those squads.
Their career very likely depends on it.
