Explain to me how the Titans, Chargers, and Bengals are all better than the entire NFC South?
The NFC South is the losingest division ever in regular season win percentage (.445). The Buccaneers have the most championships in that division and not only have the worst regular season win percentage in the division (.404), it's the worst regular season win percentage of all 32 franchises...
Yes, you read that right. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have a worse regular season win percentage than the woeful Cardinals or Texans or Lions or Jets. In the regular season, they are the worst team ever of all the teams that exist today...
And yet they STILL may be the best team in that division historically. That tells you how bad the division is...
The Bucs are saved by two sustained periods of relevance: the Dungy-to-Gruden era (1996-2008), and the Brady era (2020-present). This is 16 seasons of great and sometimes elite football, with a win percentage of .554, won both of their Super Bowl appearances, won two of their three NFCCG appearances, and made the playoffs 10 of those 16 years. For some context, if that .554 was their entire history win percentage, it would be 6th highest ever...
For about a third of their existence, the Bucs have basically the Ravens historical background...
The problem then, is there is another ~65% of their history where they weren't just bad, their fukking five-alarm fire terrible. In their other 30 seasons Tampa is 156-327 (.323), with only TWO playoff appearances in those 30 years. This is Detroit bad, x5. Detroit in no 30-year interval has missed the playoffs 28 times. This tells you historically awful the Bucs are outside of their 16 year success streak...
Again I'm honing in on Tampa to illustrate my point about the NFC South, because I think they are the GOAT NFC South team, by a hair. They were better, by a hair, in their 16 years, than the Saints were in the Brees/Payton 15 years. We know the Saints outside of those 15 years are arguably even worse than Tampa...
The Panthers don't even have 15 years of relevance. They had 2003-08, the John Fox era, and then the Peak Cam years, 2013-17. 11 years of high level ball. The Falcons are the worst team on that division, traditionally they have a hot year or two and then disappear back into obscurity. They had a 10-year run in the Matt Ryan era, 2008-17, that is there only sustained period of success, the same Ryan Falcons heads shyt on. If it weren't for him we'd be talking about the worst team in NFL history...
So that's the thing, this entire division has strong arguments as the worst team in league history. Carolina is the only one with a winning playoff record. Carolina also has the highest regular season win percentage in that division, at .472---->which is still lower than both the Titans and Chargers...
The Titans, Chargers, and Bengals all have three or more eras of sustained success in their histories, no one in the NFC South has more than two (and again the Saints and Falcons, albeit 10+ year runs, only have one single era of relevance on their resumes)...
Titans, Chargers, Bengals have just been relevant across eras to more generations of football fans than any South team. Their entire bodies of work are just better---->note that it isn't by much, as I have those AFC teams and the NFC South squads in succession one right after the other...
Bears are too low man. It's only post lovie that they have struggled.
This is false...
The Bears were fukking garbage from 1966 to 1976, and this particularly doesn't make them look good at all, as it aligns with The Merger and appears as if the added competitiveness of a larger league revealed a franchise who dominated when it was one game playoffs, kinda like a criticism against Russell's Celtics...
They were garbage again in the early 80s, garbage again from about '96 to '04 besides the fluke 13-3 year, and this "post-Lovie" trash run has been 12 years and counting besides the fluke Nagy year...
The Bears have been pretty terrible for the better part of 55 years, and are still a Top 15 All-Time organization on the backs of their first 45 years in existence, and that '84 to '94 run...
