Latest / Sports History Network / Revealing the NFL's Winningest and Worst Franchises Since 1970

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Revealing the NFL's Winningest and Worst Franchises Since 1970 · Sports History Network

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  Ever wonder how your favorite franchise truly stacks up against every other team since the modern NFL merger?
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  Get the ultimate guide to football history.
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  We are tracking the highs and lows of all 32 teams, from dominant dynasties to heartbreaking near misses.
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  But we've got just the man to do it.
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  Author Scott Perry.
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  Professor Perry joins us to tell us about the greatest franchises in the NFL since 1970.
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  Hello, my football friends.
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  This is Darren.
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  He's a pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.
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  And welcome once again to Friday where we get to visit with one of our favorite people, Professor Perry.
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  Scott Perry.
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  Welcome back to the Pig Pen, Darren.
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  It's awesome to be here.
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  Thanks so much.
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  It's going to be a good weekend of football.
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  I know it.
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  Yeah, most definitely.
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  And, Scott, you have something really interesting to share.
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  Sort of a milestone moment in NFL history that's happening right now.
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  So why don't you go into a little bit detail on that?
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  All right.
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  Well, some have already happened, but most are on the horizon, so we'll talk about that.
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  So my book, the NFL since 1970 tracks, you know, championships are king.
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  But what about just being able to say that your franchise has won more games and it's lost, whether it's over the course of history or since the greatest time in sports history, the 1970 merger, when the greatest league
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  nearly doubled in size.
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  So that is my premise.
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  And when I talk about the number 500, of course, everybody knows the mathematical equation of becoming a winning team is meaning you're over 500, and if you haven't got there yet, you're under 500.
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  But since kickoff, 1970, we're in the 880s as of right now.
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  So that means it's possible for some teams to have 500 victories since kickoff 1970.
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  And if the discrepancy is pretty glaring now because Cleveland didn't exist for three years, Darren, they don't have the same number of games.
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  They, you know, whatever 16 times three is, that's how many games short they are.
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  So that means in 1970, 25 teams kicked off that as of today have played all games that are now in the total of the 18 of the 880s.
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  So, so we're here to talk about, you know, my, my book shows, as you're showing it on the screen there.
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  They can, they can see that going into the 26th season, the very bottom team, oh, my gosh, I love mentioning this.
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  The very bottom team is the Raiders.
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  And they lost their last game.
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  So for the first time in the history of the NFL when they had a team called the raiders, it's an under 500.
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  So the commitment to excellence has dropped under 500 as we're taping this.
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  They have climbed back above, but the lag May maybe back to 500.
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  So we'll see how that plays out.
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  But that's the interesting part.
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  So.
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  But it always varies.
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  There are some years on my book when you go back to the 70s and 80s, that yet that there's four teams on the bottom that are under under 500.
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  There's very rarely a team on the losing side that is over 500.
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  You're following my.
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  My logic.
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  And just to put in perspective, you know, folks, Scott is talking about only the super bowl era.
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  Well, actually not even super bowl, the merged era of the AFL and NFL since 1970.
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  So when he's talking about these records.
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  So, Darren, you want me to talk about the teams with 500 wins or 500?
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  Yeah, yeah, let's bring them out.
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  Let's get the good stuff here.
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  All right.
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  All right.
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  So the good stuff is not good stuff to me because when I became a football fan watching NFL Films in 1978, I decided, well, first of all, NFL Films gets the credit because that's slow motion, heart pounding orchestral
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  music with great written narration for Harry Callis by Steve Sable is what knocked the switch off in my life and I became a fanatic fan.
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  I've been on TV here in Denver as the Bronco fan of the week.
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  That's who I give credit to.
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  But I decided that I was going to love all the bad teams and despise not the spy.
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  That's too strong a word.
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  Now I've given my life to Jesus.
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  So I don't want to be too harsh on anything anymore, but the teams that were great I did, I dislike still.
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  All right, so the two teams we're going to talk about on the winning side, I am not fans of.
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  And it seems like my fellow guys on the Sports History Network, all I can find is fans of these two teams so far, other than Joe, a good Patriot guy.
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  Right.
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  So here it is.
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  Some teams are so far away from 500 and yet the number one team is a third of the way on its way to number 600.
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  It's the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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  So they have 530.
