The stat that’s been thrown out a lot the last few days is that out of the last 60 teams to start 0-2, only one has made the playoffs. That stat is terrifying and it suggests that if recent history is true the Saints have a 1.67% chance of making the playoffs. But this is the Saints with Drew Brees as their quarterback and Sean Payton as their coach, so I think it’s pretty clear this is not your run of the mill 0-2 team. Especially when you consider the team is 2nd in the NFL in points scored through two weeks and has lost both games by last second field goals on the road. I was inspired by @505SaintsFan to dig a little bit deeper in an effort to give us all a glimmer of hope. Since 1991, three teams have started 0-2 and finished their season by winning the Super Bowl.
Pointing this out isn’t to suggest the Saints are going to win the Super Bowl. I don’t think they will. But it is to illustrate that all hope is not lost, and they can still have a good season and possibly get into the playoffs. The odds are stacked against them, but they have the talent to pull it off. It’s worth considering how these teams started 0-2 and what happened afterwards to turn around their slow start:
1993 Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys were coming off a Super Bowl title and were the favorites to win again, but the league was shocked by the unexpected 0-2 start. Of course star running back Emmitt Smith was absent those first two games due to a contract dispute, and that severely hampered the offense. The Cowboys were blown out by the Redskins in Washington 35-16 and then they lost at home 13-10 to the Bills. Without Emmitt Smith the offense was clearly lost. The Cowboys would get him back and reel off 7 straight wins, though, and finished the regular season with a 12-4 record. The defense would only give up more than 20 points one other time that season.
2001 New England Patriots
Coming off a terrible season the previous year, all hope looked lost in week 2 when starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe went down, which forced backup rookie Tom Brady to come in as a replacement. The rest is history. After a 23-17 loss in Cincinnati and a 10-3 loss at home to the Jets, the Patriots answered by scoring 44 points week 3 (Brady’s first start). They would actually then lose again to go 1-3 before winning 10 of their next 12 to finish 11-5 and win the division. Like the Cowboys the main problem was a lack of scoring which changed with the replacement of Bledsoe.
2007 New York Giants
This team barely got into the playoffs at 10-6 and put together an absurd run on the road in the playoffs to win one of the most improbable Super Bowls in history as a wild card. Like the two teams above they started 0-2, but defense was the issue more so than offense in this case (like the Saints). They opened with a 45-35 loss in Dallas and followed that up with a 35-13 loss against the Packers. That’s right, the Giants gave up 80 points in their first two games to start 0-2. They’d go 10-4 the rest of the way, though, and that started with a 6 game win streak to go to 6-2. During that span they gave up more than 20 points just once. And unlike the Smith/Brady factor in the two previous examples, there was no roster change that made a huge difference, they just started playing a lot better. This example is probably the transformation that is (hopefully) most applicable to the Saints. They gave up 80 points in two games as a defense, and then they transformed (under Steve Spagnuolo, of all people).
So it’s been done before and that should give you hope. Further, the Saints are not struggling to put up points so half the equation is already there. If they can start playing better on the other side of the ball then all they have to do is maintain current form offensively and the wins will come. And coming back to the Dome should help. Hang in there Saints fans!
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
