Has there been a “team of the decade” in the 2010s?
The Patriots can certainly argue the point with a 123-34-0 mark that puts them 21 wins over any other franchise, and three Super Bowl wins in a five-season stretch. Had the Seahawks given Marshawn Lynch the ball at the end of Super Bowl XLIX, it likely would have been two wins in a row for them, and Seattle had an unbelievable stretch of leading the NFL in scoring defense every year from 2012 through 2015.
The Steelers have had a remarkable run of consistency in that they haven’t had a single losing season in the decade, but the lack of a Super Bowl win tends to mute their argument. The Packers and Saints are the teams that leave you wondering “What if?” What if New Orleans hadn’t had some of the league’s worst defenses when Drew Brees was at his best, and what if Aaron Rodgers had a functional offensive play-designer as opposed to whatever Mike McCarthy was most of the time?
The Patriots have the safest claim to the title, as they did in the first decade of the millennium, which once again underscores the remarkable and unprecedented nature of the Bill Belichick era in Foxborough. With Tom Brady as his only constant, Belichick had filed through personnel with a success rate that other coaches and executives can only imagine.
Other franchises have not been as fortunate. Whether it’s the Browns, Jaguars, Buccaneers or Raiders, the teams at the bottom of the pile in any decade tend to have one thing in common — a listless and headless lunging for success without the personnel or the staff to make it happen. In these cases, the tendency is to throw everything out the window every two or three years and start all over again. Which, of course, never works.
So, with the 2010s coming to a close, here are our All-Decade Power Rankings, rating every NFL team from 32 to 1. Teams are ranked by several factors — overall record, consistency of success from season to season, postseason success and success above or below quality of personnel.
32. Cleveland Browns (42-113-1)
Seven different head coaches. Myriad quarterbacks. Draft picks that should (and did) get all kinds of different personnel people fired (remember 22nd overall pick Brandon Weeden in 2012? Yikes). The Moneyball approach put together by former executive vice president Sashi Brown paid dividends with much smarter high draft picks over the past few seasons (Baker Mayfield, Denzel Ward, Myles Garrett), but even with the recent improvements, the Browns are still struggling to find themselves relevant at a postseason level. With no winning seasons since 2007 and no playoff appearances since 2002, which other team could possibly reside last in our power rankings?
31. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (58-99)
Turnovers and turnover could be the dueling themes of the Buccaneers’ decade. They’ve employed five different head coaches and a slew of front office personnel, and quarterback Jameis Winston — the man they’ve chosen to lead them since selecting him first overall in the 2015 draft — leads all players with 100 total turnovers since he came into the league. The only winning season the franchise has enjoyed with Winston as its quarterback was 2016, and the 9-7 mark that year is one of two winning seasons in the decade (10-6 in 2010). Tampa Bay hasn’t made the playoffs since 2007, and given the uncertainty surrounding Winston’s future, it could be a few more years.
30. Jacksonville Jaguars (49-108)
The Jaguars certainly have enjoyed their moments. They were a few second half play-calls and a couple of officiating decisions away from beating the Patriots in the 2017 AFC Championship Game, after the organization had assembled one of the NFL’s best defenses. But the 10-6 mark they put up in 2017 was Jacksonville’s only winning season of the decade. It could be credibly be argued that the Jags also wasted five seasons in the decade with Blake Bortles as their quarterback, as they had a 24-49 record with Bortles under center. Not that it was all Bortles’ fault, but after finally parting ways with Bortles, the team promptly gave Nick Foles an ill-advised $88 million deal with $50.125 million guaranteed. Foles broke his collarbone in Week 1 of this season and was benched in favor of rookie Gardner Minshew shortly after he returned. Minshew probably won’t have the benefit of that excellent defense by the time he matures into whatever he will become.
