Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Not the worst season from your team, But rather the one you just didn’t enjoy watching.


I thought this would be interesting because it’s easy to choose the best or worst seasons your team had. But least favorite doesn’t always mean it has to have a bad record, just one you did not enjoy watching.

Packers, 1986. James Lofton. Mossy Cade. Charles Martin. Not all of that was on the field but c'mon. The Starr/Gregg "reign" of mediocrity ended here, I guess. Randy Wright started all 16 games at QB! Beat the Lions on Thanksgiving, that was a good game. Beat the Bucs twice because Bucs were terrible. Beat Cleveland in Cleveland, I'm not really sure how, but that was after 0-6 start. Probably one of the worst seasons where a coach doesn't get fired.

1997 Cowboys ... Switzer would get fired but Gailey wouldnt do any better, as the team continued losing valuable depth as a result of keeping Primetime happy ... 1989 was terrible too but Johnson had to get rid of veterans in favor of hungry young draft picks. The 1997 team had way too much talent to win only 6 games. Once Jones fired Switzer, I knew this team would continue to decline. Losing Irvin in 1999 was tough as well.

Okay, I won't pick a below-500 Steeler season for this.

But even if I would, it wouldn't be 1988! Yes, the sick 1-6 start! And Noll and Landry being on that ever-notorious 'Under Fire' cover of SI! They, FWIW, beating Dallas on Opening Day, then almost winning at RFK the following week vs Gibbs' defending-Champs, giving the surging 'Buddy Ball' Eagles such a good game at the 'Burgh, beating the Oilers AT the 'House of Pain' later on (Brister coming alive), simply the 3-2 finish, many future-Cowher greats slowly showing their stuff already along with the solid stuck-between-eras non-'70s/non-Cowher studs still being in the thick, Webbie's last season in Black and Gold! Enough of a 'hint' of 1989 was lost in it all even of you wouldn't have actually noticed it until after the fact.

I'll start with both failures to defend - 2006 & 2009.

Cowher's final year real uninspiring! Bettis, now retired, let it slip that Cowher was thinking this be his last year (Bill apparently upset over that). You get the sense that maybe he already was retired as the season began. They win the opener albeit very uninspiring, then win only one more game before the halfway mark hence 2-6! Rally, they did (felt a little, just a little, '89-esque), but too late by then (MAN the Ravens clobber them both games down stretch)! Knocking Bengals out in the finale whilst avoiding a losing season was just not enough.

Davenport...big RB but running in a straight-up style instead of lowering...just so damn humdrum of a campaign for a defending-Champ! Not a good-enough way for Cowher to go out. He may as well have retired after Pontiac. Most casual fans think that '05 was his last season anyway.

And the first half of 2009 was the opposite of 2006's first half! Nice 6-2 start, but damn! Lose next five?? A little '89-like teasing as well at the end (6-7 to 9-7) but simply not enough.

Of course neither of these two teams were the '22 Rams but learn how to defend a Title, damn it!! Humdrum Steeler campaigns; the two of them.

I guess my top non-loser is actually...a 12-4 finisher! 2011. Without actually looking this one up, even the actual regular season win vs Brady (Paterno's final game was the day before) didn't overall inspire me going into the playoffs. Thinking Steelers would beat 8-8 Denver, I wasn't optimistic about beating the Pats again; especially it having to be AT Foxboro! And then to actually lose Round One anyway? And to...Tebow?? Quite un-nostalgic the whole '11 Steeler campaign (coupled with the SHOCK of the Scandal involving my favorite college team)!

But though this IS a (well) below-500 team, 2003 should be mentioned for the road. Nothing like '88. No semblance of 'good' from what I remember. Man did Steelers belly-up! "Thought" we finally had our best, most-promising QB since Bradshaw! Despite a relatively weaker defense effort in '02 than a typical Cowher playoff team, we barely did lose at Tennessee in the divisional (thanks to Ned's Oscar-winning performance). I had no reason to not be optimistic going into 2003! And in the opener, Tommy played so great vs Baltimore! But then we all know how things went. But maybe I shouldn't see it like that for OBVIOUS reasons, for the 6-10 finish led to...(4/24/04)...

Jay Z wrote:Packers, 1986. James Lofton. Mossy Cade. Charles Martin. Not all of that was on the field but c'mon. The Starr/Gregg "reign" of mediocrity ended here, I guess. Randy Wright started all 16 games at QB! Beat the Lions on Thanksgiving, that was a good game. Beat the Bucs twice because Bucs were terrible. Beat Cleveland in Cleveland, I'm not really sure how, but that was after 0-6 start. Probably one of the worst seasons where a coach doesn't get fired.

