Closing Arguments: The Stinky-Poo Teams
How bad will bad be in 2025? The Saints, Browns and other bottom-feeders are about to find out.
All nine of these teams should tank. All nine of them can then finish in last place and draft Arch Manning. Thank you for choosing the insights and analysis you can only get at Too Deep Zone.
We’ll actually talk a little about tanking in this final installment of Closing Arguments. But many of the nine teams on this tier, chosen because they had a +2000 or higher moneyline to finish with the least wins in the NFL, per DraftKings on August 24th, have better things to root for than a top draft pick. Some have an outside chance of reaching the playoffs. Some have young quarterbacks and/or nuclei. Only a handful of them are either too cap-strapped, demoralized or both to do anything but embarrass themselves this season. And even those teams won’t be losing on purpose, though we might respect them a little more if they did.
As mentioned at the starts of all the other Closing Arguments segments this week: the prop bets accompanying each team are not suggestions, merely indicators of what the handicappers (and therefore conventional wisdom) thinks of these teams. I’m not picking on the Dolphins for putting them here. They put themselves here by picking on themselves.
Carolina Panthers
Prop Bet of Note: Over 7.5 wins at +140.
The Panthers first-stringers looked great in their preseason opener against Browns backups but dreadful in Week 2 against the Texans starters.
The vibes around the team were tense after that second loss. Cornerback Jaycee Horn and left tackle Ickey Ekwonu sparred in the final padded practice of training camp. Dave Canales later admitted that he may have pushed the players too hard in a team meeting. How do you push a team that hasn’t had a winning season since 2017 too hard in a meeting? Whatever. The offense ran gassers after a shoddy earlier practice, though The Athletic’s Joe Person reported that the punishment was Bryce Young and Chuba Hubbard’s idea, not something handed down from the coaching staff.
Person noted that a Cam Newton/Josh Norman training camp fight helped galvanize the 2015 Panthers. Sure. But Young is no Newton, nor is Horn in the same category as Norman (yet), and there are no Luke Kuechly or Greg Olsen-types about. It sounds like Canales and the veterans received a rude wakeup call from the Texans in joint practices and the preseason game. The Panthers may indeed have improved, but they have categorically NOT arrived.
Canales seems like a righteous dude. Young is proving to be a hard-nosed fella. There’s fun young talent scattered all over the Panthers roster. An 8-9 season is a plausible reach goal. It would be a real sign of progress. But I worry that some of the tension in Charlotte is coming from the impetuous doofus who writes the checks and may have drawn the wrong conclusions from last season’s semi-fluky end-of-year uptick.
Cleveland Browns
Prop Bet of Note: +400 for fewest wins in the NFL.
I admire the Browns’ commitment to pretending that they are normal.