Whipped Cream Difficulties

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

New York Jets (bye week)
Miami
Cincinnati
Denver
Washington

In other news about minor sports, it looks like I was wrong in thinking there wasn’t going to be a historically bad baseball team this year. At least, depending on how you define “historically bad”.

The Detroit Tigers finished 47-114 (one game towards the end of the season was cancelled and they didn’t have a chance to play a make-up) for a .292 average. Wikipedia’s cutoff for “worst Major League Baseball season records” is .300 or below, which puts them 16th on the list for the “modern” era. (Wikipedia has them at .291, or .001 better than the 2018 Baltimore Orioles. I’m not sure why they give different numbers than MLB.com, but I’m going to blame floating point math.)

Speaking of Baltimore, they finished 54-108, with a .333 winning percentage. 108 losses is kind of pathetic, but…

Orioles GM Mike Elias finds positives in rebuild after 108-loss season

“Hey, we stank. But at least we weren’t the worst team in MLB this year! And we didn’t lose as many games as we did last year!”

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

New York Jets
Miami
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Denver
Washington

I’m liking the Jets and Dolphins chances, but it is still early.

It looks like the baseball season is still going on, so next week’s loser update may include some commentary. I don’t think there’s a historically bad team this year, but Detroit could come close.

Well, things are shaping up. The Jets are using a practice squad quarterback as their starter, Pittsburgh lost their starting quarterback for the season, the Saints lost theirs for six weeks…and the Browns won. Even with the Browns winning, I’m excited about the prospects for an 0-16 team this year.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

New York Jets
Miami
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Jacksonville
Denver
Washington
New York Football Giants
Carolina

Welcome back, folks. Another year, another tie in the first game of the season, which means that the Lions and Cardinals (per our policy) are out of 0-16 contention.

Fortunately, there are a couple of teams that we think have a good shot at going all the way this year. In honor of the late great Manhattan Infidel, though, we plan to avoid jokes and snark at the expense of the Giants. Well, mostly.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

da Bears
New York Jets
Miami
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Pittsburgh
Houston
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Denver
Washington
New York Football Giants
Carolina
Atlanta
Tampa Bay

NBA teams that still have a shot at going 0-82:

Chicago
Cleveland
Lakers
Oklahoma City

===============

I wanted to do some analytics on the NFL losers. Specifically, I wanted to get an idea (and perhaps express it in graphical form) of how many losers there were at various points in the season. Week 1 isn’t very interesting: there’s generally 16 losers out of 32 teams¹. But week 2 and the weeks following are the ones where things become more interesting.

loser

This is an HTML file containing the loser data from 2009-2018. Year’s on the left, week is across the top. So for example, in week 1 of 2018, there were 15 teams that had a chance to go 0-16.

I tried graphing this in Excel, but wasn’t totally happy with the results I was getting. Perhaps someone with more experience in data visualization can do something better.

¹ I say “generally” because there are exceptions. There was a tie in week 1 of 2018, which knocked two teams out of loser contention. In week 1 of 2017, one of the games was postponed due to a hurricane, which left those two teams at 0-0 and with the potential to go 0-16 that week, for a total of 17 possible losers.

Four weeks into the season, and one team left standing. By comparison, at this time in 2017, there were four 0-4 teams. On the other hand, Cleveland was the only winless team at this point in 2016, and Detroit was the only one left in week four of 2015. So I don’t know, Bob.

Also: TMQ is either going to ignore this story, or be his usual insufferable self this week.

And this amuses me:

The “FitzMagic” era for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers might have ended at four games, as Tampa Bay was forced to shuffle quarterbacks in a blowout loss Sunday that was so bad, coach Dirk Koetter said afterward that everyone on the field should be fired — starting with him.

I doubt Ryan Fitzpatrick was the problem, and I doubt Jameis Winston is the fix. Then again, I didn’t watch a minute of the game.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Arizona

And it looks like the MLB regular season is (more or less) over, and B’more finished 47-115. By my count, that’s 15th on the all-time list.

The Browns won for the first time since Donald Trump took office. The worthless Buffalo Bills actually beat Minnesota in what ESPN calls “the biggest NFL upset in 23 years”. The New York Football Giants beat hapless the Houston Texans. New England is 1-2. And we’re down to three teams standing. But at least we didn’t have another tied game.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Houston
Oakland
Arizona

In non-NFL news, the NYT ran an interesting article on the Baltimore Orioles.

The Baltimore Orioles are bad. Very bad. Historically bad.

I admit I haven’t been paying much attention, because:

1) Baseball.
II) FiveThirtyEight, as of today, is predicting that Baltimore will finish 47-115, or a .290 winning percentage. That’s 15th place on Wikipedia’s list. Historically bad? Maybe. That’s certainly a worse record than the bad Astros teams of recent memory, but it’s still better than the 2003 Detroit Tigers.

I report, you decide.

Not a whole lot to say this week.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Buffalo
Houston
Oakland
New York Football Giants
Detroit
Seattle
Arizona

Administrative note:

The loser update is primarily for teams that have a shot at going 0-16 over the course of the NFL season. (Secondarily, the loser update is for teams that have a shot at going 0-(x) over the course of some other sport’s season. Thirdly, the loser update is for teams that are just plain bad, or other noteworthy loser related items.)

Teams that have a shot at going 0-15-1 don’t count. I’m just a little sorry to see the Browns come off the list, and more sorry to see Pittsburgh go. But, technically, neither team has a chance to go 0-16: if one or both of them wind up going 0-15-1 this season, there might be a special acknowledgement. But for now, neither team is part of the loser update.

(I have not heard that the beer fridges have been hacked yet. However, the word from Bud Light is that a tie is not a win, so the fridges officially stay locked for now.)

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Buffalo
Houston
Tennessee
Indianapolis
Oakland
Chargers
Dallas
New York Football Giants
Detroit
Chicago
New Orleans
Atlanta
Seattle
San Francisco
Arizona