No fan base is happy after a loss, but there are different levels of disappointment. Determining who are the worst feeling fanbases is a combination of what their expectations were for the team and how they had performed recently. It is not just about a team’s record, as a fanbase that expected their team to lose would not feel as down as a fanbase that thought their team had an easy win and lost. Injuries can also be a factor, if your team had a crushing injury that could propel that team on the list. Also how you lose is very important, getting blown out or losing by a hail mary are both crushing losses, much more than losing by 10. Ultimately, the worst thing is the feeling that your team’s season just ended, losses or injuries that lean a fanbase into thinking that way, are the teams at the top of the list.
Honorable Mention:
Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 23-34 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Things were going so well, you were up 17-0, yes there have been a lot of comebacks this year but Tom Brady makes comebacks he doesn’t let up comebacks! At halftime the Buccaneers had only let up 83 yards but in the second half, mistakes started to pile up. Tom Brady turned the ball over on four straight possessions, two ints and two fumbles, which helped turn a 17-3 halftime lead into a 34-17 fourth quarter deficit. It was the first time Brady has had four turnovers in a half since Oct 28, 2001 when he lost to the Broncos 31-20. Another statistic Brady didn’t want on his resume was entering the game, he was 89-0 when leading by 17 or more points. The Buccaneers are still winning their division but they can’t be feeling that good after dropping their third game in their last four.
#3 Washington Commanders
12-20 loss to the New York Giants. This game is going to be a tough pill for the Commanders fan base to swallow. Entering the week, Washington had gone 3-0-1 in their last four games and New York was on the struggle bus going 0-3-1, with the tie being the first matchup between the two teams. Both teams were 7-5-1 and were competing for the final two wild card spots. The winner would be sitting nicely and the loser would be sweating out the race for the final spot, but it just seemed like the Commanders were the much hotter team who would avenge the first tie and get the tiebreaker. But just when you think you know where teams sit, comparably to each other, one team pulls out an upset. Not only is this a rough loss in terms of making the playoffs, but also the simple fact that you could make the argument the Commanders were the better team and still let it slip away. The Commanders had 387 yards, compared to 288 yards for the Giants, and still only managed 12 points due to bad plays at critical times. The Commanders had two turnovers and a turnover on downs, they only went 1-10 on third downs, and 1-3 in the red zone. Turnovers, third downs and red zone are all often key factors in the game, and while they outplayed the Giants in between the twenties they couldn’t overcome those crucial moments. What puts the Commanders fans in the top three worst feeling fan bases is not just the fact that they arguably outplayed a team and lost or the crucial hit in the standings, putting them on the edge of the playoffs. But the feeling that the refs screwed them on their final offensive play to make them lose the game. It was fourth and six on the six yard line, the Commanders had the ball down 12-20, last chance. Taylor Heinicki dropped back, bought some time and lofted the ball to Curtis Samuel which fell incomplete. Problem was, the defender who was initially holding down Samuel’s right arm then jumped into his back pushing himself above Samuel, while holding him down, to knock the ball away. It was textbook pass interference but no flag came out, kneel downs were the only thing left for the Giants. Like I said earlier, this might be a tough one for Commanders fans to swallow. With the 49ers, Browns, and Cowboys as their final three games, they could easily still be thinking about this game in a few weeks.
#2 New England Patriots
24-30 loss to the Los Vegas Raiders. What a wild game with an even wilder finish. To understand just how brutal the ending was for all Patriots fans you need to know what the game meant and the circumstances that led to the fateful final play. First the Patriots odds of making the playoffs drastically dropped, Vegas had the odds near 50 percent before the game and now at 19 percent after the game, so this was a crucial game. Second, is the number of opportunities the Patriots had to win the game. By my estimation, New England had five clear ways of winning the game at the end of the fourth quarter. First, with the score at 24-17 for New England, the Pats had a 3rd and 10 with three minutes left and no timeout for the Raiders, a first down would nearly seal the game but the play was well defended and they were forced to punt. Second, on the Raiders ensuing drive, they faced a 4th and 10 with 1:54, not converting would mean knee downs and the win for the Patriots. But they completed a 12 yard pass, staving off defeat for the second time in 6 plays. Later that drive, the Raiders completed a 30 yard pass to Keelan Cole for a touchdown to tie the game with 32 seconds left. The only problem was, there seemed to be a clear view of Cole’s foot out of bounds, but the referees did not deem it as clear enough evidence to overturn. Thus, if the call went the other way, the Raiders would have still needed 30 more yards in 32 seconds and no time outs, which would have been the third way the Patriots could have won. After the score was tied, the Patriots drove the ball to their own 45 with 10 seconds left, they could have attempted a hail mary or a 20 yard out route for a field goal, either of which would be a fourth way of winning. And of course they could just win in overtime, which is their fifth different way they could have won the game. Bill Belicheck passed on the longshot of scoring with 10 seconds left and played for overtime just calling a run play. Then all hell broke loose. Pats RB Rhamondre Stevenson broke free for 23 yards before lateraling it to Jacoby Meyers who choked it across the field to Raiders defensive end Chandler Jones who stiff armed Pats QB Mac Jones into the ground and ran for a touchdown, game over. Yes it is as crazy as it sounds. The Patriots had so many different ways of winning the game and they lost, in a play whose only purpose was to send the game to overtime. Now they are currently out of the playoffs with their final three games all against teams at least two games above 500. A brutal loss in an even more brutal fashion, most weeks this kind of loss would be a shoe in for the number one spot, but this week there is one fan base feeling the pain even more.
#1 Indianapolis Colts
36-39 OT loss to the Minnesota Vikings. My goodness, what did Jeff Saturday say at halftime? “Good job team, now let’s all go easy this second half, don’t want anyone getting hurt!” Or maybe “We did it! Now let’s all make sure we all think of something good for the post game speech, that’s the only thing left to worry about!” Whatever it was, led to a collapse like never seen before, with 8:34 seconds left in the third quarter, the Colts were beating the Vikings 33-0 and the NFL next gen stats, gave the Colts a 99.4% chance of winning. Even that felt low, considering in over 100 years of the NFL, with thousands of games that have been played, no team has ever lost when up by more than 32 points. Yet there is always a first, and last Saturday that was the Indianapolis Colts. The Vikings would go on a 36-3 run to end the game and once they forced overtime it felt like more of a question of when the Vikings would win, not if. Let’s break this down by the numbers, first consider that the average NFL team gets six possessions on one half of play, which means a team would have to score touchdowns on five of six drives, but the Colts gave the Vikings extra opportunities as the Vikings had nine full drives. This is because of extraordinarily quick drives by the Colts, in their eight second half drives they were averaging 1:47 per drive, which means they literally would have longer drives if they took knees three times and punted every drive.
The entire game wasn’t bad for the Colts, obviously to be up by that much the first half things were going great, they were creating turnovers, moving the ball, and scoring touchdowns. All three phases scored a touchdown, including a pick six and a block punt for a touchdown. At halftime, the 33 points scored by the Colts were the 2nd most points scored by any team in the 449 games so far this year. Of course, the jubilation of winning by so much so unexpectedly, as the Vikings were heavy favorites entering the game, quickly turned into unbelieving, stunned dread as the Vikings somehow stole a win so carved in stone that it would have seemed Medusa herself was looking at it. Losing a guaranteed win might be the most painful way a fan base could suffer a loss, and being up 33 points is a guaranteed win, at least before last Saturday. Entering the game, a fun fact was passed around that Jeff Saturday was the only head coach to ever be named “Saturday” who coached on a Saturday, now he is the only head coach to ever blow a 33 point lead, holy shit life comes fast.