The Philadelphia Eagles may have escaped falling down the NFC East standings with their 22-21 win on Thursday (the Giants were not so lucky, neither figuratively nor literally), but they still are still racing to evade potentially making history this season.
Only twice in NFL history has a playoff team made it with a below .500 record: the 2014 Carolina Panthers (7-8-1) and 2010 Seattle Seahawks (7-9), the latter of whom was once ranked by Nate Silver as the second worst playoff team of any sport of all-time. Both teams finished with negative point differentials, with the Panthers at -35 and the Seahawks at -97 (note: the 2020 Jets have already exceeded both at -110 except they did it in 10 fewer games). A point differential of -97 over 16 games means that the Seahawks were outscored by more than a touchdown per game that season! That season was also infamous for being the only time two different 10-6 teams in the same conference missed the playoffs entirely.
Furthermore, only 4 times since the NFL re-aligned in 2002 have all 4 teams in a division individually finished with a negative point differential: the 2014 NFC South, 2010 NFC West, 2006 NFC West, and 2004 NFC West. Amazingly the Seahawks were the beneficiary of each of the latter 3. Nevertheless, that's a rate of only 4/72 divisions (5.6%).
Can you see where we are heading with this?
Standings from ESPN
The NFC East is currently a combined 6-19-1 with all 4 teams firmly into the negative point differential. There is still more than half a season left to potentially see one of these teams rise above the rest, but as of now it certainly looks like a potential historically bad division. Thankfully, we can use my Tank-for-Trevor-thon 5000 Simulator to also forecast the potential outcomes in the NFC East.
Below is a histogram of the expected win total for the NFC East Champion across 5,000 simulated seasons. This is for whomever wins the NFC East in each simulation, but on an individual basis, I am forecasting about 66% to the Eagles (who had a game in hand over Dallas as I published this), 23.5% to Dallas, 7.7% to Washington, and 2.8% to the Giants.
The model forecasts the NFC East winner having 7.2 wins on average, which is right in line with the 7 wins of the 2010 Seahawks and 2014 Panthers. The model barely gives the winner more of a chance to finish .500 or above (34.6%) as it does to finish with the new record low for a division winner of 6 wins or less (28.3%). The distribution really stands out when compared to all of the other divisions:
Yikes!
As for the point differential, I don't have a way yet to quantify the odds of all 4 teams finishing negative. I think it's pretty safe to say that at least 3 will, with the Eagles having the best chance to hit the black. To avoid the dreaded 7 wins, the Eagles would need to finish 6-3. Let's optimistically say the 3 losses are all close and they lose by a field goal in each. That would mean the 6 wins would need to make up 42 points to get to neutral for the season, or an average of 7 points per win. That seems pretty unlikely for a team that a few days ago needed to score 2 late touchdowns just to win by 1 point over a team that literally had the game slip out from under their feet. However, they do have 4 more division games to possibly cut the deficit with one big blowout win. Most likely though, they would still be slightly negative even if they finished with 8 wins.
Then again, in the year 2020 it feels fitting for the worst playoff team of all time to etch their way into the history books, doesn't it?
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