So Your Season is Over? The NFL’s Guide to Coping With Elimination

We all know the saying that sports can be cruel. The problem is that every single fan of every single team dreams of winning the championship, some of those dreams more realistic than others, but only one set of fans get to see that come to be each year. There are 32 teams in the NFL and 31 of them get eliminated as each season progresses.

Some handle that better than others, some hardly handle it at all. With only 16 games it’s such a short season and even if you do well the playoffs might not be so rewarding. Only 12 of 32 teams make the postseason and it’s possible up to eight of them might only get one playoff game in (if the bye teams all lose – there were six one-and-done playoff teams in 2017). This league is bloody ruthless. That can be a tough thing to come to terms with sometimes, here are a bunch of different coping mechanisms… not all of them are recommended.

The Blame Game

The New York Giants got smacked up by the Green Bay Packers in the wildcard round. It was close in the first half, Giants games usually are with a strong defence uncharacteristically carrying them, but then Aaron Rodgers popped one of his regular Hail Mary passes on the brink of the half and they ran away with it in the second for a 38-13 defeat.

The game was probably comprehensive enough to think that the super in-form Packers had their number but it might have been closer had Odell Beckham not had a shocker, dropping several passes including one sure-thing touchdown. Given that he and a couple other wide receivers had spent the week before the game hanging in Miami and partying on a yacht with Trey Songz and Justin Bieber, they very quickly found themselves the scapegoats for a disappointing season-ender.

Far be it from the New York people and media to accept defeat. Odell Beckham and company’s commitment definitely comes into question after a game like that, however lumping all the pain and disappointment at their feet (and buttered fingers) is a little much. What was even weirder was the NY Daily News headline: “Giants, led by Odell Beckham and Party Boat, waste chance for Eli Manning to win one more Super Bowl”. Picking favourites? Manning was 23/44 for 299 yards, 1 TD & 1 INT. A few drops should have improved that but he was easily outplayed by Mr Rodgers.

But hey, you’ve gotta blame someone or else it’s all futile.

Optimism Factor: 0/10

Repercussions

If people want scapegoats, if people are gonna jump to wild conclusions in who they blame for things… make it easy for them and take the conversation past the angry mob stage. Give them repercussions and swing the axe.

The Buffalo Bills sacked Rex Ryan towards the end of the season, their famous defence having gotten worse in the years that defensive specialist Ryan had been in charge and without a playoff trip in 2016 that was too much. So they sacked him. The strategy behind this is that you skip the blaming and get straight on into the replacing. Who are they gonna choose as their next head coach? What will that decision reveal about the direction of the franchise? Whatever they do, it usually reinvigorates fans at least until the new season starts. It’s a fresh beginning, after all.

The Bills went with Sean McDermott as their new coach, plucking him from his defensive coordinator role with the Carolina Panthers (remember how good that unit was in 2015). Interesting to see them go defensive again given their quarterback situation but there’s nothing wrong with strengthening your strengths – that’s taken teams a long way in the past. The LA Rams, having finally dumped Jeff Fisher, went ultra-risky and hired Sean McVay as their new boss, the 30 year old now the youngest head coach in NFL history. This is a team with a rookie quarterback and a sophomore running back, just finished their first season in a new city. They’re definitely trying to clean the slate.

The San Diego Chargers have sacked Mike McCoy and will hire Jeff Lynn (recently the interim head coach of the Bills after Ryan was fired) to become the first head coach of the Los Angles Chargers… more on that in a second. The Denver Broncos didn’t sack Gary Kubiak, he resigned for his own reasons, but they’re brought in Vance Joseph to get their team back into the playoffs while the San Francisco 49ers didn’t only sack Chip Kelly after one season but they got rid of their GM Trent Baalke too. They’re still waiting on someone brave enough to take that job. As for the Jacksonville Jaguars, they’ve promoted from within as Doug Marrone becomes their new boss and former Giants coach Tom Coughlin has been tapped up from outside to become Executive Vice President.

