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The NFL’s five most mystifying teams
BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG
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They are the teams that had high hopes before the NFL season started and perhaps even after a couple of weeks of the regular season were played. They might have had great potential, they might have made great off-season adjustments, or they might already have had a top-flight roster in place following a successful 2002 season. No matter how they came into the 2003 season, their fans were firmly on the bandwagon, and the so-called experts exuded confidence in picking them to go places. Well, it’s nine games into the season, and those fortunes have changed. Their fans are stupefied, confused, and perhaps even a little bit angry, bettors don’t dare make them their weekly choice, and even network execs do not highlight them as favorable featured teams on their Sunday broadcasts. They are the teams that should, by all accounts, be doing a helluva lot better than they are. Instead of leading their divisions, though, they are merely hanging around — not out of it, but certainly not in the thick of it as they had hoped to be. What went wrong? Who’s to blame? What can be done to right these listing ships? Here are the five teams at the 5/8th-pole that are driving their supporters to think and drink while the teams stink. • Buffalo Bills. What happened to this team? Granted, maybe choosing injured Miami halfback Willis McGahee as their first-round draft pick was not the best idea (especially when they already had one of the AFC’s top backs, Travis Henry), but the Bills had definitely made improvements during the off-season. Already blessed with one of the league’s top offenses, Buffalo upgraded its defense significantly through some horse-trading and free-agent signings. With former Patriot Drew Bledsoe coming off a Pro Bowl season, the Bills were expected to contend in the wide-open AFC East. After a 3-1 pre-season — including wins over the Ravens and Rams — Buffalo came out with all phasers blasting in week one. Sparked by the midweek pick-up of free-agent safety Lawyer Milloy (who had been unceremoniously set free by New England just days before), the Bills did everything right in a 31-0 knockout of the deflated Patriots in the NFL’s opening week. Things continued to look promising a week later when they bludgeoned Jacksonville on the road, 38-17, but two months later, the Bills are 4-5, three full games behind the rejuvenated Pats and just one game ahead of the last-place Jets. The vaunted offense has produced just 12 points in the last four road games, which includes zero TDs and 16 turnovers. The team has won just one of its last nine road contests, and yesterday’s 10-6 loss in Big D was particularly gruesome, especially for Bledsoe and his playmakers. Blitzed unmercifully all day long, Bledsoe threw 34 times for just 104 yards and fumbled twice on sacks, as his frequent desperate scrambles gave way to his trademark happy feet so familiar to Patriots fans. The team’s offense has had explosive firepower in the past, but this season it has been held to single digits in four games. In the meantime, the defense has at times kept the team in games — as in a 17-7 loss at Miami and Sunday’s snoozer in Dallas — but at other times it’s been totally overmatched, as evidenced in defeats to offensively challenged Philly (23-13), the Jets (30-3), and KC (38-5). Remarkably, the Bills’ D is second in the AFC in total defense, but second-to-last (to Cleveland) in total offense, and the Buffalo brass will soon have a big decision to make regarding Bledsoe’s future with the team. At that point next November, the team will have to decide whether to pay the former Patriot a bonus that will trigger three more years of his expensive contract. Given his performance in recent weeks — including just one yard passing in the fourth quarter on Sunday — he may not be long for Western New York, and may have to sell his second mansion in three years. Buffalo still has defensive stalwarts like the Colts, Giants, Titans, Dolphins, and frothing-at-the-mouth Patriots on the remaining schedule, so things will get a whole lot worse in Wing-land before they get anywhere close to better. • Miami Dolphins. Unlike the Bills, the Dolphins at least still have a fair-to-middling shot at making the playoffs this season. Nonetheless, the ’Phins were picked by many to go deep into the playoffs — and that was assuming as certain their standard late-season meltdown in the frigid closing days of the regular season. The team has done itself no favors by moving up the schedule on that patented fade by a month, and now heads for the home stretch with a mediocre 5-4 record. One must admit that the Dolphins have had a difficult schedule, especially of late, but the Patriots have, too, and they have at least beaten some teams that they weren’t expected to. Miami took second-year Houston for granted in the season opener and got stunned, 21-20 at home. Then, however, the team put together a four-game stretch of impressive wins, against the injury-riddled Jets, the then-strong Bills, and road wins at the Giants and Jags. Since then, though, the Dolphins have lost three of four, with their lone win against a sputtering Chargers team on Monday Night Football two weeks ago. Two of those recent losses have been at home to fairly decent foes (New England and Indy), but both were winnable, and had Miami’s defense played up to snuff, it could have come away with a pair of victories. Instead, the team lost ’em both and then got annihilated at Tennessee on