Welcome to Trendlines, your weekly installment of what’s trending up and what’s trending down in the world of sports.
This week, millions of Americans breathed a sigh of relief. No longer will they (and in this case me) be worried about whether their weekends would continue to be filled with boredom.
No, the NFL’s Hall of Fame game marked the beginning of the preseason. It’s the first sign that autumn is near and football is back.
Every new season means hope for teams that have never won a Super Bowl (like the Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Chargers, the Hall of Fame game participants).
It, unfortunately, also means that some classic teams that have recently struggled get another shot at rediscovering their greatness of yore.
And this is where we begin.
There are few things more delicious than “America’s team” (and the quotes are there for a reason) falling flat on its face over and over again.
Can you believe Dallas hasn’t appeared in or won a Super Bowl since the mid-1990s? There are people I work with who weren’t even alive then.
The Cowboys were truly mediocre last year and they’re hoping to bounce back this season under new coach Brian Schottenheimer. I don’t know how Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones landed on Schottenheimer, but things aren’t looking good for the team with a Lone Star.
Vegas odds put the Cowboys’ chances of winning a Super Bowl this year at about 2%.
How very, very sad that Dallas’ Super Bowl drought looks like it’ll hit the big 3-0 after this season.
Trending down – New England Patriots’ playoff wins: Down six seasons in a row
When the Patriots were winning all of those Super Bowls, the big question was whether quarterback Tom Brady or head coach Bill Belichick was more responsible.
Well, the Pats haven’t won a playoff game since Brady left. Brady went on to win a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Belichick, on the other hand, is now coaching in college.
This has left the team from the Bay State in a world of hurt. They finished last season with more than three times as many losses as wins. They were so bad that they dumped their first-year head coach Jerod Mayo and brought in Mike Vrabel.
This season? The betting odds say that they will miss the playoffs again.
We’re a long way from nobody being able to stop the Brady/Belichick duo.
Delicious.
Although they lost last night, the Lions have one of the five best chances of winning a Super Bowl this season. They have a better shot than any team that’s never won one, except for my Bills.
I used to joke that the Bills hadn’t made the playoffs since before my bar mitzvah. The funniest jokes are always the true ones. They didn’t make the playoffs from the 2000 season through the 2016 season.
Those days are gone. The Bills are basically in contention all the time now. They have won a playoff game in every season dating back to the 2020-2021 season. This five-year streak is the longest in the franchise’s history.
The question is whether they can finally get to the mountain top with MVP quarterback Josh Allen. They have the second best chance, according to Vegas odds makers.
If Allen and the Bills can do it, then who says the Lions, Chargers, Arizona Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, Minnesota Vikings or Tennessee Titans won’t be next?
