The Losers That Became Winners

The Eagles currently hold a 1.5 game lead in the woeful NFC East with a disgusting 3-4-1 record. The 2020 edition of the NFC East is a black eye on the sport’s current playoff picture and is easily the worst division in football this season.

 

Some have even considered this year’s NFC East to be the worst division in football history. Therefore, if the Eagles were to win the division with a losing record at the end of the year, it would bring up a fair question.

 

Would they be considered the worst team to qualify for postseason play that the sport has ever seen? It’s certainly possible, maybe even likely.

 

With how bad the Eagles have looked through the first half of the season, coupled with holding an unofficial 0-8 record in games that have been enjoyable to watch, it would be easy to pin them as the worst playoff team in NFL history (if they are actually able to hold onto their lead in the division).

 

However, this wouldn’t be the first situation in league history where a team with a losing record made the postseason. There has been four instances in league history where a team with a record below .500 qualified for the playoffs. Two of those teams came from the 1982 shortened season when the league expanded the postseason to 16 teams.

 

The two teams were the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions, which is quite hilarious to me because of their torturous histories in the NFL. They both lost in the opening round of the playoffs and looked bad doing it.

 

The 2020 Eagles Before the 2020 Eagles

 

The other two times a team with a losing record made the postseason have come over the last ten seasons. In both circumstances, that team actually won its division. The first of the two was the 2010 Seattle Seahawks, who beat the then St. Louis Rams in the final game of the regular season to win the division at 7-9. The other team was the 2014 Carolina Panthers, who won a competitive, yet terrible NFC South at 7-8-1.

 

Both teams got to host their wild card game against a team with a much better record than them. The Seahawks hosted the defending Super Bowl Champions, the 11-5 New Orleans Saints. In 2014, the Panthers welcomed in the 11-5 Arizona Cardinals. Clearly, both these games would be blowouts in favor of the teams that actually had a winning record, right?

 

Wrong.

 

Starting in 2014, Carolina bested Arizona 27-16 in what was a truly horrid and forgettable playoff football game. The Cardinals started third string quarterback Ryan Lindley due to injuries to both Carson Palmer and Drew Stanton. They would get routed the next week by the NFC’s number one seed, the aforementioned Seattle Seahawks. That’s what you call irony, folks.

 

Speaking of the Seahawks, their wild card round victory over the Saints in the 2010 playoffs was one of the most memorable games in league history. Seattle won 41-36 on the heels of what might be the best individual effort the sport has ever seen. Marshawn Lynch’s 67-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter would go on to be known simply as, “Beastquake,” and live on in NFL lore. ESPN finds a reason to post the play to their social media accounts pretty much every month.

 

 

Seattle would lose the next week to Chicago by a score of 35-24. It wasn’t as close as the score may indicate.

 

Back To The Birds

 

Now, it is still too early to determine if the Eagles will be the next team to make the playoffs with a losing record. Beyond the fact that there are still eight games left to be played, there is also no guarantee that the Eagles hold onto their lead in the division.

 

Five of the Eagles final eight games will be against teams that currently have a winning record. The other three games are against the other three teams in the NFC East. Based off of what I’ve seen from the Eagles and the rest of the division, this team seems destined for 6-9-1. That would be the worst record of any playoff team in NFL history.

 

At the very least, history would be on the Eagles side. Well, at least for Wild Card weekend.

 

 

 

By Matt Szczypiorski | November 9, 2020