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  They're in the low 530s as of the taping of this.
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  So that's really amazing.
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  Yeah, great, great stuff so far.
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  We love that here in West Virginia.
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  Well, the problem Here for me is they never have a bad season and get going back to my Broncos real quick from 60 to 69, by far the worst franchise in professional football.
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  So from kickoff 70 to the year after they won the championship last in 15, they came into the 2017 season second place behind Pittsburgh.
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  They were 17 games out of first place with 48 to play.
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  Darren, I thought well that was 16.
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  I thought, well there's 48 games to play, there's four seasons left.
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  My team is going to be the best team.
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  At the 50th anniversary of the merger.
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  Well, I don't know what happened, but the Broncos started a seven year losing streak.
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  They're down to number five as today and Pittsburgh never has a bad record.
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  Luckily they're not doing good in the playoffs for me, but they still always have a winning record.
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  They're just put that in perspective for.
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  A second what you're saying, okay, so you know we're, we're 50 plus years in.
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  So let's just say we're talking, talking about 50 years like you're talking about to get the 500 wins.
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  That's averaging 10 wins a season.
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  And some of those seasons back in the 70s were 14 game seasons.
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  They aren't 17 games like they are now.
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  I wish I had think about it right now.
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  So anyway, that's all the glory.
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  So I, I just happened to have met somebody here in Denver that grew up next to the Rooney family and she sent a copy of my book to, to our Rooney Jr.
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  And I'm really proud to say that it's in his hands.
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  I hope he, hope he's enjoying it because it's unbelievable.
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  I just, I say at the bottom of their special pages and congratulations Steeler Nation for, for just the domination they've had.
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  All right, that's enough of that Steeler stuff.
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  But this next team I don't like anymore, they beat my Broncos in their first championship attack back in 1978.
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  Hey, watch what you, you say with Terry Bradshaw looking over your shoulder there.
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  Yeah, yeah, I'm a Terry fan to some extent, so.
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  But it is the number two team and they, they have, they're in the low teens over 500.
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  So they still have close to 90 to get to 600.
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  But amazing.
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  That's, and that's, you know, Tom Landry of course, but, and just my wacky thought process is, you know, and a big part of that is the Herschel Walker trade that got the Cowboys such draft capital.
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  They went on to win three of the next four Super Bowls and now 95 is a long time ago.
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  Darren.
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  I'm as a not non cowboy fan, that's pretty good.
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  I, I do have a buddy from church that really has a love form.
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  So whenever I kind of get a relationship with a buddy that has the heart break of a team that hasn't been in it.
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  So you know, when I decided to love all the dislike, the bad, the good teams, I've taken my foot off the throat of the Dolphins and Vikings fans because it's been so long.
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  So.
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  And, and if you can believe it, I may have mentioned before that I'm actually softening up on Raiders and that's really hard to believe.
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  I mean I, because the Raiders have dropped down to Bengals, Cardinals and Buccaneers territory of just decades, decades of losing and having many, many double digit loss seasons.
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  So.
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  So since the year that the Buccaneers took John Gruden, the Raiders were number two at that point in time and they've dropped down to the bottom as of, as of the start of this season.
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  So that's an amazing fact that I, I had to divert to some Raider talk on that subject.
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  But anyway, back to the Cowboys.
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  They are an amazing team that has 500.
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  They, they've never, they never drop out of the top five in my book all 56 years.
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  They're never worse than the 15 in winning percentage.
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  The Dolphins never drop out of the top five either.
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  That's amazing.
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  It sure is.
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  We think about Shula being the coach in Miami starting in 1970, retires in 1995.
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  My book was to be called Chasing Dolphins when I did it in 2010.
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  But something happened.
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  That's the year that they fell out of first after getting there.
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  The year Marino went to Palo Alto to lose to Joe Montana in the super bowl.
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  So from 84 to 2009, Shula retired in 95.
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  You have to be a pretty old Dolphin fan to remember anything great about that organization.
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  Am I right, Darren?
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  It's just said that these younger Dolphin fans don't have any, any highlight films of any good playoff wins.
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  Maybe, maybe one of any recent decades.
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  And, and when they do make the playoffs, it's 20 below in Kansas City, right?
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So.
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  All right, well, I need to give Dallas some more love.
