Can the NFL have a reprise?
Because all things often do happen in threes, I’m looking for a longshot choice at this point of the NFL season with a legitimate chance to end up celebrating a Super Bowl championship on February 2.
This is not a “pick.”
I’m not saying it will happen.
But if the trend continues, a slow-starting NFL team will rally, make the playoffs and claim the Lombardi Trophy.
It’s worth a shot. A flyer. A what-the-hell futures wager.
In the NHL, the St. Louis Blues had the worst record in the league last season as late as Jan. 3, when they were 15-18-4. Mike Yeo had been fired as coach on Nov. 19, and Craig Berube officially was his interim successor.
The Blues rallied under Berube and behind goalie Jordan Binnington, called up from the American Hockey League and given a chance, and went 30-10-5 the rest of the way to finish third in the Central Division.
As scribes and analysts sought to capture the spirit of the thing, the Blues then beat the Jets, Stars, Sharks and Bruins in the playoffs to claim the Stanley Cup.
They finished it off the hard way, winning Game 7 over the Bruins on the road.
The Washington Nationals were 19-31 after a May 23 loss to the Mets, went 74-38 the rest of the way – including winning 10 of their last 11 — and finished second to the Braves in the National League East.
The Nationals beat the Brewers in the wild-card game, and then knocked off the Dodgers in the NLDS, Cardinals in the NLCS, and Astros in the World Series.
They finished it off the hard way, not only winning Game 7 over the Astros on the road, but by claiming all four of their World Series wins at Houston in a bizarre series in which the visiting team won all seven games.
In a sport in which it seems that teams spray champagne after every postseason victory, the Nationals’ bubbly celebration Wednesday night in Houston actually saluted something significant.
They were the world champions.
(Now try to get Freddie Mercury singing out of your head. You’re welcome.)
In the NBA, the Raptors were strong from wire-to-wire last season, opening with a 20-4 run and eventually beating the Magic, 76ers, Bucks and Warriors to claim the Larry O’Brien Trophy. They did close it out with a Game 6 road win at Oakland, but it wasn’t a monumental rally after a bad start to the regular season. So I’ll disregard that.
But with the NHL and MLB examples of initially underachieving teams rallying still fresh in our memories, and with the NFL at roughly the halfway point, I’ll at least toss this out there: Is there anything similar conceivable in the NFL?
To qualify as similar, I’ll arbitrarily say it would have to be a team that was below .500 after five games – or roughly the stage comparable to where the Nationals found themselves after 50 games.
Under that standard, there are 14 possibilities, and here they are with their records after five games and currently, heading into the Monday night Cowboys-Giants game:
Browns 2-3, 2-6
Jaguars 2-3, 4-5
Titans 2-3, 4-5
Chargers 2-3, 4-5
Giants 2-3, 2-6
Buccaneers 2-3, 2-6
Cardinals 1-3-1, 3-5-1
Jets 1-4, 1-7
Steelers 1-4, 4-4
Broncos 1-4, 3-6
Falcons 1-4, 1-7
Dolphins 0-5, 1-7
Bengals 0-5, 0-8
Redskins 0-5, 1-8
The first consideration, of course, is making the playoffs. So the team in question has to have been showing signs of awakening and is in a situation that makes winning a (most likely shaky) division or qualifying as one of the two wild cards in each conference conceivable.
When the Jaguars were horrible and drearily lost to the Texans at London, and the Titans fell to the Panthers, I eliminated them as possibilities for that “take-a-flyer” choice. Until then, I was pondering going all in on the Jaguars’ Gardner Minshew II narrative, which has come off at times as a pushing-the-envelope Disney movie. The plot complication would be that Nick Foles (clavicle) might be healthy enough to return soon, leaving Doug Marrone with the decision to stick with Minshew or go with Foles.
But the Jaguars looked awful in the first game past the halfway point.
That left the Steelers and Chargers.
The Steelers have won three in a row, with Mason Rudolph settling in as the injured Ben Roethlisberger, who hasn’t played since Week Two and has undergone season–ending elbow surgery. We’re only two years removed from the latest example of a backup quarterback — in this case, Foles with the Eagles — winning a Super Bowl.
The Chargers have beaten the Bears and Packers the last two weeks, and Philip Rivers makes a habit not only of goofiness, but helping his team show signs of life after bad, seemingly snake-bit starts.
I’ll take the Steelers (100-1 at the Westgate Las Vegas as of Monday morning) to win the Super Bowl and generate comparisons to the Blues and Nationals. (For the record, the Chargers are 80-1, and that’s tempting. too.)
About Terry: Terry Frei is the author of seven books. His novels are Olympic Affair and The Witch’s Season, and among his five non-fiction works are Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming, Third Down and a War to Go, and ’77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age. Information is available on his web site, terryfrei.com. His woodypaige.com archive can be found here.
