Cleveland Browns: 3 myths exposed about the 2016 team
By Thomas Moore
You don’t have to go very far back in league history to realize there are several teams that were worse off than this year’s Browns.
Thanks to their Week 16 win over the San Diego Chargers, the Browns avoided joining the 2008 Detroit Lions as the only teams to finish a 16-game schedule at 0-16. Those Lions allowed a league-worst 32.3 points per game, which makes the 28.25 points per game the Browns gave up this season look impressive in comparison.
The 2006 Oakland Raiders – just four years after playing in the Super Bowl – scored just 168 points as quarterbacks Andrew Walter and Aaron Brooks combined for six touchdown passes and 21 interceptions. As bad as the Browns offense was this year – especially with Robert Griffin III at quarterback – Cleveland still managed to score almost 100 points more than that Oakland team and had 15 touchdown passes.
The 1980 New Orleans Saints finished at 1-15 while giving up more than 30 points per game, while the 1991 Indianapolis Colts, also a 1-15 team, only scored 143 total points that season.
While fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers would love for everyone to believe the NFL did not exist prior to 1974, the reality is that there have been plenty of bad Steeler teams throughout the years. The 1934 teams went 2-10 while scoring a total of 51 points, while the Steelers were just 6-34-4 from 1938 to 1941 while averaging eight points a game.
The 1965 team (2-12 while giving up 28.3 points per game) and the 1969 team (1-13 while giving up 29 points per game) are also in the running.
Even the New England Patriots have skeletons in their closet, most notably the 1990 edition that went 1-15 and finishing at the bottom of the league in offense after averaging just 11.3 points per game.
But any discussion about the worst team in the NFL begins and ends with the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Along the way to an 0-14 record the Buccaneers were shut out five times, averaged less than nine points a game and lost by an average of 20 points per game. Steve Spurrier was the team’s quarterback and he finished the year with just seven touchdown passes and a long pass of 38 yards.
Tampa’s losing streak would extend through the first 12 games of the following season, but they were in the NFC Championship Game just two seasons later, so take heart Browns fans – there really can be a light at the end of the tunnel.