2008 was a total letdown for these five NFL teams?

cboy4

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Sat Dec-27-08 08:22 AM
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2008 was a total letdown for these five NFL teams?

They forgot to list:
DALLAS

It is being hailed as the Greatest Year in Sports History. 2008 gave us a Super Bowl for the ages, an OT NCAA hoops title game, an epic Nadal-Federer Wimbledon final, a Celtics-Lakers resurrection, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt transcending human limitations, and Tiger Woods winning on one leg.

But not everybody thought the year was all that. NFL fans in Jacksonville, Green Bay, Cleveland, Buffalo and, of course, Detroit thought it outright sucked.

No other teams defied expectations quite like these. (Seattle's expectations were modified after losing its top six wide receivers to injury.)

For fans of the five most disappointing teams in the league, the Sundays of Our Lives were pure misery.

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1. Jacksonville Jaguars

A funny thing happened on the way to the Super Bowl: the Jags (5-10) ended up in last place. This was the year they were supposed to get over the hump. Jacksonville was coming off an 11-5 season in which they won twice at Heinz Field, including bouncing the Steelers from the playoffs, and had 80-yard and 95-yard TD drives at New England in the playoffs.

David Garrard had an 18-TD, 3-INT season under his belt as a starting quarterback. Fred Taylor was coming off his first Pro Bowl season. Maurice Jones-Drew, 23, had scored 24 touchdowns in his first two seasons. The Jags had added SEC stud defensive linemen Derrick Harvey (Florida) and Quentin Groves (Auburn) with their first two picks in the '08 draft.

What could go wrong?

Well, let's see, leading receiver Matt Jones could get busted for coke possession, the offensive line could get ravaged by injuries, Taylor could hit the wall and Harvey and Groves could combine for a total of four sacks.

Still, after Garrard (276 yards passing) and Jones-Drew (125 yards rushing) led the Jags to victory in Denver in Week 6, the Jags stood at 3-3, had already won at Indianapolis and looked very much like the contender they were supposed to be.

Whatever Jacksonville did on its Week 7 bye week, it sure didn't work. The Jags returned to action with back-to-back losses to the Browns and Bengals. In fact, in seven games from Oct. 26 to Dec. 7, the only team the Jags could beat was the Lions.

No play summed up how little there was to cheer about in Jacksonville this year more clearly than Mike Peterson exuberantly celebrating a sack while trailing the Bengals 21-3. The moment led to a rift between Peterson and coach Jack Del Rio and perfectly symbolized what a spectacular disappointment the Jags were in 2008.

2. Green Bay Packers

Robin Williams needs to throw his arms around Aaron Rodgers and tell him "it's not your fault" over and over again until the pain of 2008 subsides.

Rodgers has thrown 25 touchdowns to 13 interceptions and posted a 91.4 QB rating. In the red zone he has thrown 17 TDs and zero picks, posting a 105.5 rating. But there's no getting around the fact that a team that went 13-3 last year with Brett Favre at the helm has 10 losses heading into Week 17.

If it's not Rodgers' fault, who or what is to blame for the Pack's 1-7 record in its last eight games?

The defense has been decimated by injuries, the schedule has been brutal and lady luck has been taunting them on a weekly basis.

Green Bay lost corner Al Harris and defensive end Cullen Jenkins to injuries in September and linebacker Nick Barnett went down in early November, which helps explain how the Pack were strafed for 110 points in one leaky three-game stretch.

On Oct. 19 the Packers beat the Colts to head into their bye week at 4-3. November would feature games at Tennessee, Minnesota and New Orleans. Those three teams are a combined 17-4 at home this season (the Saints also won a "home" game in London).

The Packers lost in OT at Tennessee and by a point in Minny when Mason Crosby's last-second field goal attempt scraped wide.

After the defense was humiliated in the Superdome in a 51-29 loss, the Pack came home to lose a 35-31 heartbreaker to a Carolina team that was in the midst of winning seven out of eight games. Even the Texans, who would beat Green Bay the following week, were in the midst of a four-game winning streak. The Packers just seemed to have a season-long knack for catching everybody at their hottest.

A blocked field goal in Chicago — in a game Green Bay dominated — led to loss No. 10. That game was a perfect microcosm of the Packers' season. Rodgers played very well in sub-zero conditions. The Packers had 325 total yards to the Bears' 210. The Packers led by 11 in the second half. The Packers lost.

