Culture
Can an NFL team go from 0-2 to the playoffs? It’s a long shot, but these 9 teams did it
Nine NFL teams are still looking for their first win of the 2024 season after recording two consecutive losses to open their schedules.
Historically, starting 0-2 has meant the odds are stacked against you. The Athletic’s Austin Mock’s playoff odds reflect that. None of the current 0-2 teams have better than a 44 percent chance to make the playoffs or a 26 percent chance to win their division. Seven of the nine teams already have a less than 20 percent chance.
GO DEEPER
Which 0-2 NFL teams should panic? Model projects playoff chances for Ravens, Bengals and more
But going from 0-2 to the playoffs isn’t impossible.
Nine teams over the past 10 seasons have reached the postseason after an 0-2 start, and two franchises have accomplished the feat multiple times.
Here’s a look at which teams overcame a tough start to advance to the playoffs and how they did it.
How they finished: 10-7, AFC South champions
Postseason result: Lost in divisional round
Houston started 2023 with losses to the Ravens and the Colts, but the Texans had a young roster that hadn’t hit its stride quite yet.
Once rookie QB C.J. Stroud settled in and the Texans solidified the offensive line that would protect him, they got the season back on track.
In Weeks 1 and 2, the Texans allowed Stroud to be sacked 11 times and pressured 44 times, both league highs, according to TruMedia. Houston would allow the ninth-fewest pressures (188) for the rest of the season.
One of the keys to the Texans’ improved pass protection was simply getting their best offensive linemen healthy. Of the six linemen who made the most starts in Weeks 3-18, including Pro Bowler Laremy Tunsil, only Shaq Mason and George Fant started both of the first two games.
Houston, like a few teams on this list, benefited from a weaker division. No other team in the AFC South won more than nine games.
GO DEEPER
Everything is different for the Texans because of CJ Stroud: ‘He’s got some dog in him’
2022 Cincinnati Bengals
Joe Burrow and the Bengals overcame a slow start to the 2022 season to win 12 games. (Todd Olszewski / Getty Images)
How they finished: 12-4
Postseason result: Lost in conference championship
Coming off a Super Bowl appearance in 2021, the Bengals began 2022 with losses to the Pittsburgh Steelers (in overtime) and Dallas Cowboys before winning four of their next six and closing out the regular season with an eight-game win streak. (Their Week 17 matchup against the Buffalo Bills was canceled after Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the field.)
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow had his two worst games of the season during the 0-2 start, throwing a career-high four interceptions in Week 1 and passing for a season-low 199 yards in Week 2. As Burrow improved, so did the Bengals. In weeks 3-18, Burrow led the NFL in passer rating (105.5) and completion percentage (69.1). He also ranked second in passing touchdowns (32) and touchdown-to-interception ratio (4) during that span.
2018 Houston Texans
How they finished: 11-5
Postseason result: Lost in wild-card round
Houston opened the 2018 season 0-3 with losses to the New England Patriots, Titans and Giants, but a pair of overtime victories in Weeks 4 and 5 turned the tide after the dismal start.
Including those OT wins over the Colts and Cowboys, the Texans pieced together a nine-game win streak buoyed by their ball-hawking. From Weeks 4-13, the Texans forced 19 turnovers, the second-most in the NFL during that span, and scored 74 points off of them, the third-most in the league. After failing to force a turnover in two of those first three losses, Houston forced at least one turnover in every game the rest of the season.
How they finished: 10-6
Postseason result: Lost in wild-card round
The Seahawks struggled to get an effective rushing attack going early in the 2018 season, but after consecutive close losses to the Broncos and Chicago Bears, Seattle sorted out its ground game.
In those two matchups, the Seahawks rushed for 64 and 74 yards and turned the ball over five times. Week 3 saw Seattle finally eclipse 100 yards on the ground in a victory over the Cowboys, and then it was off to the races.
Seattle rushed for more than 100 yards in all but one game the rest of the season and from Weeks 3-17 led the NFL with 173 rushing yards per game. The Seahawks also lost only six turnovers the rest of the season.
Alvin Kamara won Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2017, helping New Orleans get to the playoffs. (Harry How / Getty Images)
How they finished: 11-5
Postseason result: Lost in divisional round
After three straight 7-9 campaigns, the start of the Saints 2007 season appeared to foreshadow more of the same as New Orleans suffered losses to the Minnesota Vikings and Patriots. But stars would soon emerge during an eight-game win streak that followed.
