A Case For The 0-2's

I know ESPN keeps pushing this "only 22 of 169 of the teams that started 0-2 since 1990 made the playoffs" stat, but like most stats, looks can be deceiving. No worries, I'm here to save the day!

Of those 147 teams (169-22=147, for my slower readers) that haven't made the playoffs after an 0-2 start, how many of those teams generally suck year in and year out?? If a team starts off 0-2, there's a great chance that they sucked last year, and the year before that too. How many times have the Lions started off 0-2 since 1990?? How about the Bengals?? The Saints just got good, how about them?? The Bills?? The Browns??

Well I went out a did some research of my own to prove that this 0-2 stat is flawed. I picked the 10 worst teams (Bengals, Bills, Browns, Cardinals, Chiefs, 49ers, Lions, Raiders, Redskins, and Texans; we'll call them the Terrible 10) from the past 10 years (2000-2009), and broke down how many times they started off 0-2, went 7-9 or worse, and how many times they made the playoffs.

Here's what I found:

• Of the 90 times teams started a season 0-2 since 2000, 38 were by the Terrible 10; that's 42%. There's 32 teams in the NFL (barring 2000 and 2001 when there were 31), so the bottom ⅓ of the teams in the NFL, represent 42% of the times a team has started 0-2 since 2000.
• Sixty-six (66) times the Terrible 10 finished the season 7-9 or worse since 2000.
• The Terrible 10 only made the playoffs a collective 14 times over the past decade. Three of which were by the Raiders from 2000-2002, including one season when they made it to the Super Bowl.
• The 2006 Chiefs (9-7) were the only Terrible 10 team that made the playoffs in the 38 combined seasons they've started 0-2. That means 97% of the time 1 of these 10 teams starts off 0-2, they miss the postseason.
  
• If these findings from the Terrible 10 of the 2000's were projected to the Terrible 10 teams of the 90's, the combined total would represent half of the 147 teams that have started 0-2 and missed the playoffs since 1990.
  

Again, these stats only account for the 10 worst teams over the past decade, and doesn't include all the mediocre teams like the Rams, Dolphins, Vikings, Jets, Saints, Bears, Jaguars, and Buccaneers, who have had their fair share of 0-2 starts, sub 7-9 records, and playoff-less seasons.

The point is this, usually it's not a fluke when a team starts off 0-2. Most of the time those teams have a history of sucking, and that "22 of 169" statistic does not account for all those repeat offenders, like the teams I mentioned above. So instead of having a 13% chance of making the playoffs after an 0-2 start, like ESPN Stats & Information suggests, it's actually closer to 50%.