The Saddest NFL Stats Of Week 4
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.One second left. The kicker trots out trying to control his breathing. Can't be too high. Can't be too low. This is it. One last play with it all on the line. A kicker dreams of this moment just as much as he dreads it. It's all up to him. The snap is good. The hold is good. His hips swing his foot through the ball like butter. It's perfect. Right down the middle. Plenty of length. The kick is good. Congratulations, kicker. Thanks to you, your team has come out with the well earned, buzzer beating, walk off…
tie.
That's right. Just a tie. They say some moments in life you have nothing to lose, so go give it your best. Sunday Night football proved that sometimes you also don't have anything to win. And that's really the ethos of this blog series. So what better way to start this list of sad NFL stats than to bring to light that two teams this week scored 40 points and didn't get a win. Funny enough, I had just caught the Jon Bois Scoragami video a couple days ago where he regaled on how wild the 43-43 tie was and how that'll never happen again. Well, never said anything about 40-40 I guess.
This brings us to our first sad stat.
Sad Stat #1: The Green Bay Packers made the first walk-off game tying field goal in NFL history
Cooper Neill. Getty Images.What can you say? Cowboys like to draw. They were pretty darn close to doing so in Week 2 vs the Giants as well and they were able to return home and finish the job in Week 4. And I think if we're keeping track of "must win" vs "can't lose", the records should show this was a "must win" for Green Bay and "can't lose" for Dallas, so the home team came away with a positive "-1" ending to their wins/loss stat vs a negative one for the Packers.
Anyway - here are all the field goals since 1999 in total (for some reason on the right), those that were game tying, and those game drawing for the record.
Having a Sunday Night game end with a tie left everyone with a bad taste in their mouth. Say what you will about tennis players, but they'd never just call it even on a 40-40 game.
Luckily for football fans, there was still Monday Night Football where had the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets meet to find out if either of them could come out a winner.
Sad Stat #2: Miami/New York Jets was just the third "0-3 Off" or worse in Monday Night Football history
Prime time games are supposed to be designed for the headliners. So it's not too often you get a battle between two winless teams in Week 4. But it has happened.
Cincinnati/Pittsburgh (both 0-3 coming in)
Washington/Dallas (both 0-4 coming in)
9-7 is probably an appropriate score for two 0-4 teams. Although 9-6 is probably what I would have guessed. Love that Tomlin came in hard with a 27-3 clobbering as his brain probably panicked at the thought of having a losing season began to set in.
Sad Stat #3: Only two teams made the playoffs after giving up 133+ points in first four weeks
Amy Kontras. Getty Images.2013 Eagles. 2002 Jets. That's it.
But if it helps - that Jets team is the Pennington led outfit that absolutely demolished Peyton Manning in the Wild Card 41-0. But still, this Ravens team was supposed to be that team that should probably have won the Super Bowl last year, if only Andrews didn't crap the bed a couple times vs the Bills. And now the injuries are starting to add to everything. This is a far cry from the days of Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, and Terrell Suggs.
Sad Stat #4 - Brian Thomas has zero receiving touchdowns and 40.75 yards per game after an all time top-ten rookie season
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.I ranked this guy super low in fantasy football and quite frankly, I didn't have a super great reason why. Didn't trust Trevor Lawrence and even if Liam Coen is a better coach, the odds of him using Thomas as much as the last coach was statistically just likely to drop.
But this much???
Only eight players have ever recorded 1,282 rookie receiving yards and played at least ten games in his second year. Here they all are with Thomas who comes in with a paltry 40.75 yards per game average through four weeks.
Remember Victor Cruz mania? The little salsa shuffle end zone celebration? Those were good days. Wouldn't last much longer for Cruz though and for the record, this actually is counting his second season as his rookie year since he never actually caught a ball in year 1. Whatever. Point is Brian Thomas is bad and I called my shot on it despite only having loose logic on it all. Please don't look back at how high I was on guys like Calvin Ridley though. You won't be impressed.
Honorable mention Matt Eberflus for never winning a road game on Sunday as the Bears head coach and having Ben Johnson do it in just his second try. Pretty much everyone and their mother posted that stat though. Shame the Bears didn't play the Cowboys in Dallas last week so we could twist the knife in a little more. Then again - it'd probably have ended up being a tie.