Winning games is important if you want to make the playoffs. In fact, no team has ever made the NFL playoffs by going winless! Teams have, though, made the playoffs after losing some games, which includes making the postseason after losing their first two games of the season.
But making the playoffs after an 0-2 start is definitely not easy. Not at all! Let's run some numbers to see just how hard it is.
How often do 0-2 teams make the playoffs?
Historically, the rate of teams making the playoffs after an 0-2 start has been around 10 percent, though the math has changed in recent seasons with the league expanding both the playoff field and the season length, opening up more room for 0-2 teams to recover. However, it hasn't made it so much easier that it really changes the fact that starting 0-2 puts you in a massive hole.
According to research from the South Bend Tribune, just eight of the 42 teams to start 0-2 since the expansion to the 17-game schedule have made the postseason. That 19 percent mark is more encouraging than the numbers from the 16-game era, but still...it puts you at basically one-in-five odds of recovering from that poor start to make the postseason.
If you're a fan of a team that started the 2026 season with an 0-2 record, you, uhh, should probably be worried! 2024 and 2025 saw three teams each season make the playoffs after an 0-2 start, which seems to be a bit more than what we should usually expect. That 19 percent mark feels like it might be a little higher than that number will eventually settle out to be.
Notable 0-2 teams to reach the postseason
This isn't to say that an 0-2 start necessarily ends your season. In fact, three Super Bowl-winning teams have started 0-2: the 1993 Dallas Cowboys, 2001 New England Patriots and 2007 New York Giants.
Last season, the Panthers, Bears and Texans all started 0-2 and went on to make the playoffs, but analyzing that requires some context. The Panthers, for example, started 0-2 and ended up finishing just 8-9, but won the NFC South because the entire division struggled. In other words, the team needed a lot of luck to come back from that 0-2 start.
Team | Start | Finish |
|---|---|---|
Carolina Panthers | 0-2 | 8-9 |
Chicago Bears | 0-2 | 11-6 |
Houston Texans | 0-3 | 12-5 |
Chicago, meanwhile, started 0-2 last season with losses to a pair of divisional foes, putting the team in an early hole. How did it did out? Because the team — specifically quarterback Caleb Williams — matured in a hurry and was able to quickly go on a four-game winning streak because of how its schedule shook out.
Last year's Texans are an even weirder case, as the team was 0-3 to open the season. Two of those losses were to playoff teams and the third was to a Buccaneers team that looked like a playoff team at the time. How did Houston turn it around? Well, having arguably the league's best defense helped, and the team closed the regular season a nine-game win streak because that defense hit its stride and was able to consistently drag the team across the finish line.
Each circumstance was different, so I'm definitely not saying there's some one-size-fits-all way to predict which 0-2 teams make the postseason. What mostly matters is that an 0-2 start puts you in a hole, and it takes both talent and luck to get out of that hole.
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