The fourth-quarter lead should have been safe, even for the hapless Detroit Lions. Instead, the 17-3 cushion over the Minnesota Vikings was merely the backdrop for their latest pratfall that provided a glimpse into the soft underbelly of the NFL: the third of the league that routinely finds ways to lose.
Minnesota's comeback, and subsequent 26-17 victory, occurred courtesy of a fumble recovered in the end zone for a touchdown, a field goal and an interception of Lions' quarterback Jon Kitna's fourth-down pass that was returned for a touchdown with two minutes to play.
"People are so fed up here, especially after they blew a 17-3 lead," said Don Nadeau, a Lions season ticket holder. "It's just typical Lions. Everything is normal again in Lions Country. People are embarrassed to root for them. They're a joke."
Fans in all corners of the country could echo those sentiments. Four teams enter Week 6 of the NFL season still groping for their first victory -- the Lions (0-5), Oakland Raiders (0-4), Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-4) and Tennessee Titans (0-5), the Redskins' opponent today at FedEx Field. Six other teams have one win.
In a league where parity and competitive balance among the 32 teams have long been buzzwords, this season is pointing to another recent trend: There are a number of franchises that are increasingly being associated with bad football.
The number of teams with one victory, or none, through five weeks is on par with the last three seasons, but the method of defeat seems more audacious. Consider that on the same day the Lions fell apart, the Raiders committed three turnovers in the span of three plays in a 34-20 loss to San Francisco. Oakland has lost 10 straight games dating from last season and has given up at least 24 points in every game in 2006.
"I did not expect to be at this particular point," Raiders Coach Art Shell told reporters after last Sunday's game, although many top candidates wanted nothing to do with Oakland's oft-vacant head coaching position in the offseason precisely because of such expectations.
The Lions are 21-64 since Matt Millen took over as team president in 2001 and the franchise hit new lows in September when defensive line coach Joe Cullen was arrested for allegedly picking up food at a drive-through while naked.
Tampa Bay was humiliated, 27-0, at home by Baltimore in Week 1 and has yet to recover. The Titans have also suffered the indignity of defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth being given the longest suspension in league history for stomping on the head of Dallas lineman Andre Gurode in Week 4.
The Titans managed to sidestep that distraction last week and scare the Indianapolis Colts before succumbing, 14-13. "Despite the fact that our record does not reflect a win, they act like a winning group," Titans Coach Jeff Fisher said. "That's all I can ask of them. In this particular case the players left not feeling good about the outcome of the game, but they could walk away knowing they gave it their best shot."
No team has gone winless in a 16-game season (Tampa Bay was 0-14 in its first season, 1976), and despite the considerable flaws of the zero-win teams, it would take utter ineptitude to go through the schedule without a victory. Last season, Houston was the NFL's worst team, with a 2-14 record; no team has been held to a single victory since Carolina in 2001.
"There are some horrible teams out there, but they're all going to get a win or two down the road," said Wayne Allyn Root, chairman of Winning Edge, the only publicly traded sports handicapping firm in the United States. "Nobody is going to be winless. Everybody overreacts, especially in the media, to what they see, and the fans get upset, but you can't overreact in my business. They'll all get their wins by the end of the season."
If the early-season form holds, the losing teams will feast largely on each other in 2006.
Arizona is the only one-win team to defeat an opponent with more than one win, but that came against San Francisco (2-3), another rebuilding franchise. Cleveland's only victory came against Oakland -- the Raiders blew a 21-3 lead -- while Green Bay managed to knock off Detroit and Houston's one win was against the 1-4 Dolphins in Week 4. And who did the Dolphins beat? Tennessee, 13-10, in Week 3. Pittsburgh, the defending Super Bowl champion, came back to beat Miami in the first game of the season, and the Steelers (1-3) have not won since. Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has thrown no touchdown passes and seven interceptions.
This bunch has compiled some truly woeful statistics in plummeting to the bottom of the standings.
The Buccaneers have been outscored 61-17 in the first half, rendering everything else moot. Last Sunday, they outslugged New Orleans for much of the afternoon, then lost on a late punt return for a touchdown by rookie Reggie Bush. Oakland's quarterbacks have a remarkably bad 38.1 passer rating. The Titans are allowing 172 rushing yards per game, while Detroit is averaging 60 yards rushing per game. The Dolphins are holding teams to 2.9 yards per carry but still cannot win, with their offense inept and their quarterbacks already sacked 22 times this season.
Like all sports, football is cyclical. Teams rise and fall over the years, and several longtime league watchers said the bottom teams in the league this year are no worse than those in past seasons.
"I think you'll find that in most years," said NFL analyst Gil Brandt, who served as vice president of player personnel for the Dallas Cowboys from 1960 to '89. "You can go back to when we were with the Cowboys in the '70s and Washington might have been competitive for a while, but then Philadelphia was terrible. There were always teams going up and down.
"That's they way it goes, and I don't know what the answer is. But I think one of the keys is, if you're going to have a good team, you've got to have a quarterback that's halfway decent -- that's a big parameter -- and your left tackle had better be pretty good, too."
It is no coincidence that Oakland, Tennessee and Tampa Bay have been forced to use rookie or second-year quarterbacks because of injuries or the ineffectiveness of a veteran. And of the one-win teams, all but Pittsburgh are led by a coach in his first or second season. Turning a team around can be tricky. Miami finished 2005 with a flurry and became a popular preseason playoff pick, but there are no guarantees from week to week, much less season to season.
"You hope as a coach to catch on to a team on the upswing, but you never really know," said Jim Hanifan, who coached in the NFL for 30 years, including seven seasons as the offensive line coach in Washington when the Redskins went from Super Bowl champions under Joe Gibbs to a 4-12 team in two years. "I remember when my friend Richie Petitbon was coaching the Redskins [1993] and good gracious, he only lasted one year.
"Everybody was hurt and everybody seemed to get old all at once. I could hardly tell you who the hell was playing on our offensive or defensive line most weeks, and all of a sudden it was Richie's fault."
As difficult as those ruts are for fans, it's even more taxing on coaches and players. Cornerback Mike Rumph spent four seasons in San Francisco before being acquired by the Redskins in the preseason. The 49ers were 6-26 his final two seasons in San Francisco.
"Nobody wants to lose like that," Rumph said. "I did it for two years in San Francisco, and it's tough. A lot of people start asking you questions. Coaches start asking each other questions. The media is messing with you. The fans are not happy with you. You can't go out and have breakfast for free no more. You've got to deal with all kinds of stuff that keeps messing with you."
Kitna is experiencing such angst every day. His three-interception outing last week did nothing for the Lions' popularity, and the team's record is inescapable. "The only thing that matters is we're 0-5," he told reporters after last Sunday's loss. "Right now we've got to suck it up and find a way to win and break free from this mess."
Detroit hosts Buffalo (2-3) today, with the city enraptured by a Tigers baseball team that advanced to the World Series last night. The Tigers have provided a distraction from the Lions, with the football team a predictably tough sell.
"Trying to find somebody interested in going to the Lions game is pretty hard," said Nadeau, a security officer from St. Clair Shores, Mich. "So you know what I'm doing? I've got tickets 10 rows above the Tigers' dugout for all the playoff games, and I'm telling people, 'If you want to go to a Tigers game with me, you've got to go to the Lions game, too.' I don't want to hear anyone saying they'll meet me at Comerica for Game 5 after the football game. No way. But I'm struggling to find somebody to take me up on it. I actually can't find anybody to go. That's how bad it is."
