The Saddest Stats Of NFL Week 12
John Fisher. Getty Images.Week 12 in the books as we prepare to sit at the sad team table on Thursday and make up some lies to our family about being thankful.
If you're looking for something to be thankful about, this is the wrong place. More Festivus vibes in these weekly sad stats blogs. The Giants are now the first team officially eliminated from the Playoffs despite the fact that the Tennessee Titans are 1-10. Hey look. I guess I lied. A little glimmer of pride there for Titans fans. Not the first eliminated. But that's pretty much all the positives I have for you.
This is Week 12 NFL Sad Stats.
Sad Stat #1: The Titans are 4-24 since firing Mike Vrabel who has 250% the wins since while coaching in 50% as many games
Great coaching matters in the NFL. A lot. Case in point being the Chicago Bears and New England Patriots upgrading from guys that had not clue what they were doing to those who either did or showed promise to be elite. Literally no one thought that Mike Vrabel was the problem in Tennessee. Well, I guess except Amy Strunk…
ESPN:
"As the NFL continues to innovate and evolve, I believe the teams best positioned for sustained success will be those who empower an aligned and collaborative team across all football functions. Last year, we began a shift in our approach to football leadership and made several changes to our personnel to advance that plan. As I continued to assess the state of our team, I arrived at the conclusion that the team would also benefit from the fresh approach and perspective of a new coaching staff
…
I will never shy away from acknowledging that I have unapologetically high expectations for the football team and every aspect of the Titans organization"
We might want to rethink the "unapologetically" part here Amy. This was the most obvious "he's not really the problem, but they fired him anyway" situation I can remember.
Sad Stat # 2: The Giants are 2-5 when leading by 10+ points
Don't let the four games in the graphic fool you. There's a fifth sneaking in at the top. Couldn't help but dig a little deeper in on this myself and there are a couple of teams who lost two games after taking a ten-point lead this season, but five is pretty wild.
Are the giants a fraudulent bad team? Question for the Thanksgiving table perhaps. With Jameis in there now taking the Lions into overtime, this has me kind of wondering. But I think a case can be made that they are really this bad - therefore by rule, fraudulent frauds.
I ran this all again for 2024 and eight teams lost two games with ten-point leads. None lost more. Three teams lost three in 2023, and it hasn't been since the 2022 Raiders that a team lost five. In all of NFL history - nine teams have lost five now including the Giants and zero have lost six. So this is as bad as it gets historically.
Of course, the Giants aren't done yet. Five more chances to break the record!
Sad Stat #3: The Raiders are unreal bad which isn't a stat, but this is…
The Raiders have come a long way since losing five games while leading by 10+ in 2022. You'll notice they did not appear on the Giants graph above - a suave choice by them in declining from ever taking a ten-point lead this season. Now I did look up the Browns EPA overall to give Shedeur credit for this long touchdown pass:
-.12 for all drop backs INCLUDING screen pass dots. Still not great despite that nice actual deep ball he connected on. Especially when you consider how bad the Raiders secondary is. And primary. And tertiary. Everything about the Raiders is just bad.
Sad Stat #4: The Browns are now 1-0 in their last one game in new quarterbacks starting games
Sometimes even the happy stats are sad. Now this must be for a player's first career start - not just for the Browns - as Deshaun Watson won his first Browns game in 2022. So there's that! Speaking of Shedeur Sanders, I do have a little blind resume for you.
First two career games played passing stats
A) 4/16 47 yards, 11/20 209 yards
B) 4/16 70 yards, 13/26 211 yards
Shedeur Sanders is A. My readers from last week will probably guess B is indeed Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw. So… things are still loosely on track!
Speaking of blind resumes.
Sad Stat #9: JJ McCarthy
I'm not here to beat a dead horse in the ground. I'm here to try to revive it. Nothing like a good ole stat challenge. So long as we're doing six-games stats here are some notable quarterbacks that had a worse completion percentage than McCarthy through their first six games. McCarthy is at 54.1% for the record.
Josh Allen (54.2% close enough)
Matt Stafford (53.8%)
Joe Namath (49.7%)
Terry Luck (45.5%)
Brett Favre (37.8%)
Tim Couch (30.2%)
Sorry, Cleveland. That was a cheap shot. Of course, the problems with "9" are far beyond completion percentage. Dude is a lost puppy out there. Lost and making things worse because he knows he's in trouble. In cruel NFL fashion too, he actually had an amazing pass a week ago vs the Bears where he hit Justin Jefferson down field in stride and the perhaps best receiver in the game dropped it. But no one remembers because it was all bad aside from that.
Now JJ is in concussion protocol. Interesting…
Well… Happy Thanksgiving. I guess.