Usually, football coaches go through the video of the previous game with the team and point out what players did right and what they did wrong.

But, some games, the team plays so poorly that the coach will just say “Burn the footage.”

At times it seems like the Carolina Panthers should have burned the footage of every game this season, except for the game at the end of October when the Panthers squeaked out a 15 – 13 win over the Houston Texans.

The Panthers have four games left, so the team could conceivably win another game. However, doing so would be a minor miracle given the past performance – which means the Panthers seem very likely to end up the season with a single win.

Even if the Panthers won every game the rest of this season, it wouldn’t matter with regard to the NFL Playoffs. Out of 32 teams in the league, only two have been mathematically eliminated from reaching the Playoffs: the Panthers and a New England Patriots team that has won three times as many games as the Panthers.

It could be worse.  The Panthers could easily be winless this year given the close score in the Houston game.

In the last 80 years, only nine teams have gone winless in the NFL.  In this  century, it’s only happened twice. The 2008 Detroit Lions couldn’t manage a win and neither could the 2017 Cleveland Browns. The Panthers could have been in that boat.

Fox 8 Sportscaster Danny Harnden made an interesting point this week.

“It’s too bad the Panthers couldn’t have been halfway decent this season,” he stated during the newscast, “because they would have had a chance to win the NFC South.  The Division is really bad again this year.”

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the NFC South last year with a losing record and, this year, the other teams in the division –Tampa Bay, Atlanta and New Orleans – all have 6 wins and 7 loses at this point in the season.

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