10 NFL Teams and Players That Made the WRONG KIND of History in 2025
This article was originally published on Total Pro Sports.
Every NFL season has its winners and losers. That’s just how sports work.
But 2025? This season had some historic losers. We’re talking about records that nobody wants to hold… the kind of stats that make you cringe just reading them.
We saw quite a unique mix
Some of them are the kind of thing where you just have to sit back and ask… how is that even possible?
There is down…. and then there is down bad—and we saw it all this past season.
From individual disasters to complete team-wide meltdowns, these are the 10 NFL teams and players that made the wrong kind of history in 2025.
Which NFL players or teams blundered in 2025?
Myles Garrett: Sack Record on a Terrible Team
Myles Garrett had arguably the greatest defensive season in NFL history in 2025.
He was a monster all year, posting 23 sacks despite the team regularly being down and the opposing offense not being forced into many passing situations.
Doing so, he broke the 22.5 record that Michael Strahan and T.J. Watt have shared since 2021.
Garrett also became the first player ever with 12 or more sacks in six consecutive seasons… and the only player with 10 or more in eight straight years.
And with all that… the Browns still went 5 and 12—and somehow—the season felt more hopeless than that still.
This was Garrett’s seventh losing season in Cleveland since they drafted him first overall back in 2017. Seven years. Seven losing seasons. The man broke the all-time sack record, and it didn’t move the needle one bit.
He did everything humanly possible on his end… but Cleveland’s issues run so much deeper than anything one player can fix. The offensive line was a disaster. The quarterback situation was a mess. And ownership continues to make decisions that leave fans scratching their heads.
Hard to feel bad for him considering he signed that massive extension, but at this point, Garrett has to be wondering if he’ll ever play for a contender—or if he’s destined to waste his entire prime setting records that don’t lead anywhere.
Carolina Panthers: First Team to Win Two Division Titles with Losing Records
The Carolina Panthers had a unique 2025 NFL season… It started off looking like it might be a complete disaster, but they found some midseason magic behind the resurgence of former first overall pick, quarterback, Bryce Young, and managed to sneak into the playoffs through the back door.
And when we say backdoor… we mean it.
After all, the Panthers won the NFC South with an 8 and 9 record—yup, that’s a losing record—in the playoffs!
And here’s the kicker… this is the second time Carolina has done this. They also won the NFC South at 7, 8, and 1 back in 2014.
That makes them the first franchise in NFL history to win multiple division titles with a losing record. That is the kind of magic that could only happen in the NFC South.
Three teams—the Panthers, Buccaneers, and Falcons—all finished 8 and 9 this year. Carolina won the tiebreaker despite having the worst point differential in the division.
For what it’s worth, there is reason for Panthers fans to be optimistic, looking forward to seeing how Bryce Young improved in his second year and the one in which the team as a whole seemed to come together under Dave Canales.
But making the playoffs at 8 and 9… twice? That’s the kind of history that makes you question whether the NFC South should even exist.
Indianapolis Colts: 8 and 2 to 8 and 9
Leave it to the Indianapolis Colts to put on display one of the greatest collapses in NFL history.
Indy started the season 8 and 2—and were the talk of the town… it was their best start since going 10 and 0 in 2009—the year they reached Super Bowl XLIV. The Daniel Jones signing was looking like a godsend, everything was clicking, everyone was signing their prices, and it looked like they were going to be one of the first teams to have a playoff spot.
Then they lost. And lost again. And again.
Seven straight losses to close the season. The Colts became the first team in NFL history to start 8 and 2 and finish with a losing record.
Now, technically, this was only possible because of the 17th game that was added in 2021. Before that, an 8 and 2-team couldn’t mathematically finish below .500.
But still… Seven straight losses. How does that happen?
Well, to be fair to the Colts, they did have a good run of bad luck… starting with Jones breaking his leg, which he somehow tried to play on for a few weeks, before the wheels came off entirely when he tore his Achilles in Week 14 against Jacksonville.
And after watching how Riley Leonard played standing in for him, I think it is safe to say the Colts panicked. And in one of the most desperate moves imaginable… they signed Philip Rivers out of retirement.
Rivers was 44 years old. He hadn’t played in nearly five full seasons. He’d been coaching high school football in Alabama.
Unsurprisingly, he lost all three of his starts.
Only the Colts could pull off a collapse of this magnitude.
Cam Ward: 6 Sacks in His NFL Debut
The NFL has a way of humbling even the most talented prospects. Just ask Cam Ward.
Ward was the number one overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft—the most hyped quarterback by a large margin.
Everyone was eager to see what he could do at the next level… if he could get the Titans back on track.
His first game against Denver was supposed to be the beginning of a new era in Tennessee. Instead, he got sacked six times, tying David Carr for the record in an NFL debut.
Not exactly the company you want to find yourself in…
His actual performance wasn’t much better either—Ward completed just 12 of 28 passes for 112 yards. Zero touchdowns. And to make matters worse, he fumbled on one of those sacks late in the game, which pretty much sealed the 20 to 12 loss.
Welcome to the NFL, kid.
Now, to be fair, this wasn’t entirely on Ward. The Titans’ offensive line was so bad that they fired both head coach Brian Callahan and offensive line coach Bill Callahan midseason.
Ward finished the year with 55 sacks—tied for the most in the league—and early in the season, he was actually on pace for 72, which would have threatened Randall Cunningham’s 1986 record of 76.
