December Is The Cruelest Month

Well, it happened. The 11-5 Patriots, with a winning percentage of .688, are officially the best team of the wild card era not to make the playoffs. And, in an effort to avoid falling into depression, I started thinking not about yesterday's elimination, but about the other great teams from recent years not to make the playoffs. And so, in a Poop on Boozer first, I decided to do some actual research, finding the best teams from the past 10 years not to make the playoffs in every sport (except hockey, since I did it by winning percentage, which ties in hockey made difficult). So, here you go, without further ado: the best of the rest, the Patriots' brothers in extraordinary mediocrity:

1. TIE: 2007 Browns, 2005 Chiefs, 2003 Dolphins (winning percentage: .625)

There are too many teams to go into much individual detail, but considering that the Patriots are now number 1, and the next three teams are all football as well, this suggests that somehow the NFL breeds the best borderline teams. Sure, it's got a divisional format, which helps keep good teams out at the expense of, say, the Arizona Cardinals--but so does baseball, and it doesn't crack the top four. Ultimately, the reason that baseball's bubble teams are worse is because baseball teams in general are more average--football has .625 teams that don't make the playoffs, while baseball rarely has .625 teams, period.

4. 2008 Warriors (winning percentage: .585)

A bad year to be a middle-of-the road team in the West--the East had the league's best teams in Boston and Detroit, while the West had its top teams bunched together around .600. In fact, while Eastern playoff teams had winning percentages that ranged from .451 to .805, every single one of the playoff teams from the Western Conference was between .600 and .700--which meant that a team just outside .600 wasn't going to make it, even with great fans and Baron Davis. Parity, thy name is the 2007-08 Western Conference.

5. 2005 Indians (winning percentage: .574)

This roster most likely would make the playoffs today, and it's somewhat surprising that it didn't then. But the White Sox won 99 games, and the Red Sox and Yankees tied in the AL East, giving the Wild Card to one of them and leaving the Tribe on the outside looking in. If only they'd figured out how to unleash swarms of marsh-bugs on cue in time...