And that’s not even to mention the numerous assistant coach and coordinator duties that have been shuffled in the wake of elimination or the hundreds of players whose contract may or may not be renewed, torn up, traded or burnt. At least a dozen teams right now couldn’t say for sure who their starting quarterback will be next season and if they did they’d be lying.

Optimism Factor: 5/10

Pack Your Bags

Yeah, right. The Los Angeles Chargers. Sometimes the best way to get over a breakup is a change of scenery. The split between the Chargers and the 2016 season was relatively amicable, they blew things early on with a series of outrageous defeats from strong fourth quarter position, but their comfort levels in San Diego were anything but. Citizens rejected a proposition for tax increases that would have gone towards paying for a new stadium and pretty much that was it for the Chargers, who had been flirting with leaving for ages now.

Dean Spanos, Chargers Chairman: “San Diego has been our home for 56 years... But, today we turn the page and begin an exciting new era as the Los Angeles Chargers.”

For the next two seasons they’ll play in the 30,000 seater StubHub Arena, which is the home of Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy until Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park is ready and built. It’s pretty strange because Los Angeles has tried and failed to hold an FL franchise before (Raiders and Rams) and now suddenly they have two because the LA Rams took the same move last season. It’s not a reaction to the season, these things take heaps of time and paperwork, but teams who consistently win aren’t usually those looking to move and rebrand. And the timing of the announcements is never a coincidence. The past is filed away and we’re moving forwards, they’re saying.

Spanos and his cohorts more or less tried to blackmail San Diego to pay for their new stadium as an update to the increasingly antiquated Qualcomm Stadium by threatening to pull stumps and move to LA and finally he was forced to put his money where his mouth is and now there are two fresh teams competing to win over the local fanbase… which has always been much more keen on basketball in the past, although the Lakers haven’t been good for a few years so this might be a blessed window of opportunity. The Rams and Chargers will share the new stadium from 2019, in the meantime the Rams are at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the franchise played from 1946 to 1979 and the USC Trojans have called home since 1923. It also hosted the 1932 and 1984 Olympics and is banking on hosting the 2024 Games as well.

Of course, a new location is a reason to change everything. A complete rebranding, although that can get a bit confusing at times…

Optimism Factor: 7/10

Sweet, Sweet Relief

This one goes out to the Cleveland Browns. They don’t even care about the draft, they’re getting the top pick and will be praying they finally end up with a quarterback worth a damn. But mostly, having pulled out a famous victory in week 16 to avoid a humiliating 0-16 season (they finished 1-15, so not all that much better), all their fans really care about is that it’s over and there’s no more obligation to watch this perennially awful team for a few more months. Absolute crisis avoided, the draft isn’t for a few more months, no massive personal issues making headlines… it’s now fully safe to completely ignore the Browns for a while and focus 100% on LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Having said that, the owners still found the motivation to send out letters of apology to season ticket holders, which the team released to the public…

“Clearly this season has been a painful part of our building process. You deserve the best, and you certainly deserve better than a 1-15 team. We are sorry that our results have not been better.”

Optimism Factor: N/A

Obsessive Analytics

Then again, if you do still hold out hope for a resurgent next season then the thing to do is start crunching the cap numbers. Look at the free agents who may or may not be retained. Look at the draft and all the players on offer. What would it take to trade up into the top three? Immerse yourself in stats and figures to assess each player on a performance basis and see if anyone’s trade value outweighs their performance, maybe keep an eye out on a few steals overlooked by other teams. Which rookies are gonna breakout? Do we take this guy or that guy with our first pick? Should we franchise tag this dude? Can we really trust that running back’s ankles for one more season? Is that coach really the best leader out there? Is the quarterback’s personal life getting in the way of his job? Is the wide receiver’s haircut affecting his wind resistance?

Warning: this particular strategy comes with a very high chance of complete mental breakdown.

Optimism Factor: 6/10

Maybe Next Time?

The Dallas Cowboys were undone by a late masterpiece between Aaron Rodgers, Jared Cook and and Mason Crosby while the Oakland Raiders were undone by an injury to their MVP candidate QB Derek Carr. But neither team is all that upset. They had legit justifications that had nothing to do with themselves and, more importantly, if luck goes their way next time then there’s every reason to think that the young guns of Dak Prescott, Derek Carr, Ezekiel Elliott and Amari Cooper, amongst plenty others, will only be better in 2017, and potentially even better in 2018 and beyond. The future is bright, so bright that it shines its light on the darkness of 2016 elimination.