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  Pretty amazing that they've been able to, to keep that.
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  They were number one in my book for two years the two years prior to the dolphins taking over in 84.
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  So they just hung around.
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  But Pittsburgh is accelerating, accelerating away from the rest of the league and that's pretty frustrating.
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  So.
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  All right, that's the winning side.
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  We could talk teams that have had 500 losses.
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  Sure.
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  All right.
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  Well, I should have.
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  I have my 1968 jets pennant downstairs that I got as a kid on Long Island.
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  It says world champions 1968.
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  It's got an AFL logo on it.
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  A prize possession.
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  I'll show that at some time in the future.
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  But yeah, that's be cool.
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  So we do all love Arnie at the Sports History Network and I just love giving his Lions some love because they're one of the bad teams that I decided to love when I became a football fan.
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  So let's talk about how they fit into this equation starting.
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  So they had 475 losses going into the 2023 season.
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  They were well on their way to blazing to 500 defeats.
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  But since 2023, they're pretty close to being tied for the most regular season victories.
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  Isn't that.
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  It's pretty amazing.
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  Yeah.
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  That Owen 16 season was sort of the.
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  The bottom.
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  There's nowhere to go below that.
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  Up.
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  Yes.
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  That's.
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  That's funny.
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  Good.
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  So what's happened since then is that two teams have come up and just blazed past them.
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  And I mentioned the Jets.
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  The jets going into the year 508.
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  So they are the losing his team.
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  And I have pictures of me in jets pajamas growing up on Long island.
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  And I.
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  I'd like to see that team do good at some point, but can you imagine the time it's going to take to see a 500 record out of those guys?
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  But anyway, it's.
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  And then the cardinals also have 505 going in.
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  So they blew past Detroit too.
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  But ironically it's last weekend, had the jets beaten the Lions, the Lions would be sitting at 500.
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  So here we are three games into the 26th season and they were.
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  And they were on fire to get to 500 first.
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  And they were able to defer that.
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  And they still are.
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  They don't lose another game.
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  They'll be if they don't lose another game.
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  The 2027 season is the 70th anniversary of their last championship.
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  Maybe they can pull it out.
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  I'm.
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  People ask me.
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  I only use my heart.
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  I want to see the Lions play the Broncos in Los Angeles coming up.
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  So we'll see how that plays out.
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  But what a great story.
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  The Lions win a championship.
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  Better learn to play some defense real quick because I'm sure the fans are yelling.
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  Yeah, well, actually the mathematician in me says, I think maybe this is the 70th season since.
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  Since the championship in 1957.
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  But.
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  So there you have it.
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  I mean, unfortunately, the Cardinals, I like the Cardinals.
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  They're sitting three from the bottom.
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  Only the Buccaneers and the, and the, and the Browns have worse winning percentages overall since they started playing football after the merger.
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  Well, I, I think there's some, probably some people that I visited in Pottsville, Pennsylvania last year that are probably happy that the Cardinals are.
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  They call it the Cardinals curse because of the 1925 championship that was given to the Cardinals over the Pottsville Maroons, who were expelled for playing a game in Philadelphia against the Notre Dame All Stars we talk about in
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  our book.
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  But they did win a championship in 47 that was legitimate.
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  Right.
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  And they should have beat Pittsburgh that year.
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  Oh, don't get me started.
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  It's always the frustration of.
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  Wish I could have some fake steam come off my head at that point, but I'm a Kurt Warmer fan, would like to see that happen.
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  But that's, that's the latest championship.
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  But you can think that's when the Steelers got the ring started.
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  On the other hand, they filled up one hand.
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  They did another hand to put them on.
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  I, I remember one for the thumb in 81 and that was it.
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  That was the story.
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  Yeah, that's true.
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  Angel Green's saying.
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  Yeah, that's right.
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  So, so there it is.
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  500 defeats by the Cardinals and the jets and maybe the Lions coming up.
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  Well, actually with this for this film is they or this plays.
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  It might be a past tense thing, but I'm pulling for them to, to win that division and take on the Broncos in la.
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  So we'll see what happens.
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  So they're close enough.
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  We could probably say they're 500 loss team.
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  They're going to get a loss somewhere in this season.
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  It's going to be hard for somebody to run the table.
