NFL Teams That Are Failing Their Rebuilds at Midseason

For NFL teams, the idea of a perfect scenario is to never have to rebuild. And if that fails, the goal is a quick rebuild, not an extended one. 

That means showing progress on a year-to-year basis, even in the most dramatic rebuilds. Anything failing that could mean going from "rebuilding" to merely coexisting in a purgatory of sorts, recycling head coaches and starting passers every few years. 

Looking at the biggest rebuilders this year, some are off to a bad enough start that it looks like a failure already. The starts are so bad that they call into question the direction of the franchises in question, starting with the head coach and going from there. 

Here's a look at a handful of franchises that tried to hit the reset button within the last few years and have flopped badly enough to suggest another punch of the button might happen as soon as this offseason. 

Houston Texans

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Nobody should have expected the Houston Texans to sprint out of the gates and possibly flirt with a wild-card spot in a wide-open AFC and miserable AFC South where Tennessee has six wins and second place belongs to three-win Indianapolis. 

But 1-7 isn't getting it done for new head coach David Culley. 

Through eight games, the team's only win is over one-win Jacksonville. Losses of 31-21, 24-9, 40-0, 31-3, 31-5 and 38-22 are on the record. The Deshaun Watson-less passing attack has thrown 10 scores and eight picks, the running game has averaged 3.3 yards per carry and the defense has 15 sacks, tied for ninth-worst in the league. 

Behind the scenes, the Texans are still speculated to be a big player at the trade deadline, with ESPN's Jeremy Fowler reporting they're still engaged with the Miami Dolphins in trade talks over Watson.

The three-time Pro Bowler is facing 22 lawsuits stemming from allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. Ten women have filed formal complaints with Houston police as well.

But even if the team gets a haul of draft assets, they're not on pace for first in next year's draft order, and the team hasn't been competitive enough on the field to suggest the front office would put Culley in charge of those assets and direction of the franchise, anyway. 

Culley was in an impossible situation after the Texans added more than 20 players on one-year deals this past offseason. But failing to even reach last year's four-win mark while taking lopsided losses could only make things worse. 

Jacksonville Jaguars

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Elsewhere in the AFC South, the Jacksonville Jaguars have been one of the more noteworthy flops among rebuilders. 

Questions about whether Urban Meyer was the right guy for the head-coaching job in his first pro attempt chased him to Jacksonville. He inherited the first overall pick and nabbed Trevor Lawrence before almost immediately creating a major off-field distraction. The first-year coach apologized to the team after a video posted on social media showed a woman dancing on him in a bar after he didn't fly home with the team following their 24-21 defeat to the Cincinnati Bengals.

Lost in the circus act that started with adding Tim Tebow to the roster to play a completely new position nearly 10 years removed from his last pro stint was a 1-6 start. The lone win was a triumph in London over another member of this list, the Dolphins, while the Jaguars got blown out by Houston and most recently lost 31-7 to a Seattle team quarterbacked by Geno Smith, not Russell Wilson. 

Lawrence has shown flashes, as expected, but he still has eight touchdowns and nine interceptions on the year and the game plans have called for 50-plus passes twice already. The Jaguars don't do anything relatively well, whether it's offensively (more than 20 points three times, with a high of 23) or applying pressure defensively (11 sacks). 

The Jaguars weren't going all-in on just Meyer, but his entire program, which would explain why Sunday saw owner Shad Khan reiterate his faith in the head coach. However, if the team continues on this trajectory, it could change some minds by the time it has played 17 games. 

New York Giants

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The New York Giants are a good example of a team that resets often. Ben McAdoo followed Tom Coughlin's 2004-2015 run for nearly two seasons, which gave way to Pat Shurmur. 

Shurmur won nine games from 2018-2019 before Joe Judge arrived in 2020. Judge has won eight games in 23 tries. Unfortunately for the head coach, his job might be tied to that of 2019 sixth overall pick Daniel Jones. 

Jones again hasn't looked the part, this time completing 63.5 percent of his passes over seven games, throwing five touchdowns and four interceptions. Key pieces like Saquon Barkley, first-round wideout Kadarius Toney and big free-agent add Kenny Golladay haven't stayed healthy, but Jones hasn't looked like a guy who elevates everyone around him, either (he's thrown 26 picks and fumbled 23 times in 34 games). 

The Giants are 2-5 this year and like most listed here, don't do much well. Besides Jones' struggles, the ground game can't average four yards per carry, the defense has just 16 sacks and the team allows an average of 25.7 points per game, a bottom-10 mark. 

At this rate, the Giants could regress from the 6-10 mark last year, and that may mean a new head coach and top-end quarterback prospect combination in New York. 

Miami Dolphins

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The Miami Dolphins are the most disappointing team in football by a wide margin. 

Miami looked like the new big contender on the block in the AFC with Tom Brady finally gone from the AFC East. The team also won 10 games last year. Maybe the fact that was only the franchise's second season over .500 since 2008 should have been a red flag. 

This third year of head coach Brian Flores' tenure is off to a 1-7 start. 2020 top-five passer Tua Tagovailoa has appeared in five games, throwing seven touchdowns and four interceptions. As mentioned, his franchise continues to reportedly flirt with the idea of trading him away in only his second season in favor of somebody else. 

Maybe Miami's roster-building habits should have been a red flag, too. The Dolphins have spent big in free agency as of late (four signings of $30 million or more in total dollars since 2020) and drafted five first-round players since 2020. Few of those draft picks have had a major impact, if not been a detriment, and moving up to select wideout Jaylen Waddle (413 yards, three touchdowns, 8.6 per-catch average is eighth on the team) this year meant sacrificing next year's first-round pick—which is projected to be the third overall pick. 

This is the second time in three years Flores has started 1-7. In 2019, he was able to rebound for a 5-11 finish. Falling short of that, especially while the team apparently eyes a quarterback change already, would signal this rebuilding effort is kaput. 

Detroit Lions

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The Detroit Lions are the only winless team left in the NFL. 

When the Lions traded Matthew Stafford and got back two first-round picks and Jared Goff in the exchange, the team still probably didn't envision this sort of stinker to start the new era. The Lions were going to be bad, but bad enough to make matching last year's five-win mark set by two different head coaches look unlikely seemed impossible. 

Yet here the Lions are—and it seems as if things are getting worse. First-year head coach Dan Campbell has already called out Goff (eight touchdowns, six interceptions). And the team has gone from competing in most games to 34-11, 28-19 and 44-6 losses over its last three. 

That 44-6 defeat came at the hands of a three-win Philadelphia squad that was able to run wild against a Lions team that didn't look like it was trying while coughing up 236 yards and four touchdowns on the ground. It was so bad that beat writers were quick to bring up the possibility of 0-17. 

Like many coaches on this list, Campbell inherited a terrible situation. But when the reputation of a "bad team that plays hard" goes out the window while taking brutal losses, the hope that things could be better once the roster gets overhauled goes, too.