Sunday by 24 points. Miami’s upcoming schedule is hardly a peach, either, as Dave Wannstedt’s group hosts Baltimore and inconsistent Washington, then has three road games (Dallas, NE, Buffalo) sandwiching a tough home contest against the Eagles. Miami has yet to prove it can win in December when the season is on the line. Those arctic visits to Foxborough and Orchard Park could seal the team’s fate, sending Wannstedt and several other members of this underachieving bunch on their way to warmer climes. • Pittsburgh Steelers. Goodbye, Kordell Stewart, hello, consistency and playoff glory. That is what the Steelers believed would come to pass when Slash was cut loose during the off-season. The team was coming off a season that saw Pittsburgh get to the second round of the post-season before losing a tough 34-31 decision at Nashville, and optimism was high in the Steel City. Instead, the defending AFC North champs are third in the AFC in team defense but just 11th in offense, and turnovers have killed the Steelers’ efforts, particularly Tommy Maddox’s 11 interceptions. Pittsburgh jumped out to a 2-1 start this season, including tough wins against the Ravens and Bengals, but got blown out in consecutive games at Tennessee and Cleveland, then lost a last-second heartbreaker at Denver on October 12. After a bye week, the team submitted a pair of lackluster performances against St. Louis (33-21 at home on a day when the team feted its 100th-game anniversary with a halftime ceremony featuring its championship-era players) and at Seattle (23-16) before regaining a smidgen of dignity with a 28-15 home triumph against the woeful Cardinals on Sunday. The Steelers head into the final seven games of the regular season with a disappointing 3-6 record, though their last-place status is amazingly just two games out of first in this mediocre division. Can Bill Cowher’s squad turn it around? That’ll be more in evidence after back-to-back roadies against the 49ers and Browns, along with a pair of tough away games in the season’s final weeks against the Jets and Ravens. Don’t count ’em out, but certainly don’t count ’em in, either. • New York Giants. There are a lot of Giants fans out there who wouldn’t dispute their team’s place on this list. Some days the New Yorkers can astonish and awe, and others they can make you cringe and curse. The Giants have had some impressive victories this season, including decisions over the Rams, Redskins, the previously unbeaten Vikings, and the cross-town Jets. On the flip side, the team lost a mind-numbing Monday-nighter in OT at the Meadowlands to the hated Cowboys when the game was seemingly in the bag, and turned in uninspired performances against the Dolphins, Patriots, and Eagles coming out of the bye week last month. The low point (other than the Dallas meltdown) was Sunday’s inexplicable 27-7 loss to the lowly Falcons, who entered the game at 1-7 and had allowed an NFL-worst 30.4 points per game. Four turnovers, including two Tiki Barber fumbles and two Kerry Collins INTs, contributed to the horrific loss, and the team is now 1-4 in its home contests while posting a decent 3-1 record on the road. The team has scored just 82 points in its five home games and 27 in its last three, which is puzzling considering the team’s standing as the second-ranked offense in the whole NFL. Maybe it’s a good thing that four of the team’s remaining seven games are on the road, but they’re certainly no gimmes: Philly, Tampa, New Orleans, and Dallas. The 4-5 Giants have already spotted the surprising Cowpokes a three-game lead in the division, and they’ll probably need to take five of seven just to reach the post-season — a concept which still gives the team’s fans nightmares over the playoff debacle in San Francisco last January. • Tampa Bay Bucs. Win one, lose one, win one, lose one. That’s pretty much been the story of the 2003 Super Bowl champs this season. In their wins, they’ve been pretty damn impressive: 17-0 over Philly, 31-10 over Atlanta, 35-13 over Washington, 16-0 over Dallas. It’s the Buccaneers’ losses that have been excruciating and bewildering: three-point losses to Carolina (OT), Indy (OT), New Orleans, and Carolina again, plus a 17-point blowout to the Niners. Is this any way for a defending champs to retain their crown? It certainly wasn’t the way the Patriots went about it a year ago, and they had similar results as the trophy-bearer, finishing 9-7 and out of the playoffs. The Bucs are still second in the NFC in defense and fourth in offense, so it’s probably just a matter of some breaks along the way, but to see this multi-talented team at 4-5 and three games back in the relatively-weak NFC South makes one question its hunger and drive. Their collective heart will be tested in upcoming home games against the Packers and Giants, but the true determinant of whether Tampa Bay can repeat its storybook ending of a year ago will probably come down to its regular-season finale at Tennessee. Then we’ll see if they’re made of stronger stuff. Other teams that might have made this list include the Jets (injuries), Jags (new coach and aging offense), Browns (QB injuries), Raiders (age and QB injuries), Falcons (Vick-less), Packers (see Raiders, above), and 49ers (new coach), but we’re only an hourlong show here, and they all have built-in excuses at the ready. The five teams featured here do not have such legitimate gripes, and it’ll remain to be seen if they can reverse their fortunes to soothe and satisfy their followers. Till then, "Bartender!" "Sporting Eye" runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com
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