Unlike most weeks where one topic jumps out to me for a video or article I want to write or even there’s a point in the season where it makes sense to do power rankings or mid-season awards, there were several ways I considered going here. However, as I looked a broader view at the NFL landscape, my one grand thought I came away with is the state of affairs for the teams at the bottom of the standings and their gap to the rest of the league. In large part because I currently don’t see a path where those franchise massively turn things around and I don’t want to ignore them until draft season rolls around.

With some teams having already had a bye week, I didn’t want the cut-off to be two wins, but rather I chose to go with the nine squads at least three games below .500 – meaning 2-5 or worse. That also made sense considering the two teams that criteria excludes are the 2-4 Rams and Dolphins, whose campaigns have been heavily affected by injuries and still have some hope to turn things around.

To illustrate that rift between the franchises in question and those in legitimate position to compete for playoff spots ultimately, here’s a number to consider – and I understand of course that it has to exist for this make sense mathematically – but the nine teams I’m about to discuss have an average point differential of -53.1 for the year, meaning the median outcome for them every week is pretty much losing by just over a touchdown. I did not go back to recent years to really dive into how this stacks up, but it feels like quite an extreme line of demarcation – and that calculation includes the Saints’ clearly unsustainable start, where they led the league with a +62 point differential through the first two weeks.

So this isn’t meant to be a way for me to trash the bottom-third of the league, but rather trying take a step back and reflect on how we got here, by going through these teams. And maybe give an outlook for the near future, as we think about how things could be course-corrected.

We’ll go by record first and then alphabetical order: