What Does NFL History Tell Us About 0-2 Teams?

It's only two weeks into the 2012 NFL season, but already, some teams are hitting the panic button, as six of the NFL's 32 teams have yet to notch a win this year.

For fans of the Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Tennessee Titans, Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs, it's already "wait-until-next-year" mode. This handful of teams all have glaring weaknesses. Frankly, they just aren't very good, and while it's still very early in the season, the simple fact of the matter is, these clubs are jockeying more for positions in the 2013 NFL draft than playoff spots.

Sorry, all.

However, there's one team among the winless clubs that had not only playoff, but Super Bowl aspirations in 2012. The New Orleans Saints won 13 games a year ago, and after an offseason filled with turmoil and suspensions, the Saints were hoping to rally the troops and make a run at another NFC South title.

Things haven't gone as planned.

The absence of head coach Sean Payton has been sorely felt by a Saints team that has looked out of sync and has been woefully slow to make in-game adjustments. And after dropping games to the Washington Redskins and Carolina Panthers, the Saints sit at 0-2, desperately in need of a win to try to turn things around.

Unfortunately for the Saints, history isn't on their side. Only three teams in NFL history (the 1993 Dallas Cowboys, 2001 New England Patriots and the 2007 New York Giants) have started the season with consecutive defeats and gone on to win the Super Bowl.

Two of those clubs pulled off a pair of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, and the 1993 Dallas Cowboys only started 0-2 because star running back Emmitt Smith held out, looking for a new contract.

After that pair of losses, Smith got paid and the Cowboys were on their way.

In fact, the odds of the Saints making the postseason at all aren't very good at this point. According to Jarrett Bell of USA Today, since the National Football League expanded to its current postseason format in 1990, teams that started the season 0-2 have failed to make the playoffs 88 percent of the time.

As ugly as that number is, it pales next to the ugliness that the Saints have passed off as a defense in their first two games. Through two weeks, the 4-3 scheme of new defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has been downright offensive, allowing over 460 total yards a game and getting gashed by the Panthers for over 200 yards on the ground.

Unless that changes both drastically and quickly, the Saints aren't going anywhere this season, but linebacker Scott Shanle told Bell that no one should count the Saints out just yet.

"We're not used to it, but every year is not going to be the same. The only thing losing these two games does is guarantee is we won't go 16-0 or 15-1," Shanle said. "I've been here when (we've) won 13 in a row."

That may well be true, but as Shanle himself said, every year is not the same, and while the player suspensions handed down by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in the wake of the "Bountygate" schedule may have been overturned, it appears that Goodell may get his pound of flesh after all.

Because the New Orleans Saints are in very serious trouble.

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