The 2024 DOOM Index

Bring out yer dead! Bring out yer dead! Week 2 has come and gone, and your favorite team is once again DOOOOOOMED!

A stutter in Week 1 can be written off as rust, or bad luck, or just a particularly nasty matchup to begin the year. Since 1990, when the NFL expanded the playoffs to 12 teams, 25% of teams that started the year 0-1 ended up making the playoffs anyway. But an 0-2 start? Now you’re down to just 11%, and your chances have been near-fatally wounded.

A two-game losing streak doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not good at football. The 49ers made the Super Bowl last season despite a three-game losing streak, and the Packers and Buccaneers survived four-game streaks to make the playoffs. But starting 0-2 puts you in a major hole, even if you are otherwise a playoff caliber-team. Not only do you find yourself looking up at the rest of the league in the standings, but you’re burning valuable tiebreaker capital while you’re doing it. And heaven help you if you start 0-3, where making the playoffs requires a nearly once-in-a-generation unicorn squad, with just four teams managing it in the past 34 years. At that point, you might as well pack it in, chicken out, and bravely run away.

So, while not all 0-2 teams are created equal, teams that have yet to find a way into the win column this season are in great peril. All of them are various degrees of DOOMed, and it’s up to us to index to just what degree DOOM has come from them. Some of these teams may claim that they feel fine, but we know that they’ll be stone dead in a moment. Let’s run down everyone left, to see which ones have been already turned into a newt, and which can still get better. We’ll also check what our playoff odds say about their future. But if it says your 0-2 team’s season is essentially already over, don’t worry. It’s only a model.

Tier 1: It’s Just a Flesh Wound

Baltimore Ravens

Current Playoff Odds: 63.9%

There are fans of the Baltimore Ravens calling for John Harbaugh’s job. Actual human beings, who have presumably viewed football at some point prior to this season. There are about 20 franchises, at a bare minimum estimate, who are enjoying the heck out of the schadenfreude of one of the league’s top franchises over the past five or six years inducing so much panic into the fan base.

There are real, annoying stats that Harbaugh is racking up! Harbaugh now has the most blown double-digit leads in the fourth quarter of any coach in the past 35 years, with nine. Fourth-quarter defense, especially, feels like it’s been a running theme. It hasn’t, mind you; the Ravens actually have had better fourth-quarter defensive DVOA than first-to-third quarter DVOA. But that sinking feeling in Ravens’ fans guts isn’t always appeased by numbers and facts.

And all of those losses have happened since 2022. It’s not like this is something he’s been gradually assembling over a long, storied career – this is happening over and over again in a very small window, and it’s driving fans batty. Ignore the fact that this means he was 79-0 in such situations until 2021, or that the coach that he passed for the record here is Andy Reid, a coach of some renown. It also, of course, means that the Ravens are often in a position to blow double-digit leads. It’s not that these first-world problems aren’t problems, but they are still the sort of problems you get from a very good team that struggles, at times, being great. Those teams don’t belong on the DOOM index. They’re teams that break your heart, not your spirit. The Ravens are clearly cursed, not doomed, and we respect that distinction here.

Baltimore is also very unlucky to be sitting 0-2 right now. According to our Post-Game Win Expectancy, the Ravens would be expected to have beaten the Raiders 94.5% of the time, based on DVOA of the games plus play counts and penalties. They lost to the Chiefs by the tip of Isaiah Likely’s toe. They outgained the Chiefs 452-353, and the Raiders 383-260. They’ve forced as many turnovers as they’ve given up. They haven’t made any egregious fourth down decisions or strategic mistakes. And yet, here we are.

The offensive line is struggling, Derrick Henry isn’t quite the same player he once was, they don’t have any receivers outside of Zay Flowers, and maybe the defense is missing Mike Macdonald more than they thought they would. Letting Patrick Mahomes come back on you is one thing. Letting Gardner Minshew do it is another. There are reasons for Ravens fans to be antsy, especially in a season which is very much Super Bowl or bust – anything other than getting past the Chiefs would be considered a failure, and starting 0-2 is a big step down the road towards failure.

