OT - One of the all-time greatest NFL teams didn't even make the playoffs | Dorktown

[bacchys]

Stay-at-home has me watching videos. This one is about the 2010 Chargers, who had the #1 offense and #1 defense that year and still missed the playoffs.

Anytime someone starts decrying the importance of ST, send 'em to this video.

[Shas]

In this same category I will nominate the 1967 Colts.

Going into the final game of the season they were undefeated, 11-0-2, with ties against the Rams at home and Vikings on the road. This Colts were in the Coastal Division of the Western Conference so they had to make the cross country trip to LA for the final game of the year.

The Rams blew them out 34-10 for the Baltimore's loss of the season, evening them with LA at 11-1-2 record, with the head-to-head tiebreaker going to LA to put them into the Conference championship against the Central champion Packers.

With the Colts left at home, the Packers beat the Rams and then went on a week later to beat Dallas for the Championship in they mythical Ice Bowl game. (LA beat the Browns for third place in the "Playoff Bowl" game).

The Colts' official winning percentage of .917 is the best in North American professional sports history for a non-playoff-qualifying team.

Head coach Don Shula would take the Colts to the Super Bowl then next year, only to be upset by the Jets. Shula would stick around for one more hangover season in 69 before leaving for Miami.

Back in 1967 coaching staffs were far smaller, but some pretty big names among the five: Don McCafferty, John Sandusky, Bill Arnsparger, Chuck Noll.

[WrongBaldy]

I remember that team what a disaster

[WNCRavensFan]

Moral of the story: if you have a Kassim Osgood on your team, keep him.

[mmi16]

Remember the Colts '67 season

[bst3975]

Two words about that LA game:

Jack Snow.

[stevez51]

That Rams team also beat the Packers during the regular season but got beat by them in the playoffs.

[Shas]

Back in 1967 coaching staffs were far smaller, but some pretty big names among the five: Don McCafferty, John Sandusky, Bill Arnsparger, Chuck Noll.

All five members of Shula's coaching staff would go on to become head coaches by the way.

Noll departed Baltimore to begin his 23-year run as head coach in Pittsburgh, including those famed Steelers teams of the '70s. After Joe Paterno turned down the job, Noll was hired the day after the '68 Colts lost Super Bowl III to the Jets.

After one more season in Baltimore Shula left and took the d-line coach, Arnsparger with him to Miami, where he would coordinate the "no name defense" and earn himself a brief stint as HC for the Giants, and then back to Miami to form the "Killer B's" in the eighties.

McCafferty was promoted to head coach in Baltimore after Shula left. (Anyone remember his restaurant in Mt. Washington?) The 1970 team he inherited would go 11-2-1 and win Super Bowl V and then return to the playoffs in '71.

Bob Irsay traded his recently acquired Rams club to Carroll Rosenblum to get the Colts before the '72 season, and he hired his hatchet man, Joe Thomas, as GM.

After a slow start in '72 Thomas would fire McCafferty just five games into the season. A bigger issue, perhaps, was that Thomas had ordered McCafferty to bench Unitas, and he balked.

That's how Sandusky would become head coach of the Colts. (Father of Gerry Sandusky). Sandusky was never given a chance. Thomas then ordered Sandusky to do the same: bench all the veterans so he could line up trades. Sandusky was gone at the end of the lackluster season, and the veteran talent was traded away, including Unitas, Matte, Newsome, Curry, Bulaich, Logan.

Thomas went through five head coaches in the first five years of Irsay's ownership--they were Browns-level dysfunctional for awhile there--including McCafferty, Sandusky, Schnellenberger, himself, and finally Ted Marchibroda, who would succeed in large part thanks to the acquired talent of Bert Jones and a defensive front of Joe Ehrmann, Mike Barnes, John Dutton and Fred Cook. You have to give credit to Thomas for a least replacing the veterans with talent.

But not too much credit because Thomas was also the guy who kept trading away talent -- including Marte Domres and Mike Curtis -- for nothing in return.

Talk about dysfunctional, despite all the talent: By 1976 Marchibroda wanted a say in personnel decisions in a tug of war with Thomas. Meanwhile a drunk Irsay stormed into the locker room after a weak preseason performance in Detroit and demanded that Marchibroda fire his coaching staff. Marchibroda resigned. The team continue to practice with no coaches. They stood with the coaches and threatened to boycott the season. Finally Irsay brought back Marchibroda in time to coach the regular season, and gave him an extension. Thomas was out after the '77 season.

There were a lot of Baltimore-Miami connections back then. Shula and Arnsberger and eventually Sandusky were part of those great Dolphins teams. Rosenbloom would mysteriously drown in the waters outside his home in the outskirts of Miami, almost exactly one year before Irsay moved the Colts out of Baltimore.

[PGCountyRaven85]

They were a disaster on special teams if I recall.