This is slightly silly because luck very often doesn’t go your way in the NFL. It’s so competitive and the margins are so slim that if you’re there in the playoffs then you’d better take advantage of that while it’s there. The future’s not always as easy to see as people think. It isn’t an NFL example but the Oklahoma City Thunder team of Westbrook/Durant/Harden/Ibaka that made the 2012 NBA Finals and never got back are a prime warning. Still, whatever keeps you out of the cutlery draw in your darkest moments, aye?

Derek Carr: “Our team is going to be back. We’re going to add pieces like we do every year… The things that were on there, the good things were really good but the things I need to get better at are the things I’m going to work my butt off. That always stays between him and I, but I’m going to work my tail off to be better next year.”

Optimism Factor: 10/10

The Draft Board

See, Deshaun Watson might be the best quarterback in the 2017 draft class but that doesn't make him the most NFL-ready and his interception rate is something that might turn a few teams off despite his long arm and running ability. So maybe you go for the more controlled excellence of Mitch Trubisky at quarterback, a dude you can trust to hit his targets even if he’s not as destructive as Watson. Then again, not every team needs a quarterback, some need elite pass rush and in Myles Garrett there’s a defensive end who can bring exactly that so long as his ankles hold up. Jonathan Allen is another DE who knows how to get to the quarterback. He’s as safe a bet as you’re gonna find in the first round. Dalvin Cook and Leonard Fournette are running backs with the potential to put up big numbers while Mike Williams, Corey Davis and John Ross bring some class to the wideout ranks. Safety Jamal Adams has earned comparisons to Troy Polamalu, DE/OLB Derek Barnett will can do anything a coach might ask of him.

Naturally fans tend to overvalue the draft, one player hardly ever makes all the difference (even Aaron Rodgers still relies on Jordan Cook to make that catch), but when you’re a team trapped deep in the cave of irrelevance then this is the escape rope that can get you out of there. Maybe. Possibly.

Optimism Factor: 8/10

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

It’s been said that if you want to, you can blame the referees for anything. With the amount of decisions made every contest, there are always a few contentious ones and in every close game you can point to a couple of calls that might have changed everything if they’d gone the other way. Hell, even in a 56-7 blowout there are still usually a couple buggers yelling: ‘BUT IT ALL CHANGED WHEN THEY DIDN’T THROW THE FLAG FOR THAT PASS INTERFERENCE AT 7-7!’

Then there are those calls right at the end of games that really are pretty definitive. Obviously there are hundreds of missed opportunities throughout the 60 minutes of any game where things could have gone one way or the other regardless of the ref and if you find yourself in a one-possession game right at the death then that’s what you leave yourself exposed to. Something wild is likely to happen, something out of your control.

Try telling that to the Kansas City Chiefs after they went down 18-16 to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Big Ben, Le’Veon and the Steelers dominated a lot of that game but the superb Chiefs defence consistently kept them out of the endzone. Chris Boswell made six field goals for Pitt and with that, the Chiefs had the chance to tie things up with a touchdown and two-point conversion at the death. Alex Smith converted on a 4th & 8 and an unnecessary roughness call spaed them on 3rd & 9. Smith then hit Anthony Sherman for three yards on 4th & 2 and Spencer Ware punched it in from the one-yard line. Smith then completed to Demetrius Harris for the game-tying 2PC… except it was overruled for a holding flag on left tackle Eric Fisher. They failed on the second go and lost as Antonio Brown and Ben Roethlisberger ran out the clock.

It was a fair call, by the looks, but all holding calls are a little subjective so no shocker that it was that moment that copped the attention. Tight end Travis Kelce is one of their star players and he’d failed to live up to that against the Steelers… but that didn’t stop him having a dig at the ref:

Optimism Factor: 2/10

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Written by Nick Robinson On Tagged ,