The Carolina Panthers fell apart last year after a decade of ranging from average to very good under John Fox, including two championship game appearances and another 12-4 season just two years earlier. Their collapse made me wonder: does it matter how a team did in the two years prior to a horrible season, in determining how they bounce back? So, I used the pro-football-reference team game finder to locate all teams that went 3-13 or worse in a season since 1990. I kicked out the first two years of the expansion Cleveland Browns, and looked at the remaining 41 teams to compare how they played (by simple rating) and how many wins they had in the two seasons prior to that 13+ loss season.
As it turns out, yes, knowing that the Carolina Panthers went 20-12 over the previous two seasons means we should shade them to be slightly better than your typical really bad team in 2011. First, though, we want to know what is typical. As it turns out, the average team that won 3 or fewer games in a season finishes 6-10 the next year (which is just another way of illustrating why Overs on teams with win projections under 6 are a good idea).
CARRY ON
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