Six teams, the New York Jets, New York Giants, New Orleans Saints, Miami Dolphins, Tennessee Titans and Houston Texans are all 0-3 to start the season. Here's a look at the teams that started with an 0-3 record and still made the playoffs throughout NFL history.
Chances for Jets, Dolphins, Saints, Texans, Titans and Giants to make playoffs after 0-3 start originally appeared on The Sporting News
We are through three weeks of the 2025 NFL season and a total of six teams have yet to record a win: the New York Jets, Giants, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints, Houston Texans and Tennessee Titans.
Thanks to their respective 0-3 starts, the deck is very stacked against each team's chances of making the playoffs.
In the modern era of the NFL, which is often considered as 1970 and later, only six teams in league history have made the playoffs after an 0-3 start and none came before 1981.
The last team to do it was the 2018 Houston Texans, but there was a 20-year gap before that. The entire list of teams is as follows:
- 1981 New York Jets: 10-5-1 (AFC wild card)
- 1982 Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 5-4 (NFC wild card)
- 1992 San Diego Chargers: 11-5 (AFC West champions)
- 1995 Detroit Lions: 10-6 (NFC wild card)
- 1998 Buffalo Bills: 10-6 (AFC wild card)
- 2018 Houston Texans: 11-5 (AFC South champions)
Since 1990, only four out of 165 teams have made the postseason following a trio of losses to begin the season. That amounts to a success rate of about 2.4%.
So you're saying there's a chance!
The Texans are no doubt the biggest surprise of the dreaded 0-3 group.
After all, Houston has won the division and made the playoffs in each of the last two seasons and were the favorites coming out of the AFC South once again this year.
Teams like the Jets, Saints, Titans and Giants were expected to be bad, so no real surprises there.
The Dolphins were kind of a middle-of-the-road candidate to start off this poorly. We knew they wouldn't be world-beaters by any stretch, but this team has enough talent to be at least slightly better than what they've put on tape.
But the writing was on the wall that the Dolphins could be headed for disaster immediately after Week 1, when the team held a players-only meeting, which clearly shows there is major dysfunction in Miami.
As far as we're concerned, the only team that has hope a chance turning things around is the Texans, who play in one of the weaker divisions in football.
The rest have no shot to turn things around.
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