An absolutely painful season with an out-of-control team. Gregg was an incompetent tyrant. Wright was in over his head. Only 10 players on a revolving-door roster started all 16 games. After Dickey, McCarren, and Coffman were cut, the only veteran leader of note was Lofton, who mostly led the way to the jailhouse. Bill Renner had punts blocked in three straight games. The most exciting win of the season happened because Walter Stanley ignored a direct order from his coach to fair-catch a punt. And the win over Cleveland happened primarily because one of Gregg's harebrained schemes, replacing his offensive backfield at halftime, worked out for a change. This was a 2-14 team that got lucky twice.

Honestly have to go with last year's Packers - 2022. Watching the team slowly get dismantled and then quite disorganized on the field was painful. Very painful. Not disorganized in the loveable loser type of way that I remember growing up with. Also, the off-field drama and a coaching staff that spends some time cheering rather than coaching. Plus - and this is a major reason - I really enjoyed the 80s NFL much better than today's. So, for me, it was the 2022 Packers.

It'd be hard to come up with anything but the Seahawks' 1992 campaign. 2-14 says it all. The frustrating thing was that they had a playoff caliber defense which was undone by one of the most haplessly anemic offenses in modern NFL history. This led to several frustrating and aggravating losses. The worst was when they forced five turnovers from the Steelers and still lost. To add insult to injury, the Patriots beat them out for the top draft pick and they got Drew Bledsoe while the Hawks were stuck with Rick Mirer. The difference was the Hawks winning the Stupor Bowl against the Pats, with a key factor being a missed extra point by New England kicker Charlie Baumann. (I bring up his name because I once had a journalism class in college with his brother Gary.) Tom Flores' time in Seattle slightly tarnished his legacy.

2015 49ers. The Jim Tomsula season. I was actually surprised they finished as good as 5-11. They elevated him from DL coach all the way to interim to finish out Mike Singletary's last season. They somehow saw enough "potential" to give him another shot the first year of the post Harbaugh era. In way over his head. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I think I remember him audibly farting during a press conference. The following season 2016 with Chip Kelly would be a close second. Maybe everything will come together for him in his second try as a head coach? Nope. 2-14

1994 Bills. Most of the talent was still there from the Super Bowl teams although a year older. A regression wouldn't have been surprising. 10-6 and an early playoff exit maybe. But falling all the way to 7-9 with almost the same core group was painful to watch.

Citizen wrote:An absolutely painful season with an out-of-control team. Gregg was an incompetent tyrant. Wright was in over his head. Only 10 players on a revolving-door roster started all 16 games. After Dickey, McCarren, and Coffman were cut, the only veteran leader of note was Lofton, who mostly led the way to the jailhouse. Bill Renner had punts blocked in three straight games. The most exciting win of the season happened because Walter Stanley ignored a direct order from his coach to fair-catch a punt. And the win over Cleveland happened primarily because one of Gregg's harebrained schemes, replacing his offensive backfield at halftime, worked out for a change. This was a 2-14 team that got lucky twice.

Its amazing to me that Wright started that entire season. He wasn't any good at any point in time...not sure why the Packers even had him other than he went to Wisconsin. Kind of like how they had Jerry Tagge at QB back in the 70s. Two other things that were really annoying about that 1986 team: 1) the division was terrible. The Bucs were the worst team in the NFL, and its possible the Packers and Lions were the 2nd and 3rd worst teams. The Vikings went 6-2 in the division and still missed the playoffs at 9-7. 2) I remember a lot being made of all the USFL players the Packers acquired, but they all sucked. Cade was terrible, Paul Ott Carruth was terrible, Dan Ross came back to the NFL and was terrible, Chuck Fusina was terrible, David Greenwood hardly ever played. The only USFL guy who did anything was Mike Weddington, and he was just a reserve LB.

How Wright ended up as the starter is indicative of where the Packers were at then. They wavered between him and Steve Pelluer in the 1984 draft. They had him on a carousel with Lynn Dickey and Jim Zorn in 1985. They drafted Robbie Bosco in 1986, bad shoulder and all. They made Dickey a lowball offer before cutting him. They tried and failed to trade for Jim Everett. They brought in Doug Flutie for a tryout, but didn't want to give up a third-rounder for him. They acquired Chuck Fusina and Vince Ferragamo, neither of whom had anything to offer. Wright got the starting job more or less by default.