Before the season, the Saints drafted both the Offensive and Defensive Rookies of the Year in Alvin Kamara and Marshon Lattimore, in addition to players like Ryan Ramczyk, Alex Anzalone and Trey Hendrickson, who’ve become starters in the NFL. The Saints also signed running back Adrian Peterson.
When New Orleans began to feature Kamara more, eventually trading Peterson, their offense, led by quarterback Drew Brees, became more explosive. In Weeks 3-17, the Saints led the NFL with 391.9 yards per game and ranked third in scoring with 26.8 offensive points per game, according to TruMedia.
Kamara led the NFL with 6.1 yards per carry and caught 81 passes for 826 yards. He was one of seven Saints named to the Pro Bowl that season.
How they finished: 10-6
Postseason result: Lost in wild-card round
The Dolphins snagged their first win of the 2016 slate in Week 3 with an overtime victory against the Cleveland Browns, but the turnaround wasn’t immediate as two more losses followed. With a 1-4 record heading into Week 6, Miami was trending down.
Then a crucial piece of the offense returned.
Jay Ajayi, a fifth-round pick in the 2015 NFL Draft, was inactive in Week 1 and saw limited touches in Weeks 2-5. In Week 6, he carried the ball 25 times for 204 yards and two touchdowns, leading Miami to a 30-15 win against the Steelers.
He followed that up with another 200-yard game against the Bills in Week 7. Ajayi finished the season with 1,272 rushing yards and eight touchdowns as Miami won nine out of 11 to close the season and clinch a wild-card playoff berth.
2015 Houston Texans
How they finished: 9-7
Postseason result: Lost in wild-card round
The Texans dropped their first two games en route to a 1-4 start to the season. Houston was 3-5 at its Week 9 bye, but closed out the season winning six of its last eight with three straight division wins to secure an AFC South championship and a playoff berth.
Houston went 5-1 in its division that season, despite starting four different quarterbacks.
How did the Texans do it? Houston’s defense ranked third in the NFL, allowing 310.2 yards per game. The strength of that unit kept the Texans in games despite the inconsistency at QB, whether due to poor play or injuries.
Houston seemed to get just enough out of their QBs, including Brandon Weeden, who was claimed by Houston after being released by the Cowboys, and T.J. Yates, who signed with the Texans just before their bye week. Both players started and played in games for Houston after its bye and helped the team win five out of the six games either played in.
2015 Seattle Seahawks
The Seahawks twice went from 0-2 to the playoffs with Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson. (Otto Greule Jr / Getty Images)
How they finished: 10-6
Postseason result: Lost in divisional round
The Seahawks opened the season 0-2 but were 4-4 by their Week 9 bye. Seattle finished the year winning six of its final eight to secure a wild-card playoff berth.
In each of those first four losses, the Seahawks held a fourth-quarter lead but were unable to close out the game. Once it kicked the habit of blowing leads, Seattle’s offense and staunch defense, which allowed the second-fewest yards per game that season, were able to propel the club back into the playoffs.
2014 Indianapolis Colts
How they finished: 11-5
Postseason result: Lost in conference championship
The Colts had the unfortunate luck of opening their 2014 campaign against two Super Bowl contenders. Despite hanging close in one-score games with the Broncos, who won 12 games and led the NFL in offensive points per game that season, and the Philadelphia Eagles, who finished the season with a top-five offense, Indianapolis still had to carry an 0-2 record into Week 3, when it demolished the Jacksonville Jaguars to jump-start its season.
The Colts would only lose three more times the rest of the year en route to an appearance in the AFC Championship Game.
(Photo: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
-
Technology1 minute agoNvidia, Microsoft, and Arm are all teasing Nvidia’s new N1X laptop processors
-
World8 minutes agoChristian farming communities under siege as US report names Fulani militants Nigeria’s deadliest threat
-
Politics11 minutes agoFBI arrests protester who threatened to kill ICE officer’s family at NJ detention center protest, Blanche says
-
Health16 minutes agoControversial drug delivered rapid relief for severe depression in just hours
-
Sports23 minutes agoThunder lose star Jalen Williams for Western Conference Finals Game 7 as hamstring injury lingers
-
Technology26 minutes agoHyundai to send 25,000 Atlas robots to the US
-
Business31 minutes agoAfter heated debate, California updates key climate limit. Critics say it’s a retreat
-
Entertainment38 minutes agoSix Flags bans YouTuber for life for eating chicken nuggets on a roller coaster
