There are certain lists in sports that no player, coach, or organization ever wants to be associated with. These are the markers of futility, the historical footnotes that highlight early-season collapses, statistical anomalies, and offensive catastrophes. When the margins between winning and losing in the National Football League are razor-thin, landing on the wrong side of league history can feel particularly punishing.
Take, for example, the Los Angeles Chargers. With their hard-fought loss to the Las Vegas Raiders on a Sunday that amplified mounting anxieties, Los Angeles dropped to a dismal 0-2 record on the young season. Starting a campaign with consecutive losses is certainly not an automatic death sentence for a franchise’s playoff aspirations. Every single year, a handful of teams manage to rebound from an early two-game hole to salvage their campaigns and punch a ticket to the postseason. Last year alone, the Houston Texans, the Chicago Bears, and the Carolina Panthers all stumbled out of the starting blocks with 0-2 records, only to steady the ship and ultimately make the playoffs.
However, what thrust the Chargers onto an exceptionally exclusive and agonizingly small list is the specific, compounding context surrounding those two opening defeats. Both losses occurred at home, and both came against opponents that had finished the prior year with a grim winning percentage under .200. Only the Chargers and one other team in the history of the league have managed to pull off that peculiar brand of home-field ineptitude: the 1926 Racine Tornadoes.
The historical footnote becomes even more glaring when considering that those same 1926 Racine Tornadoes folded operations just weeks later. While nobody within the Los Angeles organization or the broader football landscape expects the modern-day Chargers to shutter their doors anytime soon, a glance at their unforgiving upcoming schedule suggests that they could very well face a reality where their losses continue to outpace their wins.
Yet, as bleak as the early-season outlook is in Southern California, they are not alone in inhabiting the dark corners of the NFL’s statistical history books. Down in Atlanta, the Falcons offense has carved out its own unique place in infamy through the first two weeks of the season, courtesy of long-time NFL analyst Aaron Schatz and FTN Fantasy.
Through two games, the Falcons have fielded one of the most thoroughly inept passing games in the history of the league, as measured by Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, a metric that evaluates performance relative to league average while adjusting for down, distance, and opponent. Although DVOA data extends back to 1977, the Falcons have managed to post the fifth-worst two-game pass offense DVOA rating in that nearly 50-year span.
The Atlanta passing offense currently checks in with a staggering DVOA rating of just -89.2%. That performance out-punches only a select few historical disasters: the 2002 Houston Texans at -90.0%, the 1978 Tampa Bay Buccaneers at -97.4%, the 1984 Los Angeles Rams at -98.7%, and the 1979 Houston Oilers at a staggering -103.2%.
As Schatz eloquently summarized in his analysis, the Falcons defense has actually performed reasonably well through the first fortnight of the season, but their passing game has been utterly horrific. Stuck navigating injuries and relying on third-string quarterback Cooper Rush and fourth-string quarterback Jack Strand to run the offense, Atlanta has produced one of the lowest pass offense DVOA ratings ever recorded over a two-game stretch in the modern analytical era.
Interestingly, looking back at the unfortunate companions on that historical list reveals a glimmer of unexpected hope. The 2002 Texans, the 1984 Rams, and the 1979 Oilers all managed to win games at various points despite possessing horrific passing numbers early on. That Texans team, however, ultimately succumbed to its limitations and finished the year with a sub-par 4-12 record.
The other two teams, however, managed to defy their early offensive struggles in remarkable fashion. The 1984 Rams rallied to finish second in a competitive NFC West division, successfully punching a ticket to the playoffs, though their journey was cut short by a loss to the New York Giants in the Wild Card round.
The 1979 Oilers represent an even more iconic chapter in football lore. That was the beloved “Luv Ya Blue!” squad that captured the AFC Central crown with an impressive 11-5 record, heavily fueled by the legendary running back Earl Campbell. That team pushed all the way through the postseason to the AFC Championship Game, where they ultimately fell to the Pittsburgh Steelers by a final score of 27-13.
To this day, that remains the most recent time an NFL franchise based in Houston reached the AFC Championship Game under that specific organizational lineage, though the franchise would later advance to Super Bowl XXXIV after relocating to Tennessee to become the Titans, and most recently lost an AFC Championship battle to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs during the 2019-2020 season. Therefore, historical precedent suggests there is at least some room for optimism in Atlanta, even if their passing attack has looked historically woeful through its opening audition.
DVOA, of course, is far from the only analytical lens through which to examine Atlanta’s mounting passing-game troubles. Advanced quarterback statistics tell a similarly grim story. Consider Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, a metric that accounts for passing yardage, touchdowns, interceptions, and sacks taken. Through the first two weeks of the season, the league-wide average ANY/A sits at 6.4. Established signal-callers are finding their footing around this baseline; Geno Smith ranks 15th in the league with a respectable ANY/A of 6.6, while Joe Burrow hovers just below the league average, ranking 19th with an ANY/A of 6.1.
Cooper Rush’s numbers, by contrast, paint a starkly different picture. Rush currently holds an ANY/A of 0.9, placing him 32nd out of 32 qualified passers across the league. When factoring in non-qualifying players who have seen sporadic action, Rush slips even further to 37th overall, sitting just one solitary spot above Jack Strand, who clocks in with an almost non-existent ANY/A of 0.1.
While those figures might not quite scrape the negative numbers recorded by analysts during their own collegiate playing days, they represent an alarming level of offensive stagnation at the professional level.
Another useful vantage point is Quarterback Efficiency, as charted by RBSDM, which evaluates performance by examining both Expected Points Added per Play and Completion Percentage Over Expected. The visual mapping provided by these metrics underscores the sheer depth of the offensive valley the Falcons currently inhabit. The data points cluster near the bottom of the analytical graph, reflecting an offense struggling to generate positive momentum or sustain drives through the air.
Much of this historical ineptitude comes with vital context attached. As noted, these abysmal passing numbers have materialized while the team has been forced to lean heavily on third-string quarterback Cooper Rush and fourth-string quarterback Jack Strand to captain the offense. The season originally began with Tua Tagovailoa slated as the starter while Michael Penix Jr. worked his way back from a lingering knee injury. However, Tagovailoa suffered a back injury during practice just days ahead of Week 1, forcing Rush abruptly into action.
Subsequent struggles under center eventually prompted head coach Kevin Stefanski to pivot toward Strand in search of a spark. Neither option has yielded positive results thus far, as the mounting avalanche of advanced metrics clearly demonstrates.
This reality naturally turns attention back toward Penix. Given the historic depths to which the passing game has plunged over the first two weeks, it would be difficult for the offense to look any worse should the team ultimately transition under center once he is fully cleared to return.