3. Cleveland Browns

It wasn't naïve for Browns fans to be optimistic coming into 2008. Derek Anderson was coming off a season in which he'd thrown 29 touchdowns in only 298 attempts. Braylon Edwards and Kellen Winslow were deserving All-Pro receivers. Jamal Lewis was coming off a 1,304-yard season, his best since clearing 2,000 in 2003.

There was no reason to believe they couldn't at least match the 10-6 record they posted in 2007.

Who could possibly have known that Anderson would usher in the Brady Quinn Era with a hail of ugly ducklings? (Not GM Phil Savage, who signed Anderson to a $24M extension.) Or that Edwards would have six times as many drops as scores? Or that Kellen Winslow would vanish in a pastiche of drama, injuries and infection? Or that Lewis would almost precisely replicate his post-prison season of 2005?

It has been 13 seconds shy of 21 quarters, over five full games, since the Browns scored an offensive touchdown. During this five-game losing streak, Phil Dawson has 25 of the Browns' 31 points and cornerback Brandon McDonald has a pick-six. It's goose eggs for the so-called "skill" positions.

It has been particularly painful watching Romeo Crennel stagger through this 4-11 season when everyone — including Romeo — knows what awaits him at the end of this long, dark hallway.

4. Buffalo Bills

When Tom Brady went down in the Patriots' season opener, the AFC East was suddenly wide open. The Bills stepped into the void, winning their first four games and five of their first six to stake a claim as the heir apparent.

The Stanford-Cal combination of Trent Edwards and Marshawn Lynch led an efficient offense and newly acquired DT Marcus Stroud was dominating on defense.

But the hot early start was quickly revealed as a mirage achieved against weak competition. (Those five wins came against teams that would have a combined .293 winning percentage heading into Week 17.) When the Bills finally started to play decent teams, they started losing. And just couldn't stop.

They lost to the Dolphins, Jets and Patriots (combined record 29-16) to fall to 5-4 and then lost to the woeful Browns at home to fall to .500. In those four losses Edwards threw just three touchdown passes while getting picked off eight times. Lynch reached rock bottom in the loss to Jets with 16 yards on nine carries.

A win over the lowly Chiefs was followed by three more losses, a fade that could only be halted by the Broncos' prodigious desire not to participate in the playoffs.

Last week's win in Denver was the Bills' first against a team with a winning record after dropping their first six such games. When you're 5-1 and sitting atop a division that features a team that lost its MVP quarterback, a team that went 4-12 in the previous season and a team that went 1-15 in '07, last place is probably the last place you expect to end up.

The '08 Bills' disappointing season was perfectly summed up by the library-like silence that engulfed them during their 16-3 "home" loss to the Dolphins in Toronto in Week 14.

5. Detroit Lions

How do you disappoint when nobody expects anything from you? Ask the Detroit Lions.

Sure, nobody thought this year's Lions squad was going to be a contender, but they weren't supposed to be the worst team ever either. Sports Illustrated pegged them to repeat their 7-9 record of 2007, an almost conservative projection given Detroit's 4-0 preseason mark and apparent upgrade in the secondary, adding corners Brian Kelly and Leigh Bodden and safety Dwight Smith to a unit that gave up a league-high 32 touchdown passes in 2007.

But it didn't take long to get a hint that despite the new faces, things may not have changed much for the Detroit DBs. On the third snap of the 2008 season, the Lions were beaten for a 62-yard touchdown pass from Matt Ryan to Michael Jenkins.

On Atlanta's seventh play from scrimmage, Michael Turner broke a 66-yard touchdown run to make it 14-0 less than halfway through the first quarter of the first game. Seven wins was a pipe dream.

But even with expectations plummeting faster than a Bernie Madoff-invested portfolio, the Lions still found ways to disappoint. They lost their first two home games to rivals Green Bay and Chicago by a combined 50 points. They lost their first four by double digits. In a Thanksgiving Day Massacre at the hands of the Titans it became clear they would have lost even if they'd only been required to provide a two-hand touch on Tennessee ballcarriers.

Through 15 losses the Detroit defense has a mere four picks and has allowed an almost incomprehensible 109.3 QB rating on the season. Steve Young is the all-time leader at 96.8. In other words the Lions turn every QB they play into a significantly better quarterback than the NFL's all-time highest-rated passer.

Even for fans inured to losing, this historic Lions season has been especially painful.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8990392/2008-was-a-total-letdown-for-these-five-teams