That being said, take a deep breath, Ravens fans. Even at 0-2, you’re still ninth in VOA at 14.2%, the best 0-2 team by a significant margin. DAVE, which combines the results so far with our preseason projections, still has the Ravens as the third-best team in the league. The road isn’t easy in the immediate future – Dallas, Buffalo and Cincinnati in back-to-back-to-back weeks isn’t exactly what you’re looking for in a get-right slate. Then again, our numbers have the Ravens better than those three teams. It’s quite possible – perhaps even likely? – that in a couple weeks, the Ravens will be basking in the glow of some huge wins that once again have them towards the top of power rankings. They are both too good and have been playing too good not to see results soon. The explosive plays will come. The offense will find its rhythm. The defense may not climb back to where it was under Macdonald, but they’re not going to bite on every single play fake this season. It’s very doubtful they’ll be as good as last year’s team, but this is still a very good football team that has waded through a period of bad luck.

At the very least, I still expect them to win the AFC North and advance to at least the Divisional round. After all, how else can Harbaugh blow a fourth-quarter lead in the postseason if they don’t even get there?

Cincinnati Bengals

Current Playoff Odds: 45.9%

At some point, you just have to stand back and stare at the outlier stat. The Bengals are 1-11 in games in the first two weeks since Zac Taylor took over in 2019. That’s almost unthinkably bad. That’s not just the worst starting team of the past six years, it’s the worst six-year stretch since the 2008-2013 Cleveland Browns. Comparing these Bengals squads to the teams of Eric Mangini and Colt McCoy seems like heresy! Those Browns teams finished their seasons 26-58, while the Bengals are 36-35-1, so we’re talking two very different caliber of teams. Some of the Bengals’ early game struggles can be handwaved away – injuries and lost training for Joe Burrow; a high preponderance of tough early matchups as the Bengals have become highlighted as AFC contenders in recent years, and so on. But it would be sure nice to not start a September behind the eight-ball for once!

And, once again, we can tag some of the early struggles for Cincinnati as rust and injury related. With Tee Higgins out and Ja’Marr Chase working himself into game shape after an unsuccessful contract dispute this offseason, the Bengals’ passing attack hasn’t been clicking on all cylinders. They currently sit 21st with a 2.3% passing DVOA. The non-Chase and Higgins receivers have been stepping up, but they’re not of the same caliber; getting that twosome back in action will be big for their future performance. You don’t want the team to be so reliant on just their superstars, but that’s where they are for the time being, and we should see them both at full speed sooner rather than later – Higgins may well play this week. And as long as Joe Burrow isn’t photographed picking up a water bottle in a strange and unusual way, maybe that will calm some nerves in Cincinnati.

I also think Bengals fans should be happy that their team looked alive against Kansas City after being so flat against New England. Frankly, the Bengals should have beaten the Chiefs; it took a pass interference, a strip-sack, and a 50+-yard field goal for Kansas City to win. It was closer than the Patriots loss, at any rate – the New England game looks close on paper, but the Bengals kept tripping over their own feet for most of that game. It was less impressive than the Ravens’ loss to the Raiders, at any rate – and I think the reason a lot of the other “which 0-2 team will panic” rankings have the Bengals higher than the Ravens is just ordering. Flip which AFC North team got a crack at the Chiefs first, and you likely have the general consensus favoring a Ravens team which took the Chiefs to the wall over a Bengals team that fumbled at the goal line, sputtered to three-and-outs, and punted the ball away with less than three minutes left in the game. The Bengals played the Chiefs tougher than the Ravens did, but the other loss is so much in favor of the Ravens that I just can’t justify putting Cincinnati higher on this list. Maybe I’m just living in the past, remembering things that happened 13 whole days ago.

With the Commanders and Panthers next up on the schedule, Cincinnati should get this 0-2 start put behind them sooner rather than later. They’re not a bad team; they’re certainly above average with the potential to be better than that. But I think some of Cincinnati’s trouble spots are more worrisome long-term than Baltimore’s. If past percentages hold to form, and just one of these nine teams are making the playoffs, I’m picking Baltimore, not Cincinnati. These are the two major contenders, though.

And with them out of the way…

Tier 2: Run Away! Run Away!

Jacksonville Jaguars

Current Playoff Odds: 28.1%

Trevor Lawrence hasn’t won a football game since Thanksgiving weekend. And Jacksonville has so much faith in their $55 million quarterback that they have the lowest neutral pass rate in the league, throwing the ball just 34% of the time on first and second downs during the competitive portion of their contests. Of course, who wouldn’t prioritize a run game that ranks 16th in VOA through two weeks? That’s just common sense.

