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1992 SAN DIEGO CHARGERS It might seem hopeless for the Giants, but things looked far worse for this Chargers squad. After going 4-12 in the 1991 season, San Diego opened 1992 being outscored by a 95-29 total en route to an 0-4 record. An emergency preseason trade for quarterback Stan Humphries — the incumbent starter, John Friesz, was injured — was looking to be a bust and Bobby Ross, who had won a share of the national championship with Georgia Tech in 1990, was not impressing in his first stint as an N.F.L. head coach.

The Chargers’ run to the postseason started modestly, with a 17-6 win over the Seattle Seahawks, a team that would finish the season with a 2-14 record. But San Diego then had a bye week and emerged from it a different team. Humphries and a hodgepodge group of running backs started putting points on the board, and linebacker Junior Seau and end Leslie O’Neal led the defense. The Chargers closed the season with 9 wins in 10 games.

The only team to qualify for the playoffs after starting 0-4, the Chargers shut out the Kansas City Chiefs in the first round before they were crushed by the Miami Dolphins in the second round. Two seasons later, the core of this Chargers team went to the Super Bowl.

1995 DETROIT LIONS An 0-3 record was somewhat misleading, as the Lions had been outscored by a combined 16 points, twice losing by just a field goal. Regardless, Coach Wayne Fontes was on the hot seat, and the team was facing the defending Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers. Detroit attacked San Francisco through the air as Barry Sanders was unable to do much on the ground, gaining only 24 yards on 17 carries. The game was close, but Detroit held on to win, 27-24, when a last-second field goal attempt by the 49ers’ Doug Brien hit the right upright.

The win did not provide much momentum; through nine games, Detroit was 3-6. But something clicked, and the Lions closed the season with a seven-game winning streak that included two wins over the Chicago Bears, a team they held off for a wild-card spot by one game. Improved play by the Lions’ defense, the typical brilliance of Sanders, and a then-record 123 receptions by Herman Moore helped Detroit finish 10-6.

The magic did not last. Detroit lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round of the playoffs, 58-37. The seemingly improved defense allowed 31 points in the second quarter, continuing Detroit’s postseason futility, a drought that stretches back to 1957.

1998 BUFFALO BILLS Unless the Giants have an undersize 36-year-old backup with a flair for the dramatic tucked away somewhere, it is hard to relate their situation to that of the 1998 Bills, who rode Doug Flutie to the playoffs after struggling with Rob Johnson, a more typical N.F.L. quarterback in terms of size and arm strength.

Johnson finished the season with a higher quarterback rating, a higher completion percentage and a better interception rate, but the Bills went 7-3 in Flutie’s starts and only 3-3 with Johnson starting.

With a 10-6 record in what was Wade Phillips’s first season as coach, Buffalo went on to lose to the Miami Dolphins in the first round of the playoffs. And the quarterback controversy was never fully resolved. Johnson refused to accept that he had become a backup, and he and Flutie continued to battle for the job in 1999 and 2000, with Johnson earning a Pyrrhic victory when Flutie signed with San Diego in 2001. But it is Bills fans who have suffered: Buffalo has not played a postseason game since 1999.

PacificNorseWest wrote:7th best scoring offense in the NFL, baby.