The Saddest Stats Of NFL Week 5 - The Longest Day Of Football Ever, All Time Worst Head To Head Losing Streaks, Old Man Running Stats, And More
Naomi Baker. Getty Images.It was a long Sunday for NFL fans in Week 5 as we had a 9:30am London game to kick things off and a 1:00am ending on Sunday Night Football after a long storm delay. And as long as it was for all fans, that made it even longer for the sad populations subjected to watch misery of their own teams and success of their peers.
And that leads us right into…
Sad Stat #1 - Soaked Steelers fans attended (from what I can find) the latest ended game in NFL history only to lose
I don't know how you spent your Sunday Night weather delay of close to two hours but I was on the prowl for the latest ending to a football game in NFL history. This was no easy task. I ran some code adding the recorded length of a game to the start time but the ones that pulled up were clearly errors in PFR:
But PFR wasn't the only thing whacked up with errors - the game referenced by the ChatGPT response never even happened and was mistaking an earlier week that year in which the Bears and Ravens played a five hour long game that started in the early slate.
So I went back to the code and filtered to only games that started in the 8pm hour - assuming none have started later. And this is what I got. An 8:31 kickoff and 4:09 long game means this game ended at 12:40am Eastern Time.
But hey - at least the home team won. Not the case on Sunday. Sorry, Monday. With Pittsburgh losing after 1:00am it's safe to say attending fans probably didn't get home until 2:30am or so given the game came down to the wire. And it's Pittsburgh, so you know they all gotta get up at 5am for work. Probably didn't even bother changing out of those mildewed socks. Just brutal.
Justin K. Aller. Getty Images.Sad Stat #2 - "The Colts losing ten straight games to the Jaguars actually isn't that bad" - Lions and Browns fans
Had to get a ricochet stat in here to keep Lions fans humble. Everyone in the world is talking about how the Colts have lost ten straight now in Jacksonville, so I'm upping my game with the all-time list of consecutive head to head road losses. Wow how shocking - the Lions and Browns own the top-five on the list. And check out the road streak the Lions have vs Washington which I believe is still current. You could have seen Gone With The Wind in theaters before watching the Lions win a football game in DC.
So yeah - ten game losing streak on the road to a single team? Not that bad.
Sad Stat #3 - The Jaguars allowed a 39-year old quarterback to run 21-yards on a play
Joe Flac-GO!!!! What a moment for Flacco. Not only does this tie for longest Colts quarterback run this season (ricochet Anthony Richardson stat) - but it goes down as #3 all time in longest old man run:
Sad Stat #4 - Josh Allen had the worst completion percentage for any quarterback throwing 30+ passes since 1992
Sean McDermott did a good job of making sure Josh got those last three incompletions to secure this stat at the end of the game. I don't really agree with everyone calling McDermott dumb for this by the way. Texans had three timeouts so a sure way to blow the game would be to run the ball three times, punt, and instantly lose from the field goal. At least they tried throwing with one of the best passers in the game.
Meanwhile in Cincinnati…
Sad Stat #5 - The Bengals ran the ball three times in a row after Joe Burrow has been dicing up defenses like Kurt Warner before missing the would be game winning field goal
If any coach needs to be immediately fired for stupid play-calling on Sunday, it's Zac Taylor. It's one thing to be an idiot. But there's nothing worse than being a gutless one. At least McDermott has that going for him. Three straight runs for Taylor is like opening the garage door after your wife's water drops and telling her "you know what honey, let's not take the Lambo, I got PFT's El Camino". The Bengals have scored 33+ the past three weeks but sure, let's go Iowa football when we get the ball in overtime at the opponent 38.
What an unreal story this Dr. Joe Mr. Hyde team is. It's like however good Joe Burrow does on offense, the defense responds in upside-down kind.
Dishonorable mention to the Carolina Panthers having to watch Caleb Williams throw dots to DJ Moore all game when the pair could easily have been throwing them in Carolina. There's been a lot of heat on Ryan Poles in recent weeks for doing a pitiful job in shoring up the offensive line so you have to think he nudged Eberflus a little bit to remind us all about that trade. I don't think you'll ever live this down Panthers fans. Your owner is the ultimate rich Dunning Kruger and there's nothing you can do about it. No matter how many restaurants make signs to tell him this. Quinn Ewers is your only chance at redemption at this point.
Honorable mention to my Bears for being the only team with a winning record who's last in their division.