The NFL’s Sad Bracket: A variety pack of tragedy

This is a fake tournament with arbitrary criteria that purportedly determines the most tragic team in the NFL. It pits division losers and two wild card teams in a bizarro 12-team NFL playoff, and makes them try to win games against one another. I don’t think anyone else has tried to do this, and in any case there is no way of quantitatively knowing who, exactly, is the most heartbreaking team in the league. Fans of every bad team are feeling pretty bad about themselves right now. There is no consolation in having that anguish recognized by an Internet guy.

This exercise has spit out a truly tragic team each week, to be sure. But more importantly, it has revealed more and more nuanced variations of heartbreak with each iteration, some perhaps never even considered until now. Flawed teams are so much more complex than those that are functional. And perhaps the most important revelation of this tournament is that no team and nothing is ever absolutely flawless.

The field:

NFC:

Division losers:

5. Washington (3-6, 4th place NFC East) [Lost tiebreaker to STL and CHI due to in-conference record]

Wild card:

If you want to hate the Bears, here’s a good reason: They’re going to the conference championship game because, by divine providence, they’ve been given a path through the only two teams they can beat in perhaps the entire conference. They’ve gone 2-3 against in-conference opponents, for a .400 winning percentage over a superior Rams team that is 3-5 with a .375 wining percentage in conference play. The difference between the No. 4 seed and No. 3 seed is massive. The NFC South is reaching new levels of terrible, and the 3-seed gets to play the two most charred and mangled teams in the division on a technicality.

Of the 12-team playoff field, the Bears feel like they’re squandering the most talent. They were No. 9 in SB Nation’s preseason power rankings, which is the highest ranking of any team taking part in this depressing exercise. And yet here we go again handing them a nice thing even though they’ve shown they can’t be trusted. The Bears are a rich kid from your elementary school -- full of fake confidence instilled by shiny toys and dumb as rocks. His worth will be what he owns, and never what he is. Just one look at him and your empathy dies. But he’s sad inside, I assure you. He has everything except a place in your heart.

AFC:

Division losers:

Wild card:

And as torturous a season as this has been for the Bears, it may not quite live up to the Ravens’ level of quivering crazy. They haven’t done anything wrong. Sure, they erred once or four times -- but they’ve won six games! They’re on the up and up!

They’re committed to the asylum with the crazies, with a bunch of teams that more or less deserve to be where they are due to years of bad personnel decisions and mismanagement. That leaves Baltimore to claw for reasons why they aren’t like everyone else, and why it’s a mistake that they’ve been grouped with a bunch of losers. After beating the Titans last week, head coach John Harbaugh gave a locker room speech admonishing the Steelers’ loss that same day ...

... as if to say “We’re not crazy -- they’re crazy.”

But you may be hosed, Baltimore. You’re in bad place with a 2-3 record in the division. The end of the season is coming fast. Pretty soon you may have to admit you’re a fourth-place team, and this is exactly where you belong.

Wild card (winners in bold)

6. Buccaneers vs. 3. Bears

5. Washington vs. 4. Rams

Divisional

4. Rams vs. 1. Giants

3. Bears vs. 2. Falcons

The Giants are in the middle of a brutal slate. They’ve just played Philadelphia, Dallas, Indianapolis and Seattle -- three of those games on the road -- and will host Dallas and San Francisco in their next two games. It’d be easy to give them pity points if the Rams’ slate wasn’t just as harsh. St. Louis beat Seattle and San Francisco, and had tight losses to Philadelphia and Dallas early in the season. Its 3-6 is clearly stronger than New York’s.

Championship

4. Rams vs. 3. Bears

Yeah, this isn’t all that close.

Wild card (winners in bold)

6. Raiders vs. 3. Ravens

5. Jaguars vs. 4. Jets

Divisional

4. Jets vs. 1. Texans

3. Ravens vs. 2. Titans

The Titans have owned the No. 2 seed for four weeks despite being stuck at two wins for more than a month. They don’t have the Bears’ silver spoon problem. They’re trying desperately to give their bye to someone more deserving, but a clerical error dictates that they be given a week off while the Ravens grind out an extra game. If the Titans had a father, he had a sense of humor.

Championship

3. Ravens vs. 1. Texans

The Texans stride up to the Ravens before the pre-game coin toss, shake hands, smile, lean in and whisper “I was once like you. Give up. Giiiiive uuuuuuup.”

Rams vs. Ravens

This is the exact same game as last week, except that the Ravens are one win better and the Rams are one loss worse. As such, there’s no reason to adjust the outcome. The Ravens are the most tragic team in the NFL right now, for many reasons stated above.

For it to get better for Baltimore, things will have to get worse for the teams above it in the AFC North. So now in addition to being a fourth-place team, the Ravens must carry with them a measure of spite. They’re a good team slowly going bad because of an unforgiving and entirely unjust system. This is how super villains are made, I’m pretty sure.

We’re hoping that a tragic end doesn’t mean a tragic future for our heroes. To find out for sure, we’re running past seasons through the simulation to see what lessons we can glean from the winner. This week:

The 2010 season could reasonably be called a pivot season when league power shifted. As we saw in 2011, that season’s playoff pool of crappy teams didn’t look all that different from today’s. Here, however, there are several teams we would consider good or excellent this season -- the Cardinals, Cowboys, 49ers, Broncos and Bengals, namely. Of course, a few standbys remain (hi Titans!), but for the most part we can take this field as a sign of how quickly fortunes can change.

Photo via Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

NFC Divisional: Vikings vs. Cowboys, Washington vs. 49ers

AFC Divisional: Titans vs. Browns, Bills vs. Texans

The wild card round in the NFC was easy to pick -- the Panthers and Cardinals were arguably the two worst teams in football that year. They AFC was a bit tougher. The Bengals had a better resume than the Bills, but the Bills beat the Bengals that season and had a tougher strength of schedule.

NFC Championship: Vikings vs. 49ers

Both of these franchise would fire their head coaches after the season. Both exemplify what a crapshoot it is to hire a new coach. The Vikings kept Leslie Frazier and dipped to 3-13 the next season. The 49ers hired Jim Harbaugh and went 13-3, and would go on to a Super Bowl appearance a year later. Now it seems the two teams are diverging again -- the 49ers apparently weary of Harbaugh and the Vikings looking competitive of late under Mike Zimmer.

AFC Championship: Titans vs. Texans

I’m not sure how often we’ve seen this matchup already, but it feels like a lot. The Texans did climb out of this hole to have some very good seasons. The Titans ... are the Titans. The NFL tends to have more parity than, say, MLB or the NBA, but somehow Tennessee has been immune to the ebbs and flows that other teams went through over the last six seasons. They’ve been consistently bleh, though the levee may be cracking this season. Maybe that’s for the better.

2010 Saddest Super Bowl: Vikings vs. Titans

The 2010 season was Brett Favre’s honest-to-god last season, coming off a year in which he made the Pro Bowl at 40 years old and made us believe he could actually play forever. Then this abomination of a season happened, in which he threw more interceptions than his career-low 11 touchdowns. Favre’s last two plays of his career were an incomplete pass and a seemingly innocuous sack that briefly knocked him unconscious and closed the curtain. So soon after a renascent season he appeared long past due to retire.

2013: St. Louis Rams

2012: Carolina Panthers