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  So, so, okay, so to put that in perspective, we have two teams that are 500 wins since 1970 and we have basically three teams that are 500 losses.
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  Yeah.
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  Who else we have coming up above the Lions are the Jaguars and Texans.
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  They don't have the chance.
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  They're too young.
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  Let's see, just under 480 defeats are the Atlanta Falcons.
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  Okay.
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  I would have pictured them to be sort of in that group.
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  They really never had, you know, great seasons.
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  They had okay seasons, but not a lot of them.
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  They've got two NFC championships to the Lions zero and the Cardinals one.
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  So that's a couple, couple of different errors there, but right.
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  They pro.
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  They probably should have won A Super Bowl.
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  Except if not for Tom Brady, that great comeback.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, when I give my talks, I say, well, you.
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  You.
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  You have a blinders on.
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  It's like going through a dark alley at the end of the season.
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  You don't care who pops out to try to keep you from winning that super bowl trophy.
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  But for Falcon fans, it was John.
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  An older John Elway.
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  His last game as a professional was against the Falcons.
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  He beat them for his second consecutive championship.
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  Fast forward 17 years, and they made a quarterback mad at halftime by getting a little too.
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  A little too rowdy and scoring 28, allowing three at halftime.
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  And then here comes Brady to.
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  To nullify any championships in the lobby in Atlanta's practice facility.
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  Yeah, that's for sure.
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  Yeah.
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  Good stuff.
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  The dirty birds.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, hey, that I can't mention that without.
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  My book has no players in it.
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  They're cogs in the wheel to getting my Broncos to be the Yankees of pro football.
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  But I always talk about my.
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  My top personality is Dan Reeves.
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  Not a Cowboy fan, but he came here from Tom Landry's tutelage and make the city of Denver a winner.
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  That's my own personal idea.
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  And I, you know, I know he has a.
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  A connection to the Falcons, and unfortunately, he was the coach when Elway won that championship.
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  So it's just a.
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  Just a big tangled web of Bronco greatness for me.
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  So, yeah, it's a tangled web in the NFL, isn't it?
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  The players and coaches might be on another team when they face each other.
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  Interesting stuff.
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  All right, well, Scott, why don't you share with everybody, once again, the name of your book and where folks can get a copy.
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  Great.
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  Yeah.
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  So it's the ultimate coffee table book on Sunday to open up and see where your team is and who to root against, because you want to pull for the teams that are above your team, especially when they're playing
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  a team below your team.
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  So that'll make the team above your.
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  Your team drop.
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  And you can advance because you want to get over to the winning side.
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  You want to get to the middle of the winning side.
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  You want to get in the top 10.
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  You want to be the winningest team of every game played from 1970 in the merger until this point.
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  So the book is on Amazon.
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  And again, I want to offer my email and put that on a graphic.
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  They can.
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  They can contact me if they want to order one for me.
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  I can sign it and insert their favorite teams page where it's random facts.
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  Every fan should know, and might even have a special bonus on the back where I have a chart of every season record and winning percentage.
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  You can see where your team switched from, hopefully going from a long time of under.500 to, to growing when they got the right head coach, quarterback or ownership.
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  And they're well over.500 and maybe they're contending to, to get past Pittsburgh.
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  You guys need to be rooting against Pittsburgh to get them lowered.
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  So no, don't do that, folks.
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  Don't do that.
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  But that's just fun stuff.
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  Yeah, it definitely is.
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  It's fun stuff.
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  It's great that.
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  I'm glad that you took the time.
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  And you know, even at a young age, I can just picture a young, younger Scott writing in a spiral ring notebook in school or something, writing these things down.
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  And then you preserve it all these years and put it into something that's palatable to the masses.
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  And we really love it, especially with those helmet graphics.
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  So great job and thanks for preserving that history.
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  I appreciate that.
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  I have some yellow papers my great grandkids will come across and say, here's the origin.
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  Because the book is a living, breathing organism, I have to update it every year and I'm looking for someone to take that over.
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  So maybe my daughter will turn the page and become a Bronco fan with me and love football.
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  So we'll see how that goes.
• 19:39
  All right, Scott, well, we appreciate you coming on here and we'll love to talk to you again real soon.
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  See you next week.
• 19:44
  Thanks.
• 19:44
  Appreciate being here.
• 19:47
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