Since I have already given up on this season being a winning one for the Carolina Panthers, which it most certainly will not and cannot be, I have instead started to focus on who the WORST team in the NFL is. I am a very big critic of my own favorite team, but I also have started to reach out and look at the possibility that there just might be a team that is even worse. I don't watch all the games each week, normally I will only watch Carolina (if I can endure how shit they are playing) and San Francisco because that is where McCaffrey - who use to be a Panther - is playing and excelling.
Looking into the numbers, there is a very good chance that Carolina might actually be slightly less terrible than the Arizona Cardinals are.
We can start here. There are only 32 teams in the entirety of the NFL, so Arizona's passing yards are pretty sub-par yet their rushing yards at first glance appear to be really good. However, if you dig into the stats you will quickly find that this is because they don't even attempt very many passes in a game because it is pretty evident that they, rightfully so, have no faith in their passing game.
Carolina does a bit better of passing yards and overall yards, but this is because of the fact that Bryce Young is a passing quarterback and is always going to look for big yardage the likes if which he regularly experienced when he was in college a bit over a year ago.
Both are really bad defensively and this is gauged by how many points are scored against them per game. The Panthers are 31 out of 32 with 28.3 points scored against per game and Arizona has a slight edge with 26.7, which lands them in 27th place out of 32.
Both teams have won only one game with the Panthers currently 1-7 and Cardinals at 1-8. The difference in total games played thus far is only because the Panthers have already had their bye week, while the Cards are yet to have theirs.
Both teams' stats are terrible, and with one exceptions the only thing they rank in the top 10 of is things you don't want to be in the top-10 for such as sacks and interceptions against you, not for you.
I think one thing that really stands out and how Carolina might actually be the worse team is that in the entire season they have only scored 2 touchdowns off of rushing, which is just terrible. Arizona, who rushes almost every play like clockwork, has a total of 7 which is still pretty bad.
Both teams' defense is equally terrible, with either team having a mere 4 interceptions for the entire season.
Unfortunately, because of the way the league is formed Carolina and Arizona will not play one another unless some sort of miracle comeback happens for both teams in the rest of the season and I would bet that there is some way to bet on that and the odds would be a million to 1 that it won't happen.
It is tough to even compare their conferences to see who has the tougher one, because they are nearly exactly the same. In my opinion, the only team out of all 8 of these that even stands a chance of going to the big dance is San Fran and even that seems pretty unlikely at this point.
So since I have zero faith in Carolina's ability to turn things around, I will be watching Arizona games henceforth if they even bother to televise them. Perhaps seeing another team that might just be worse than my team, will up my spirits a bit.