The AFC South just might be the worst division in football, despite having the Indianapolis Colts, a team with three consecutive playoff appearances including the AFC championship game last season. Along with the Houston Texans, Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars, there’s not a single team with a positive net rating.
That’s right. All four teams have given up more points than they’ve scored. There are two teams in the division, the Jags and the Titans, with four consecutive losses. The Colts are the best team in the division with a 3-3 record, but all three wins came within the division. The Titans are 0-4 in the AFC so far and have long forgotten their opening week win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, while head coach Ken Whisenhunt has now lost 29 of his his last 33 games on the sidelines for the Titans and Cardinals.
The AFC South isn’t the only division without a single team above .500. The NFC East, which has deteriorated in quality now that the Dallas Cowboys are spending their time waiting for Tony Romo and Dez Bryant to come back, has two 3-3 teams as the best in the division. But both have them a plus net rating. Things aren’t as terrible there as they are in a division that’s been awful for quite some time, with the Jaguars and Titans unable to break through after years of well below mediocrity.
Someone is going to make the playoffs out of this division, probably the Colts. But it might be a case of repeating the NFC South’s achievement from last year: The Carolina Panthers made the playoffs on a 7-8-1 record and even though they actually won a postseason game, the only reason they made the postseason to begin with was an awful division. They won four consecutive games to make it in, three of them coming against their division rivals and the other against the terrible Cleveland Browns.