OK, that’s probably more on the shoulders of Doug Pederson and Press Taylor than Lawrence. The film guys still swear Lawrence can walk on water, even though his boots have been curiously damp and waterlogged for about a year and a half now. But whoever is at fault, something has to change, because the Jaguars just can not seem to find the end zone to save their lives. Jacksonville has a -38.6% offensive DVOA in the red zone, despite being well over average everywhere else on the field – they move the ball just fine, get within 20 yards of scoring, and lose all sense of cohesion and common sense. That’s not just big plays, like the Travis Etienne fumble that swung the game against the Dolphins. It includes the more normal, down-to-down failures – just one touchdown on four trips against Cleveland, including one ugly sack and fumble that ended up turning a red zone trip into a missed 43-yard field goal.

Who are the Jaguars? What is it, fundamentally, that they want to do from drive to drive and play to play? Forget about finding wins; the Jaguars need to find themselves. They’re a team without an identity. Who do they turn to in big moments and situations? What is it that they do that can dictate the pace of games? Why can’t they just line up and beat someone when they need a yard or two – they’re 28th in offensive VOA on both second- and third-and-short. The defense is solid on a down-to-down basis, but why can’t they prevent the big pass play over the top – they’ve allowed eight passes of 20+ yards, second only to Baltimore. The Jaguars at the moment are the less of the sum of their parts, or at least, the less of the sum of the reputation of their parts. They don’t need a schedule reset; they need a trip into the swamps to find themselves. And they’d better do it quick, as they’re headed out to Buffalo and Houston the next two weeks.

Los Angeles Rams

Current Playoff Odds: 17.1%

Will the last Ram with functional limbs please remember to shut the door when leaving the facility? We’re concerned the breeze from outside might injure yet another lineman.

Let’s just go down the list, shall we?

• WR Puka Nacua: on injured reserve with a PCL strain and may be out until Week 9.
• WR Cooper Kupp: an IR candidate with an ankle sprain and will “miss significant time.”
• TE Tyler Higbee: still on PUP from the torn ACL suffered last year.
• T Joe Noteboom: on injured reserve with what has been described as a “unique” ankle injury.
• T Rob Havenstein: fighting through an ankle injury and clearly not at 100%.
• T Connor McDermott: on IR with an undisclosed ailment; can’t come back until Week 5.
• T KT Leveston: injured in practice in August; can’t come back until Week 5
• C Jonah Jackson: likely headed to IR with a fractured scapula, reaggravating an injury from this summer.
• G Steve Avila: Out for months after knee surgery to repair his MCL.
• G Kevin Dotson: fighting through a foot injury, but actually did manage to play against Arizona.
• DL Larell Murchison: on IR with an arm injury from August; can’t come back until Week 5.
• CB Darious Williams: on IR with a hamstring injury that has been bugging him since July.
• CB Darion Kendrick: out for the year with an ACL tear.
• CB Tre’ Tomlinson: out for the year with an undisclosed injury.
• S John Johnson: out for 4-6 weeks with a fractured scapula.

The Rams should be just fine once everyone’s healthy. We expect that to happen sometime around October of 2029.

Tier 3: You Make Me Sad

Tennessee Titans

Current Playoff Odds: 15.1%

Are we … entirely sure that Will Levis is on the payroll of the Tennessee Titans? This isn’t some sort of Among Us situation, where someone on the roster is secretly trying to sabotage the team without it being too obvious? Because that makes more sense than actually trying to explain Titans football so far this season.

So far this season, we’ve had head coach Brian Callahan claim that the Titans would have won their Week 1 game against the Bears if they had just punted the ball away on first-and-10 every time. We’ve had cameras catching Callahan ask Levis ‘what the f*ck are you doing’ after a terrible interception against the Jets. And we’ve had Callahan tell reports that Levis is “a grown-up, and knows better” after the Jets loss. So things are going just peachy in Tennessee.

And, well, Callahan may be right. The Titans are a bit unlucky to be 0-2, as they had halftime leads in both games before Levis frittered them away. Tennessee has a bad but not disastrous -9.7% offensive VOA through two weeks, which ranks 23rd in the league. Remove all turnovers from everyone in the league, and they jump to 10.1%, which would rank 17th. And remove the passing game entirely and they rank 11th with a 10.4% run DVOA. In a world where the Titans had a quarterback who could be trusted not to hand the ball to the other team, the Titans would be right in the middle of the AFC race. Instead, Levis’ 10.7% turnover-worthy play rate is worst in the league and we have to listen to his coach remind us of his age.

