Tapp-ing into the Numbers: 40 Packers Stats Until Opening Kickoff (No. 33)
Did you know that the last season the Packers finished in last place in their division was in 2005, more than a decade ago? Pretty impressive!
But did you know there are two franchises that have not finished last in their division in this century? If you guessed one of those teams was the New England Patriots, you would be wrong.
The Pittsburgh Steelers finished in last place in their division in 1988, the last season they were in last place in a season. Since then, they have never finished last. The other team that has not finished last in their division this century is the Seattle Seahawks. The Seahawks last finished in the cellar of their division in 1996.
Following are the seasons in which each NFL franchise last finished in last place in their division.
1988: Pittsburgh
1996: Seattle
2000: New England
2003: N.Y. Giants
2005: Green Bay
2007: Atlanta, Baltimore
2008: New Orleans
2010: Cincinnati, Denver
2011: Indianapolis
2012: Arizona, Detroit, Kansas City
2013: Buffalo, Houston, Minnesota
2014: L.A. Rams, Oakland, Washington
2015: Dallas, Miami, Tampa Bay, Tennessee
2016: Carolina, Chicago, Cleveland, Jacksonville, N.Y. Jets, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco
Jerry Tapp
Jerry Tapp is a freelance writer from Racine, WI with a major concentration on sports statistics and numbers that define sports teams and players. He began his foray into sports stats-focused writing as a regular contributor to the “Numbers” column in Inside Sports magazine in the mid-1980’s and then began writing a weekly “Stats on Tapp” column for the Racine Journal Times. That column was eventually nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He later wrote sports stats items for the Washington Post under the “Stat of the Day” heading. After launching his blog, www.statsontapp.com in 2011, Jerry turned his sports stats attention to sports websites. He wrote regularly for Bleacher Report, BallHyped, football.com and Heavy.com. Today he keeps busy writing weekly columns of stats-centric articles for three sports websites, Today’s Pigskin (NFL), Today’s Knuckleball (MLB) and Today’s Fastbreak (NBA), and as a monthly contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers “GameDay” publication that is distributed to fans attending games at Miller Park.