There are bad teams in sports, and there are bad teams. The Miami Marlins are a bad team, but the Colorado Rockies are bad. The Cleveland Browns have been bad since trading for Deshaun Watson, but they haven’t been the worst team in sports at any time.
Speaking of those Colorado Rockies, they are on pace for just 34 wins. And that’s with a recent four-game winning streak (at the time of this writing). They are a truly dreadful team.
This level of awful takes years to accomplish. It takes 10 years of bad drafting, a dozen bad free agent moves, pure spite levels of incompetence, and a leadership group who often couldn’t manage a Wendy’s. Either that, or teams are purposely terrible in order to gain a once-in-a-generation asset like The Process 76ers or the 1983 Pittsburgh Penguins (who went on to draft Mario Lemieux).
So who are the worst teams of all time? There are literally hundreds of teams to choose from. One quick rule for this piece. We want teams with a decent amount of history to say why they were so bad. So, we’re not pointing out the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who had recorded 101 road losses despite playing just 154 games. We’re also sticking to the current eras of sports leagues, so think Super Bowl era in the NFL, which knocks out the 1934 Cincinnati Reds (yes, that was once a football team as well). This list is also focusing on the core four sports in the professional leagues, so MLB, NHL, NFL, and NBA. That 34-game losing streak for the Northwestern Wildcats isn’t going to track.
10. 2024 Chicago White Sox
Just last year, the Chicago White Sox put together one of the worst seasons in the 100+ history of baseball. They won just 41 games against 121 losses. Things got so bad that the fanbase started to cheer for the team to lose. They wanted the loss record because what else are they even rooting for?
The White Sox were last in the majors in batting average with a .221 average. They were last in total bases, more than 130 total bases behind the Tampa Bay Rays, who were second-to-last. They scored 504 runs, 97 fewer than the next-worst team in baseball. They even take the claim as the only MLB team in 2024 to have fewer than 10 triples.
The pitching staff wasn't good, either. They were in the bottom five in ERA, WHIP, home runs allowed, and they were last in the league in walks allowed. There was no redeeming quality about the 2024 Chicago White Sox.
And just as a punch to the gut, they likely don't even get to keep the losses record for a full year. The Rockies are taking the express train to Sucktown, and they are kicking the White Sox out of the book of records. After this season, the dreadful White Sox season literally has no meaning.
9. 1943-44 New York Rangers
There are a few interesting names in the world of hockey. It was important to pick one team from the Original Six era. The New York Rangers are a terrible franchise. Just in general, the Rangers have thrown away every privelage its ever had. While other Original Six teams have won a dozen championships or more. The Toronto Maple Leafs have 13 Stanley Cups in their history, and they haven't won since the 1960s. Yet, the Rangers have four Stanley Cups. They have as many Cups as the St. Louis Eagles, who haven't been a team since 1935.
There are many teams to choose from in New York. Teams with incredible hype that play in the biggest sports city in the world. Heck, we could have picked the Rangers from last season which went from Cup contender to laughing stock in a matter of months.
We went with the 1943-44 Rangers because they were in the Original Six era, and they won six games out of 50. That's a 12% winning percentage. That is unfathomable. Wartime enlistments took a ton of talent from the NHL in the 1940s, and the Rangers were probably the hardest hit of any team. They had won the Stanley Cup just a few years prior to their six-win seasons. Because of this, there was literally nobody to play goalie. They searched far and wide before finding Steve Buzinski, who was working in agriculture according to the great Stan Fischler at the time.
They tried a bunch of other goalies, and the roster was a constant mess. There was no consistency, and it showed in the results. It’s hard to explain sports in the era of World War II, but it was just different back then with how athletes were treated as citizens.
8. 2000-01 Chicago Bulls
There are a few NBA teams that finished the season with 15 wins, the lowest ever for a team playing an 82-game season, but the one that stands out is the 2000-01 Chicago Bulls. This was the post-Jordan era Bulls, but that wasn’t the only loss in the Windy City. Phil Jackson was now coaching in LA, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman were finishing their careers elsewhere, and the Bulls as a whole were in a deep rebuild.
The Bulls had every intention to be good in 2000-01. They wanted to replace greatness with more greatness, going after Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, and Tracy McGrady in free agency. They struck out terribly. So, they focused on the draft. The Bulls started the season with seven rookies, giving them the youngest roster in the league.
This team had some players, but they had no direction. Elton Brand was in his second year, and he averaged over 20 points per game. Ron Artest was on the cusp of being one of the toughest players in the league. Fourth-overall pick Marcus Fizer was decent enough. A young Jamal Crawford was also on the team, but he was terrible, shooting 35% from the field.
