Seeing lost NFL seasons as life lessons for future
Teams seek ways of turning negatives into positives when faced with struggling times
WASHINGTON The iron man cracked on a cool October evening in 2016. Joe Thomas had never missed a snap in his nine years as the Cleveland Browns’ left tackle and, despite the team’s historic struggles, he had always harboured hope for progress. But after a blowout loss to the New England Patriots sent the Browns to 0-6, Thomas climbed into his car, parked in the depths of Firstenergy Stadium and had what he calls “a mental breakdown.”
His tears surprised Thomas’s wife, Annie. She asked what was wrong. Had he had a bad game? Joe cried for about 45 seconds, unable to explain how this year felt different, how he felt daunted and depressed, how he knew what they all knew: This team was built to fail.
“I was emotionally drained from trying to convince myself that this team was good enough,” Thomas said. “I was just broken.”
Every year, dozens of players experience the nightmare of a lost season. Their teams bottom out early, by accident or design, and stare down schedules promising nothing but pain.
Those in Washington, Miami and Cincinnati — who enter the season’s final week with three wins, four and one, respectively — have felt it this year.
Money helps and bruised egos heal, but losing in the NFL is different than other sports. Players can’t passively participate in a rebuild process, as they might in MLB, the NBA or NHL. Football’s violence exacts its physical toll no matter the result.
Players, coaches and executives who have endured such seasons — 5.7 per cent of teams have finished 3-13 or worse since 1970 — describe them as the hardest experience of their professional lives.
Losing recalibrates the demanding expectations necessary in the NFL. The lessons players and coaches learn during those seasons — how to stay motivated, where to look for growth, who to trust in the future — are crucial. The losses pile up, but if the team withstands them, can serve as a building block for the future. If the team withstands them.
“(That type of losing), it’s different,” said Paris Lenon, a linebacker on the 0-16 Detroit Lions in 2008 and the 1-15 St. Louis Rams in 2009. “It’s not just the locker-room. It’s the staff, it’s the front office, it’s the coaches. It’s just so much added pressure.”
Hue Jackson went on the radio in July and claimed Cleveland was “probably some of the best coaching I did.”
The internet guffawed; when he was fired in late October 2018, his Browns record was 3-36-1, the lowest winning percentage for any coach with one team in 40 or more games.
Jackson thought the ridicule revealed how little people understood about leading, and his former players and contemporary coaches agreed. Many said they didn’t find the statement ridiculous because, to stay sane, they too once learned to stop defining success by wins and losses.
Losing taught Jackson to evaluate himself in other ways. He measured his coaching by the progress of players at individual skills, and the ability to inspire full effort from downtrodden players in meaningless games. Jackson tried to prevent losing from becoming bad behaviour.
Earlier that summer, Jackson read about behavioural tendencies of successful-but-struggling alpha males and learned “they’re going to find their wins other ways,” including alcohol, drugs or violence. He safeguarded against these tendencies by hiring two psychologists, one for him and one for the team.
“I studied all that,” Jackson said of how losing affects mentalities. “I had to keep a firm, firm hand on the whole situation.”
One of the most important lessons teams learned was to find purpose without winning. It was critical because, without it, players and coaches remembered seeing seasons quickly spiral out of control. They saw players who might have once stayed until 6 p.m. start to cut out at 5:30 or 5. They knew some spent more time partying or playing video games than training or studying the playbook.
Paris Lenon still recalls the suffocating pressure he felt pulling up to the facilities for the Lions and Rams.
Randy Mueller, the general manager of the 1-15 Miami Dolphins in 2007, remembered how even team employees on the business side treated him like he was fragile. Jackson stopped going to his favourite restaurants in Cleveland at first, then quit going to the team cafeteria. He couldn’t bear the faces of the staff who wanted wins he wasn’t giving them, he said.
For motivation, Thomas and other Browns veterans resolved to mentor younger players and build a foundation for the future. Mike Riley, coach of the 1-15 San Diego Chargers in 2000, rewarded hard workers with plays schemed to highlight them. Mueller, the Dolphins GM, consoled himself by showing the team a steady demeanour that allowed few to see the frustration beneath it.
“The Titanic was a beautiful boat,” Mueller said. “They don’t have to know you’re bailing water like a son-of-a-buck inside.”
In many cases, lost-season leaders are replaced by their teams the following year. The people hired to replace them often come from outside the building. But Martin Mayhew was a notable exception. He took over as Lions GM in 2009 having been with the organization for seven years, knowing that the team needed substantial change.
Mayhew understood how hard it was to overcome a losing culture. He came up as a player in the late 1980s with the Redskins, and the team there — led by Doug Williams, Darrell Green and Russ Grimm — helped him understand what winning took.
He knew a business-as-usual off-season wouldn’t resonate with his players, so he embarked on a radical review.
Mayhew evaluated the entire organization. He researched everyone by interviewing those who interacted with them daily, including equipment managers, trainers and videographers. He watched players’ game tape (were you playing hard all game every game?) and studied position coaches (how many of your players got better this season?).
He met with the personnel and coaching staffs, and they weighed the player’s talent along his contributions to team culture. They spent hours sorting every player into three categories: Keep, on the fence (“good enough but upgrade if possible”) and need to go.
Mayhew knew the Lions would be a tough sell for free agents, so the team targeted players in trades.
They prioritized talent and resilience at the draft, selecting quarterback Matthew Stafford with the No. 1 overall pick. They later added safety Louis Delmas and linebacker Deandre Levy, two even-keeled, successful college players who they thought wouldn’t be fazed by losing.
They hired Jim Schwartz as coach because of his swagger, confidence and experience with successful teams. They signed players with experience to have one or two veterans in each position room who could learn the scheme and lead. This gave talented young players trusted resources.
“They don’t have to be great players,” Mayhew said of the veterans. “They need to have leadership ability and be professional.”
The Lions, three years after the 0-16 season, finished 10-6 and made the post-season. They remained competitive with that roster but never won a playoff game.
They fired Mayhew in 2015 and the GM, though disappointed with the results, was proud of his work there.
Mayhew joined the San Francisco 49ers’ front office in 2016 and, after the team’s 2-14 finish, helped engineer a similar turnaround that culminated in this year’s 12-3 breakout start.
But not every team has found the same success. Look no further than the Lions, mired in a threewin season that included a season-ending injury to Stafford, or the Browns, who were pre-season darlings but enter Week 17 with a 6-9 record.
Thomas, the former Browns star, was talking to Michael Irvin earlier this year when the former Cowboys receiver said something that struck him. Thomas had retired and was now a member of the NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football broadcast. Irvin told Thomas that “hope equals effort.”
Irvin verbalized what Thomas always knew. Players and coaches on playoff teams need no added motivation to practise well. Thomas realized hope was the intangible ingredient necessary to pair with an organizational reconstruction like Mayhew’s.
It is perhaps the most important lesson, players and coaches from lost seasons say, that struggling teams need to learn. “When you have a losing culture,” Mayhew said, “it’s so hard to overcome that.”
The Titanic was a beautiful boat. They don’t have to know you’re bailing water like a son-ofa-buck inside.