Which of the Surprising 0-2 Teams Will Rebound This Season?

Forget last year’s champion Giants for a minute. Ten NFL teams find themselves at 0-2 after Week 2, and history tells us that no more than two of them are likely to make the postseason. Yes, the Giants started 0-2 last season and won the Super Bowl. But since the playoff format expanded to 12 teams in 1990, only 19 teams have started 0-2 and made the playoffs. And in any given season since 1990, no more than two teams starting 0-2 have gone to the playoffs in that same year.We don’t concern ourselves with the rebuilding Chiefs, Dolphins, or Rams, all losers a season ago, but rather the expected front-runners who have stumbled out of the gates.The Chargers were this year’s Super Bowl darlings, the AFC runners-up who gave the Patriots more than they expected to handle at the conference title game in New England last January. Now they stand winless, victims of two crushing, last-minute defeats with a sprinkling of bad officiating in there for bad measure. Their most devastating defender is done for the season, and their leading rusher might be out for a while.The Vikings spent money this offseason — a story in and of itself — to become a Super Bowl contender. Their needs on paper were a pass rusher, a deep receiving threat, and help in the secondary — so they went out and spent big on a pass rusher (2007 sack leader Jared Allen), a deep threat (receiver Bernard Berrian), and secondary help (safety Madieu Williams). So what gives? Allen has one sack, Berrian has three catches (zero on Sunday) in two games, and Williams is sidelined indefinitely with a neck injury.This was supposed to be the Jaguars’ season. After coming up just short of the Colts the past two seasons in the AFC South, the power appeared to be shifting the Jaguars’ way. They finally settled on a quarterback following David Garrard’s breakout season, and the running game was the envy of most clubs, with the savvy Fred Taylor’s running buoyed by the bowling-ball force of Maurice Jones-Drew. Defensively, they had a veteran group returning with just the right dose of young pass-rushing juice (draft picks Derrick Harvey and Quentin Groves) added. And the Jaguars were poised to play like they had nothing to lose, amid rumors that their future might lie in Los Angeles. So much for hope — the Jaguars have been listless offensively in their 0-2 start.Perhaps there was no clear-cut divisional favorite in the NFC West, but the Seahawks had recent history and a veteran group going for them. In what is believed to be coach Mike Holmgren’s final season, the team had a reasonable formula for winning a division title: a talented quarterback in Matt Hasselbeck and a defense led by four Pro Bowl selections from last season. The running game was bolstered in the offseason, and the questions on the offensive line were not as dramatic. But the Seahawks were dismantled by a far more cohesive Bills team in Buffalo in Week 1 and let one slip away against the 49ers at home.So which of these teams is in the most trouble? Which has the best chance to pull out of its slump?“Of those teams you mentioned, I think the Chargers have the least to worry about. They lost one game on the last play [in Week 1 vs. Carolina] and had another end on a bad call against them,” an NFL personnel director said yesterday morning. “I still see a talented team, even without [Shawne] Merriman and with [LaDainian] Tomlinson’s toe beat up. I think they’ll be fine.”They Chargers have been in a position to win both games, but the Vikings have taken themselves out of advantageous spots by cracking in the fourth quarter. Also compounding their problems has been the coaches’ lack of faith in quarterback Tarvaris Jackson. Many NFL people thought this was a Super Bowl team minus the quarterback, and the coaches are acting as if they, too, believe that. Through two games, Jackson has led a tame passing attack that rarely asks him to make plays with his arm — especially in critical situations.“You can have the best running game in the world, and maybe they do, but you can’t win unless you have faith in your QB making the right decisions and you put him in a position to succeed,” the director said. “That they are not.”The Jaguars have the best chance to turn things around by doing what they have not done in recent years: beat the Colts. Indianapolis itself was nearly left for dead at the hands of the Vikings until Peyton Manning willed the team back from a 15-0 deficit. Perhaps the Jaguars’ offseason focus of finally beating the Colts was too nearsighted, but it could end up working out this Sunday if Jack Del Rio can get his defense and run game fired up. All he needs to do is roll the tape of this past weekend to see Vikings pass rushers all over Manning and Adrian Peterson running through the Colts’ smaller defenders for more than three quarters.The Seahawks could be in a little trouble, however. With a slew of injuries at wideout, they have had to trot out cast-off players such as Billy McMullen and Michael Bumpus into the regular offense, making it tougher for Hasselbeck to get anything going consistently through the air.“They are a passing team, period, and they have no one to catch the ball,” the director added. “Defensively, for all the Pro Bowlers they have, there are still too many holes that I see. They got to [49ers QB] J.T. O’Sullivan a few times, but they let him lead them down the field way too much. I see a real problem for them.”Being 0-2 is no fun in the NFL, but it means different things for these once-title-dreaming teams. For the Chargers and Jaguars, there might be hope. But the Vikings and Seahawks might be in real trouble.Mr. Edholm, a senior editor at Pro Football Weekly, can be reached at eedholm@ pfwmedia.com.

Which of the Surprising 0-2 Teams Will Rebound This Season?

Which of the Surprising 0-2 Teams Will Rebound This Season?

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