The Last-Drive Club: why some 0-4 NFL teams are next year's playoff teams

Before this season, 81 NFL teams had started 0-4 since 1999. Zero made the playoffs that year.

Here's the part nobody's talking about: the ones that lost close made the playoffs the next year more than half the time.

I went through every regular-season game since 1999 to check it (nflverse's public game data), and I can't stop thinking about it. So this one isn't about who's dead. Everybody already agrees all five 0-4 teams are dead. This one's about who's coming back.

Welcome to the Last-Drive Club

The rule is simple. You start 0-4, and at least three of those losses are one-score games, eight points or fewer. You were right there, and you lost anyway. Three or four times.

From 1999 through 2024, 21 teams joined the club. Here's how they compare to the 57 teams that started 0-4 the ugly way:

• Last-Drive Club (21 teams): won 43.5% of their remaining games. Playoffs that year: 0. Playoffs the next year: 11, or 52%.
• Everyone else (57 teams): won 32.6% of their remaining games. Playoffs that year: 0. Playoffs the next year: 13, or 23%.

Read that last number again. Same 0-4 start. More than twice the playoff rate a year later.

The club shows up as a pretty normal team the rest of the way, about 5 wins in its last 12. That's not enough to dig out of 0-4. Nobody digs out of 0-4. But it's the profile of a good team that ran out of time, not a bad team that got found out.

The alumni are ridiculous

• The 2000 Patriots started 0-4 with every loss by a score. The next season they won the Super Bowl.
• The 2000 Bears were in the club. They went 13-3 the next year.
• The 2017 Chargers went 9-3 after their 0-4 start, missed the playoffs anyway, then went 12-4 the next season.
• The most recent member that's had a full next season, the 2024 Jaguars, went 13-4 in 2025.

That's the pattern. The close losses don't save the season. They're a preview of the next one.

The 2026 club roster

Here's where it gets fun. By my count, three of this year's five 0-4 teams are in:

• Tampa Bay: lost by 6, 4, 7 and 3. All four. That's a perfect club card, and only three teams since 1999 have managed it.
• Houston: lost by 5, 14, 2 and 4. Three of four.
• Tennessee: lost by 13, 4, 5 and 6. Three of four.

Two teams didn't make it. The Chargers lost by 12, 12, 8 and 7, so they're on the bubble at two. Miami lost by 14, 22, 14 and 5, and that's not a club card. That's a real problem.

One more stat for the Houston file, because it's a little spooky. Since 1999, only 12 teams started 0-3 with all three losses by one score. Two of them made the playoffs anyway, and both were the Texans, in 2018 and 2025, per ESPN. The other 117 teams that started 0-3: zero. This franchise keeps doing the thing nobody does.

The counterargument

"Close losses" isn't a magic trick. Some teams lose close because they're good and unlucky. Some lose close because they always find a way to lose late. The data can't tell those apart, and nearly half the club still missed the playoffs the next year.

And context changes. Tampa Bay just lost Baker Mayfield for at least three weeks to a dislocated thumb. Houston's run game is a real issue: its backs were hit at the line on 66.7% of carries through three weeks, per Next Gen Stats via ESPN. The pattern tells you which way to lean, not where you land.

My call

None of the five 0-4 teams makes the playoffs this year. I'm not going to pretend the Texans are the first team to break an 81-team streak just because I like them.

But here's the call you can check this season: Houston, Tampa Bay and Tennessee win a bigger share of their remaining games than Miami and the Chargers do. That's what the club does. We'll know in January.

And the big one: at least two of those three club teams make the playoffs next season. Houston is my favorite of the three.

Bonus: Sunday, Houston plays at Tennessee. That's a Last-Drive Club meeting. Somebody finally gets a win, and I'll be watching to see if it's close. Of course it'll be close.

That's an opinion, not a promise. But I wrote it down at 0-4. I'll check the first call in January and the big one next fall.

Every Study Hall pick goes on the record, wins and losses alike.

Tommy