Behold. The AFC South and NFC South combined standings:
T-1. Jacksonville: 7-8
T-1. Tampa Bay: 7-8
T-1. Tennessee: 7-8
T-4. Carolina: 6-9
T-4. New Orleans: 6-9
6. Atlanta: 5-10
7. Indianapolis : 4-9-1
8. Houston: 2-12-1
I want to know how this happened.
We’ve seen sub-.500 division champions before. The 2010 Seattle Seahawks. The 2020 Washington Football Team. Each lost nine times, and the Seahawks actually won a playoff game, indicating that maybe they weren’t really that bad (Washington lost to the Bucs by eight before the Bucs went on to win it all). But why, we ask, is this happening in both these divisions? Why is it each conference’s South?
From our limited sample of seeing this before, these stints don’t last. In 2011, the NFC West had a 13-win champion in the form of the 49ers. In 2021, the NFC East had a 12-win champion—the Cowboys. They also, evidently, can come on suddenly: Last year, the Titans won the AFC South with 12 wins and the Buccaneers won the NFC South with 13. The collective impotence this season is likely temporary. But it sure does catch the eye.
The South divisions are historically bad: The best AFC or NFC South team, by all-time win percentage, is the 11th-best Colts, and all four NFC South franchises are among the ten losingest all-time (along with two of their AFC South counterparts). These are also likely low-revenue teams, annually: Of the eight metro areas represented in these divisions, only Houston and Atlanta are among even the seventeen most populous in the country, and those rank just 5th and 8th (compared to, say, the NFC East, where all four teams play in one of the seven most populous MSA’s). Revenue doesn’t directly correspond to population base in pro sports, but it isn’t a bad proxy. These franchises are facing headwinds.
On the scheduling side, the leagues do have challenging situations, by some measures: The AFC South is playing the AFC West and NFC East, which will most likely contribute three of the six NFL-wide wild card teams, and the NFC South is playing the NFC West and AFC North, from which two of the remaining wild card spots will likely be filled. At the same time, though, the NFC West has two of the four worst non-South division teams in the league, and the AFC West and AFC North house the Broncos, Raiders, Browns, and Steelers—hardly a convincing supporting cast. An argument could be made that the Ravens, who beat all four NFC South teams, are only a playoff team thanks to this specific scheduling arrangement. There’s a natural circularity here: Are all four NFC East teams in the playoff picture because they’re good, or did they play the AFC South? Are all four AFC South teams below .500 because they’re bad, or did they play the NFC East?
In the end, it’s probably best to just look at how each team, individually, got here: The Jaguars are exiting the disastrous end of the Doug Marrone era and the disastrous entirety of the Urban Meyer season (which was somehow only last year). The Texans are an historically disastrous franchise themselves, a phenomenon worsened by the team currently playing under its fourth acting head coach of the last three years. The Colts are in a cycle of get-fixed-quick schemes involving various believable-but-not-guaranteed starting quarterbacks. The Titans had been sticking with what had been working less and less, but now they’ve fired their general manager, signaling a desire for some sort of meaningful change. Across conferences, the Buccaneers have an aging quarterback leading what was once a Wings-esque all-star team but has now, by virtue of that design, become old. The Saints, Panthers, and Falcons each entered the year with their QB situation up in the air. The quarterback position is not an end-all-be-all, but it does tell a lot about the state of a franchise. The Jaguars appear to be on the rise. The Bucs and Titans appear to be playing out the natural end of successful stints. The other five franchises are kind of in the mire. Which gets us back to the initial question: How did this happen?
The answer, I guess, is partially that the South divisions are overpopulated with bad franchises. The history tells a lot of the tale, and there’s a possible line from population to wins going on to explain the ‘why’ behind that history being what it is. The other part of the answer, then, is that the teams who are capable of competing right now are all off by a year. Two in one direction, one in the other. This is more likely to happen when the share of bad franchises is so large, but it’s still not all that likely to happen. The Jaguars will probably be expected to win eleven games next year. Odds are that someone from the NFC South will get good enough this offseason for us not to notice the division as a whole. At the moment, though, what a funny little coincidence. At least the region has the SEC, I guess.
**
Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics, we’re out of the loop on soccer again but we’ll eventually return:
Bowl Game
- 2:30 PM EST: Quick Lane Bowl – New Mexico State vs. Bowling Green (ESPN)
NFL
- 8:15 PM EST: LA Chargers @ Colts (ESPN)
NBA (best game, plus the Bulls)
- 7:00 PM EST: Brooklyn @ Cleveland (NBA TV)
- 8:00 PM EST: Houston @ Bulls (League Pass)
