- Commissioner’s statement on Ventura, Marte
- Ronnie O’Sullivan: Masters champion ‘felt so vulnerable’ in final
- Arron Fletcher Wins 2017 WSOP International Circuit Marrakech Main Event ($140,224)
- Smith challenges Warner to go big in India
- Moncada No. 1 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- Braves land 2 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- Kingery makes MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- New Zealand wrap up 2-0 after Bangladesh implosion
- Mathews, Pradeep, Gunathilaka to return to Sri Lanka
- Elliott hopes for rain for Poli
View from the Cellar: Covering the NFL’s Worst Teams for a Living
- Updated: November 24, 2016
Over the last 10 years, the New England Patriots played in a staggering seven AFC Championship Games and competed in football’s biggest game three times. Two years ago, they lifted the Lombardi Trophy as champions of the NFL.
During that same 10-year span, the Seattle Seahawks made the playoffs seven times. They played in a pair of Super Bowls, losing in thrilling fashion to the Patriots and blowing out the Denver Broncos, who themselves won the Super Bowl last year.
They are the NFL’s most successful teams. The most popular teams. The league’s most talked-about teams.
There’s a flip side to that coin, however. The NFL has 32 teams, many of which haven’t sniffed the playoffs—much less the Super Bowl—in years. Teams for whom a winning season would be cause for a citywide celebration.
They are the NFL’s cellar-dwellers.
Bleacher Report recently spoke to the men and women who cover the NFL’s most beleaguered franchises about those struggles, why they continue and how those teams might finally make their way out of the NFL’s basement.
In doing so, two themes came to the forefront repeatedly—failure, just like success, starts at the top. And if your NFL franchise can’t answer the quarterback conundrum, it’s going to be headed nowhere fast.
When you look the NFL’s most consistently successful franchises, a common thread runs through them. The Pittsburgh Steelers have had three head coaches since Chuck Noll took the reins back in 1969. Bill Belichick has prowled the sidelines in Beantown since 2000. There’s continuity both among the coaching staff and the front office.
In the city where Belichick got his start as a head coach, however, it’s been another story altogether. In roughly the same time frame (since 1999), the Cleveland Browns have had nine head coaches and almost as many general managers.
Dennis Manoloff, who has written about the Browns for the Cleveland Plain Dealer since the early 1990s, believes that carousel has played a large part in Cleveland’s woeful 51-120 record over the past 10-plus seasons—including 0-11 in 2016.
“I think with the Browns specifically, the problem has been impatience from the top,” Manoloff told Bleacher Report. “Where ownership tasks a group of people with running the team and then the losing occurs. Panic sets in and they feel there’s a need for a change. That constant change has really crippled this franchise since 1999.”
“You get the cycle of poverty with these bad teams,” he continued. “They say they want to rebuild and everything sounds great in the beginning. And then as soon as the losing starts, panic sets in and there goes the so-called ‘commitment to rebuild.’ You’re back starting all over again with another regime. It’s certainly been the case with Cleveland.”
It’s not a problem unique to Cleveland, either. Up the shores of Lake Erie sits the city of Buffalo, home of the longest current playoff drought in the National Football League. Since the Bills last made the postseason in 1999, they’ve had eight head coaches.
Joe Buscaglia of WKBW, who has covered the Bills since 2010, sees the problems of the past as having started even higher up the food chain.
“It’s a lot to do with who they put in charge,” Buscaglia said. “At one point, this Bills team had Marv Levy as their GM. Marv Levy was a really good coach for the Bills for a long time, but he had no experience doing that. He wasn’t the GM by name, but (then-team president) Russ Brandon—who’s more of a business guy—kind of put on the GM hat for a little bit.”
“It’s tough for a losing organization to get someone to come in and coach the team,” Buscaglia said. “I remember there were some high hopes when they were trying to hire someone in 2010, and they end up with Chan Gailey (who had not been a head coach in quite some time). Fast-forward to Doug Marrone, who they built up as their top candidate. But he went to the Pinstripe Bowl at Syracuse for two years—he turned the program around a little bit, but not in an overwhelming sense.”
“The Bills at least wanted to talk to Chip Kelly that year, but they couldn’t get the time of day,” he continued. “Same deal with Ken Whisenhunt and guys like that.”
Since the departure of Jon Gruden in 2008, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers haven’t kept a coach for more than three years. They went 58-102 from 2006-2015 and haven’t made the postseason since Gruden left.
Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times blames the merry-go-round for much of the misery.
“Ownership sets the tone,” Stroud said. “I think you see good organizations usually win and continue to win even if there’s a turnover in coaches and players, which is inevitable. Certainly continuity especially in your coaching staff is important, but again, a lot of that has to do with ownership.”
“What happens to these bad teams—and it happened to the Bucs for years—is that you run into a cycle of ‘change the coach, change the quarterback,'” Stroud continued. “When Lovie Smith got here, in two years there was a 75 percent turnover in the roster. So when you’re …