Looking back, the Bulls made serious mistakes in the post-Jordan era that forced them to take longer than they hoped to compete again. The draft picks weren’t great until Derrick Rose, and the free agents were laughable. This was the low point.
7. 1990 New England Patriots
The 1990 calendar year for the New England Patriots was a bizarre one. It started with a coaching search as they just let go of longtime signal caller Raymond Berry. General Manager Pat Sullivan wanted more power, so he fired Berry to give him a head coach that would allow Sullivan to hire the offensive and defensive coordinators. He ended up hiring Rod Rust, who put together one of the worst performances in franchise history. They also lost franchise legend Raymond Clayborn on accident. They wanted to keep him after Berry got fired, but they already labeled him as not protected, and the league wouldn’t let Clayborn sign with New England after he already had an agreement with the Cleveland Browns, despite his desire to return.
The Patriots were off to an unusual start, and things would only get worse. After two competitive games in Weeks 1 and 2, including a win against the Indianapolis Colts, the Patriots lost 14 in a row. Now only did they lose, they lost in embarrassing fashion.
They lost seven games by at least 20 points, including two games where they lost by 30+. At the end of the season, the Patriots had a -265 point differential, the worst differential of the 1990s. This team was terrible, and three players were accused of sexually harrassing a reporter in the locker room.
The worst part for Patriots fans was this was a clear goodbye to the first era of somewhat decent football in New England. Steve Grogan lost his fastball, and all of the stars that helped them get to Super Bowl XX were clearly over the hill. Marc Wilson took the starting job as Grogan couldn’t get healthy enough to play, although many still called for him to start. The low point was the final game of the season, where a sellout crowd was mostly New York Giants fans. Finishing with a 1-15 record, it was one of the worst football teams in history.
6. 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats
The era of the Charlotte Bobcats in the NBA is one many would like to forget. The NBA wanted basketball back in the Carolinas, but was this worth it?
The low point was the 2011-12 season. The Bobcats had seven wins that season, winning barely 10 percent of their games. This was a team that won 34 games the previous season, so it wasn’t a playoff team, but this level of embarrassment was surprising. Ironically, it was the rookie years of two very good players in Bismack Biyombo and Kemba Walker.
They also had some decent players. There was some hope in Boris Diaw, D.J. Augustine, and Gerald Henderson. They had a few guys who could score 20 on any given night. Unfortunately, they are the most inconsistent team in sports. They shot under 42% from the field, and they were the only team in the league that year to shoot under 30% from three. Their average loss was by 14 points.
Remember, this was the lockout-shortened season that started around Christmas, so they only played 66 games. The games were also closer together, so it felt like constantly getting punched in the face by losses for Bobcats fans.
5. 2025 Colorado Rockies
And now to this Colorado Rockies team. It’s well known how hard it is for the Rockies to compete. They are uniquely difficult to stay competitive, as pitching is nearly impossible to come by with the thin air causing balls to leave Coors Field with quickness. This year, obviously, is no different. The four starters on this Rockies team with at least 10 starts have an ERA over 5.00. The next starter, Carson Palmquist, has seven starts and a 7.63 ERA.
The offense isn’t much better. Catcher Hunter Goodman is having a really good season with a .284 batting average, 14 home runs, and 48 RBIs. Besides him, nobody is playing well. Take Zac Veen, who was given 34 at-bats before the team realized only having four hits (.118 average) needed addressing. He was sent down.
There are multiple players who are on this team below the Mendoza Line. Brenton Doyle has 253 at-bats as of this writing and just 50 hits. Right fielder Sean Bouchard is hitting .167, and second baseman Adael Amador is hitting .146.
Then there’s Kris Bryant. The former Chicago Cubs star is the catalyst for what happened to this franchise. He signed a seven-year, $182 million contract with the Rockies four years ago. He hasn’t been healthy once. This season, he’s back on the injured list after hitting just .154 with just two extra-base hits. It’s a sad ending to his career on a very sad team.
4. 1974-75 Washington Capitals
Oftentimes, some of the worst seasons we’ve ever seen come from expansion teams. These teams are given the scraps of other teams, and they are tasked with making it work for a few seasons until they can get their wits about them. Once in a blue moon, you’ll get a team like the Vegas Golden Knights, who are great right off the bat, but more often, they are dreadful from the jump. The 1974-75 Washington Capitals took that to another level.