The good news, Titans fans, is that that turnover rate is unsustainable. Mac Jones was worst in the league in 2023 at 7.5%; it’s beyond plausibility that Levis could continue to turn the ball over at the rate he’s been doing it. He’ll either regress towards the mean, or he’ll get benched for Mason Rudolph in short order, and the Tennessee offense should rise towards the level of unremarkable mediocrity we were expecting from them before the season began.

Indianapolis Colts

Current Playoff Odds: 13.3%

If you ever are fortunate enough to buy a brand-new Ferrari, you may well discover that it’s a hell of a lot of fun on an open road or a track, letting all the power out and pushing the engine to it’s absolute extremes. You may also discover that it’s a pain to use as a daily driver, and that the minute-to-minute experience of owning one is an endless string of hassles and headaches.

…Or so I’m told. I drive a Volkswagen Jetta, the Kirk Cousins of the automotive world.

Anthony Richardson’s highlights are enough to make anyone salivate, but Colts fans are beginning to come to grips with the realization that Richardson is not yet even a passible quarterback on a down-to-down basis. And that’s OK! He’s at a stage in his development where you can celebrate what he does well and put up with where he struggles as he continues to adapt to NFL action. He’s only thrown 137 career passes; it’s more than understandable that there would be some growing pains in terms of his accuracy and decision making, and as long as he peppers in jaw-dropping highlight throws on a semi-regular basis, Colts fans should remain optimistic. It’s just that growing pains are, by definition, painful, and the Colts can’t seriously contend without a quarterback who can make the layups as well as the bombs.

If you one want one convenient number you can track to help follow along with Richardson’s progress, it might be “Prayer Yards” – what we call air yards on uncatchable passes. Richardson currently leads the league with 395 prayer yards, just ahead of Caleb Williams with 392. That’s a factor of so many of his deep passes just being shots to nowhere; impressive arm talent but ultimately a useless play. If Richardson is taking the steps forward he needs to be making, he should slide down these rankings as the year goes along, both as a result of improved accuracy and learning when to look underneath and pick up safer gains from time to time rather than shooting for the moon every other down. The only qualified quarterbacks with more prayer yards than catchable air yards last season were Bryce Young, Kyler Murray and Bailey Zappe, and Richardson is currently well underwater. Seeing that improve week over week will be a good sign that Richardson is becoming a more well-rounded player. Because he ain’t that, yet.

Oh, and the defense is getting banged up. That’s not gonna help. DeForest Buckner just went on injured reserve, joining JuJu Brents. Buckner going out explains at least a bit of why the Colts were stomped all over by a Packers team that had no inclination to attempt a forward pass. The Colts as currently constructed can’t really afford to get into a hole and count on Richardson to lead them back singlehandedly. Heck, they took Jonathan Taylor out for the entire fourth quarter against Green Bay because they are losing, which is madness. An upcoming homestand should help the Colts get right a little bit, but this is going to be a year of two steps forward, one step back. At best.

Tier 4: Death Awaits You All, with Nasty, Big, Pointy Teeth

Denver Broncos

Current Playoff Odds: 5.4%

Credit to Bo Nix for discovering that you can throw the ball downfield! Nix saw his aDOT rise from 6.3 in Week 1 to 9.3 in Week 2, which is a huge step forward. Now, ideally, by the end of the season there will be some receivers at the end of those throws, but you know what? Baby steps. Forward progress and development.

Nix may have looked like the best of the rookie quarterbacks in preseason, prepared to run the offense against vanilla schemes and backup players. Considering Nix is already 24 and started his college career in 2019, you’d certainly hope he’d be a little more game ready fresh out of the box than his draft classmates, considering Caleb Williams was a junior in high school when Nix was first starting in college. To say that has not translated to the regular season is a wee bit of an understatement. Old Drew Brees was lethal in Sean Payton’s offense because of his pinpoint-perfect accuracy. Nix has been the sixth-least accurate quarterback in football through two weeks, and the amount to which any success has had to be manufactured is concerning. Nix is one of only two quarterbacks with negative passing YAR in clean pockets, when pressure doesn’t get through the Denver offensive line. In fact, there’s a lot of different splits you can spit out where Nix is the second-worst quarterback in the league through two weeks. Thank goodness for the existence of Bryce Young.