Either way, Ward got one dubious record in the books!
Spencer Rattler: Started His Career 0 and 10
Back in 2020, Spencer Rattler was the five-star recruit at Oklahoma that everyone was buzzing about. The next great college quarterback. Future first-round pick.
And then… things went sideways. He lost his starting job to Caleb Williams, transferred to South Carolina, and his stock cratered.
The Saints still took a chance on him. And he rewarded them by joining a historically bad group of quarterbacks that went winless in their first 10 career starts…
Rattler went 0 and 6 as a starter in 2024. Then 0 and 4 to start 2025. That’s 0 and 10 to begin his NFL career—one of only eight quarterbacks in league history to do so—coincidentally a list that includes his predecessor in New Orleans, Derek Carr.
To be fair, the roster around him wasn’t exactly stacked. Carr’s retirement left New Orleans scrambling at the position, Kellen Moore was trying to figure things out in his first year as a head coach, and Rattler eventually got his first win against the Giants later in the 2025 NFL season… but the damage was done.
Shedeur Sanders: Worst QBR in Cleveland Browns History
You know the 2017 Cleveland Browns? The ones that went 0 and 16?
Shedeur Sanders had a worse QBR than any quarterback on that team.
Sanders was supposed to be the answer. The highly touted—and controversial—pick in the 2025 NFL draft had all the makings of a franchise quarterback… the missing piece that Cleveland has been searching for since… well, since forever.
The hype was real, and then he posted an 18.9 QBR—the fifth-worst among 696 quarterbacks with 200 or more passes since 2006—and, as mentioned, the worst mark for any Browns quarterback with six or more starts in a season.
Is Sanders a bust? It’s genuinely hard to say. The situation was so bad that any quarterback would have struggled. But posting a worse QBR than the 0 and 16 Browns quarterbacks… that’s the kind of stat that’s going to follow him until he proves otherwise.
Geno Smith: Most Sacked AND Most Interceptions
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Geno Smith over the years… It’s that his career never goes the way anyone expects.
After reviving his career in Seattle, Smith got traded to Las Vegas in March to reunite with Pete Carroll, who had taken over as the Raiders’ head coach. Everyone thought it might be a nice second chapter. Geno finally got another shot with a coach who believed in him.
Instead, he led the NFL in two categories nobody wants to lead. 55 sacks taken. 17 interceptions thrown. Talk about a two-headed monster.
Smith threw 10 of those interceptions in his first six games alone. He’s now been sacked 102 times over the last two seasons—more than any quarterback in football during that stretch.
The Raiders went 3 and 14, giving them just 6 combined wins over the last two years. That’s back-to-back 13-plus loss seasons for the first time in franchise history.
At this point, you have to wonder what’s next for Smith. He’ll be 35 next season, coming off the worst statistical year of his career, on a team that might be looking to rebuild with a younger quarterback.
Justin Fields: Minus 10 Net Passing Yards
While there was optimism coming into the year around Justin Fields joining the Jets, that experiment quickly went belly up.
There may be no more poignant example than their October showdown with the Broncos in London, England.
We won’t bury the lead on this one… Fields finished the game with minus 10 net passing yards.
Read that again. Negative. Ten. Yards.
The Jets signed Fields in the 2025 NFL offseason, hoping he’d stabilize a quarterback room that had been in chaos since the Aaron Rodgers situation imploded. Instead, Fields put together what many called one of the worst quarterback performances in NFL history.
He was sacked nine times. Nine. And when you factor in sack yardage, his net passing output went into the negatives. The Jets somehow only lost 13 to 11 despite their quarterback producing less than zero through the air.
Was Fields set up to fail? Probably. The offensive line was a mess, the weapons were limited, and the coaching staff was clearly in over their heads. But at a certain point, the quarterback has to make something happen.
-10 net passing yards in an NFL game—the worst mark since 1998 when the then San Diego Chargers posted –19.
New York Jets Secondary: Zero Interceptions All Season
Speaking of the Jets making history for all the wrong reasons…
The New York Jets became the first team in NFL history to go an entire season without recording a single interception. Since interceptions became an official stat in 1933, 92 years of professional football, no team has ever done this.
Leave it to the Jets.
The previous record was held by the 2018 49ers, who managed just two picks all season. The Jets couldn’t even do that. Seventeen games, zero interceptions. No wonder this season was such an unmitigated disaster.
Some franchises find creative ways to lose. The Jets turned it into an art form.
Dallas Cowboys Defense: 511 Points Allowed
It’s been a tough year for Jerry Jones, watching the Dallas Cowboys allow 511 points this season after he parted ways with Micah Parsons, the team’s best defensive player, in dramatic fashion ahead of the season.
That’s the first time in 66 years of franchise history that they exceeded 500 points allowed. They averaged 30.1 points per game—also a franchise first. They gave up 30 or more points in nine different games.
Have to love Jerry’s quote-unquote reasoning at the time, which was that they needed to rebuild around younger, cheaper talent.
Well… the rebuild is going great.
Dallas finished 29th in defensive rankings. They forced just 11 turnovers—third-worst in the league. They committed 133 penalties, the most in the NFL. Defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus was fired midseason.
The team went 7- 9 and 1 under first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer despite having an awesome offense.
Jerry Jones has always believed he can outsmart the rest of the league when it comes to personnel decisions. But trading away your best defensive player and then allowing 511 points… that’s the kind of result that speaks for itself.