Let’s start by talking about this team on the road. They played 40 games away from the nation’s capital. They won one. To put together a 1-39 record on the road, with their lone road win coming against the California Golden Seals (awesome name, by the way), says a lot about the state of hockey in D.C. After the road win, the team started lifting around a trash can as if it were the Stanley Cup. No, seriously.
Like most terrible teams, the Capitals had coaching issues. They ended up with three coaches throughout the season, starting with Jim Anderson, moving to Red Sullivan and finishing the season with Milt Schmidt doing double duty as GM and coach. There is bad, and there is the head coach saying he’d rather have his wife cheat on him than deal with this losing bad.
The Capitals are experiencing happier times now with the greatest goal scorer in history in Alex Ovechkin on the roster, but for those who remember that 74-75 season, this feels like positive karma.
3. 2008 Detroit Lions
For an entire decade, the Detroit Lions were the worst franchise in the NFL, and possibly all of North American sports. They failed to put together a winning season from 2001 to 2009, and the playoffs weren’t even a consideration. The high point was a seven-win season in 2007, but it was immediately followed by the worst record in NFL history.
The Lions went winless in 2008. After multiple teams flirted with a winless 16-game season, the Lions finally accomplished the “feat” on December 28th of that year with a 31-21 loss to the Green Bay Packers. It’s almost ironic that the Lions ended up winning all four of their preseason games.
This Lions team was a collection of former stars that were cooked and young players who never got there. Jon Kitna started the season, but the former Bengals starter wasn’t the dude. They signed Daunte Culpepper to be the quarterback in November, but he was about three injuries past his prime and a shoulder injury ended his season less than a month later. They also had Rudi Johnson at running back and a decent young player in Kevin Smith.
Oh, and this team had Calvin freaking Johnson on the roster. How could a team lose every game with Calvin Johnson, one of the best players of this generation? There were pivot points, like the pass interference call that lost them a game against the Vikings in Week 6, and blowing a 23-13 halftime lead to the Chicago Bears in Week 9. The rest of the season was a mess, and the Lions had to reset their franchise.
2. 1962 New York Mets
While the White Sox and now the Rockies are looking to push the New York Mets' dreadful first season in Queens down the list of worst records ever, this is still the worst baseball team we’ve ever seen. It was the return of a second baseball team to New York City after the Dodgers and Giants both left for California pastures. The excitement was quickly met with contempt after the team started playing games.
The stats tell the story. The Mets’ starting pitchers won 23 games all season. They started the season with a nine-game losing streak, and added 17, 13, and 11-game losing streaks throughout the season.
There was some reason to be excited at the start. Yankees managerial legend Casey Stengel was leading the team. They got to play in the Polo Grounds while Shea Stadium was being built. It was also the last stop for former Philadelphia Phillies legend Richie Ashburn. This season was so bad, it drove Ashburn to retirement despite hitting over .300 that season.
The Mets were winning games, albeit it few and far between, in spite of themselves. Everything they did was wrong. The situation was terrible, and the team was worse. They lost 120 games, and arguably, it should have been more.
1. 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The worst team in the history of American sports was the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was a team with little talent, no coaching, bad management, and a new market that didn’t know how to react to the attention. There wasn’t much to cheer for. The Buccaneers didn’t score their first points until the third game of the season.
The Buccaneers convinced USC Trojans head coach and owner of four National Championships John McKay to be the head coach of his expansion team. There would be a lot of college-aged kids on this team. They also got Florida star Steve Spurrier (yes that guy) to play quarterback.
Coach McKay said the entire team was flipped on its head when they reset the depth chart after the preseason was already over. Before Week 1, they went with young players as starters and the chemistry was immediately off. That really blew any semblance of being a good team with a mistake in philosophy. It’s insane that turned into the worst team in sports. In case it wasn’t clear how much of a mess the start was, the Bucs got lost in the Superdome during Week 1 and almost missed their first opening kickoff.
A quick list of what happened this season: offensive coordinator John Rauch quit in the middle of their Week 5 game, there were so many injuries and ejections some times it happened on the same play, they leased the team jet from a chainsaw factory, Spurrier criticized McKay in the media for playing his son, McKay called the Buccaneers fans idiots, and they finished the season being shut out five times. On top of all that, they were outscored by almost 300 points in 14 games.
They did get Lee Roy Selmon with the first-overall pick, and he has streets named after him in the Tampa area. However, it wasn’t an instant success. The future Defensive Player of the Year and Hall of Famer did win the team MVP, but it was on a winless franchise. At least there’s some redeeming quality here, but it’s not much.