It’s far too early to give up on Nix, even with every poor performance making Payton’s hyperbolic offseason comparisons look more and more ridiculous. And there are places for optimism, here and there. The special teams have been lights out, second in VOA and ranking in the top three in both punts and kickoffs. And while the overall defensive performance has been poor, a lot of that is giving up big splash plays. Denver is seventh in success rate allowed at 39%; it’s just they’ve allowed an unusually high number of big plays that have gouged them. I suspect they will look better as the year goes along; the down-by-down numbers are solid if they can clean up some of the back-breaking mistakes. If they can get solid defense, keep up the great special teams work, and turn the offense from baby-proofed to merely conservative, then Denver could find it’s way to some feisty wins. But this is very much a work in progress, and it looks like Payton has more than a little work to do to try to get Denver to respectability.

New York Giants

Current Playoff Odds: 4.9%

We said before the season started that the Giants were the franchise in the league with the least hope entering 2024. Through two weeks, I haven’t seen anything that’s changed my mind there. However, they have been more interesting that I thought. After all, losing a game despite scoring three touchdowns and allowing zero is the sort of historic tidbit that’s just catnip to me. If you’re going to be bad, explore the full range and limits of sucktitude. Seek out new frontiers and brave new uncharted territory of failure! Be memorably terrible, and fans will have something to look back on and laugh about in 10 years when everyone involved has been long since fired.

It seems like everyone in New York has already checked out. Gambling on an already injured Graham Gano and not elevating a kicker, even as an emergency option, against Washington? Well, I suppose you needed that roster slot for Evan Neal, who didn’t play a single snap. Shane Bowen’s defense didn’t stop the overpowered, uh, Washington offense a single time, allowing Brian Robinson, Austin Ekeler and Jayden Daniels to run all over them. That at least is taking some pressure off of the secondary, which has been sieve-like – 28th with a 36.2% DVOA. Maybe Sam Darnold really is this year’s rags-to-riches superstar, or maybe Shane Bowen’s seat is already red hot.

And that’s not even getting into the offense, where Daniel Jones may need to be benched before November. Not because he’s the worst quarterback in the league, though his -22.0% DVOA is leaning in that direction. Jones may simply need to be benched to avoid the chance of an injury triggering $23 million in money guaranteed for injury, because there’s no way the Giants can roll with him in 2025. The Jones extension remains an albatross around the neck of the entire franchise, both in terms of the ancillary affects of watching players like Saquon Barkley succeed elsewhere, and in the first effect of having to watch freaking Daniel Jones every week.

But hey, Malik Nabers looks fun! The offensive line has been shockingly competent! Dru Phillips looks like a third-round steal! So maybe there’s a little more hope here than we initially gave the Giants credit for. Hope for the future, mind you, once everyone in charge has been fired and cut.

Tier 5: We Apologize for the Fault in the Offense. Those Responsible Have Been Sacked

Carolina Panthers

Current Playoff Odds: 4.1%

The most important thing the Carolina Panthers could do in the 2024 season was to establish, once and for all, whether Bryce Young could be their answer at quarterback. So congratulations to Carolina for completing a successful season after only two weeks!

They brought in Dave Canales as a noted QB Guru, and Canales has shown his chops there already. Part of knowing how to fix a quarterback is knowing when one is simply beyond fixing, and Young has shown no signs of improvement in Year 2; nothing you can hang your hat on and say ‘this, here, is what our quarterback does well’. It’s not just that Young has the worst passing DVOA (-65.7%), it’s also that his problems, at this point, are mostly his own fault. It can’t be his receivers; his accuracy percentage of 58.5% is second-worst to only Anthony Richadson, and his average pass travels five and a half yards shorter through the air than Indianapolis’ mad bomber. Through two weeks, he’s one of only six quarterbacks without a highlight throw yet, and that he’s sixth in turnover-worthy throw percentage. And perhaps most concerningly of all, he is struggling without even being pressured. His 4.3 YPA without pressure is last in the league by 0.7 yards. There’s just no playmaking skill being shown whatsoever, and you need to at least be showing signs of something you can build on 18 games into your career.

Putting in Andy Dalton now might slightly hurt the Panthers’ odds of getting the first overall pick and finding their new big hope quarterback, but it allows them to actually evaluate the offense and see what other mistakes they have made assembling their roster. It’s like debugging code – you fix one error, and then you can see all the other errors pop up now that the dang thing can actually get to those parts. And don’t count out the Panthers’ ability to lose games with Dalton, either; he had three straight seasons with double-digit negative DVOA from 2019 to 2021. The sweet spot for Carolina might be getting sub-replacement level play from Dalton, but not the utter trainwreck that’s been the offense under Young. And you know? I have faith in Dalton’s ability to provide just that.

Now go out and win a game, guys, or we’ll be forced to taunt you a second time.