29. Oakland Raiders (62-95)
The Raiders had a nice little bump under general manager Reggie McKenzie from 2012 to 2018 — especially after McKenzie’s early draft picks bore fruit with the likes of Khalil Mack, Derek Carr, Amari Cooper, Karl Joseph, Gabe Jackson and Latavius Murray. In 2016, Oakland posted a 12-4 record, its first winning season since 2002. However, the return of Jon Gruden, who had been the team’s head coach from 1998 through 2001, made McKenzie a lame duck and paved the way for Mike Mayock as the new GM. The Raiders still are looking for the ultimate benefits from the new crew, but it must be said that the team’s 2019 draft class might be the NFL’s best. Oakland is competitive precisely because of the efforts of this rookie group — everyone from running back Josh Jacobs to pass-rusher Maxx Crosby. Better times might be around the corner in Las Vegas, where the Raiders will move after this season.
28. Washington Redskins (62-94-1)
When Daniel Snyder bought the Redskins and Jack Kent Cooke Stadium for $800 million dollars in 1999, it was the most expensive transaction in sports history. The value of Snyder’s team has risen considerably since, but the success rate certainly hasn’t. From 1982 through 1991, the Redskins became the only franchise in NFL history to win three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks. Since Snyder took over, there have been several overcorrections with expensive, over-the-hill free agents, a constant trend of filling the front office with people who were in over their heads, and the occasional playoff appearance — five postseason appearances and two playoff wins. The 2019 season will mark the Redskins’ third straight losing campaign, and the 12th with Snyder as the owner. The best thing one can say about the Snyder era is that Washington is successfully developing assistant coaches such as Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay and Matt LaFleur — although their success is coming to fruition for other teams.
27. New York Jets (66-91)
While the Jets of the 2010s will be remembered most vividly for the Butt Fumble (as any NFL team would), there were a few scant shards of success — mostly during the Rex Ryan era, before things fell apart. The 2010 season marked the second consecutive year in which Ryan’s Jets reached the AFC Championship Game. After that, it’s been a whole lot of “meh” — the Jets went 10-6 with a dominant defense in 2015 under Todd Bowles, and that’s been their only winning season since 2010. The only good news for Jets fans in the future is that the organization seems to have found a legitimate, Butt Fumble-free, franchise quarterback in Sam Darnold.
26. Miami Dolphins (68-89)
The Dolphins made the playoffs in Adam Gase’s first season of 2016 with Ryan Tannehill as their quarterback and a strong defense coached by Vance Joseph. They lost in the wild-card round to the Steelers, and that marks the team’s only playoff appearance of the decade. It’s been a rough string of coaches as well, going from Tony Sparano to Todd Bowles to Joe Philbin Dan Campbell to Gase — guys who have generally been better assistants than CEOs. This season, rookie head coach Brian Flores has shown more spark and toughness in an impossible rebuild of a season, so perhaps he’s the exception going forward.
25. Tennessee Titans (68-89)
The Titans have messed around with a few reasonably successful seasons in the decade, but 2017 was their only playoff season, when they beat the Chiefs in the wild-card round and lost to the Patriots in a divisional matchup. 2017 was the second of three straight seasons in which the Titans went 9-7, which goes to show you the vagaries of playoff qualification. Marcus Mariota was the quarterback who was supposed to take this franchise to the proverbial promised land, but a combination of injuries and ineffectiveness stopped that idea in its tracks. Still, under head coach Mike Vrabel and general manager Jon Robinson, the franchise has assembled an estimable roster of talent over the past couple seasons, and it’s possible that former backup Ryan Tannehill could be the answer Mariota never proved to be.
24. Buffalo Bills (70-87)
From 2010 through 2016, the Bills had four different head coaches (Chan Gailey, Doug Marrone, Rex Ryan and Anthony Lynn), four different primary quarterbacks (Ryan Fitzpatrick, EJ Manuel, Kyle Orton and Tyrod Taylor), one winning season (9-7 in 2014) and no playoff appearances. Things have been better since Sean McDermott took the head coaching position in 2017 — the Bills made the postseason for the first time in the new millennium in McDermott’s first season, and their current 9-4 mark gives them the inside track on the franchise’s first 10-win season since 1999. If second-year quarterback Josh Allen can improve his accuracy and consistency, McDermott might be in for a nice, long, productive run.
23. St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams (72-84-1)
The Rams started the decade with defensive-minded head coaches (Steve Spagnuolo, Jeff Fisher) aligned with quarterbacks who, whether through injury or a sheer lack of the tools required for the position, couldn’t get the offense over the hump. Sam Bradford had his moments, as did Nick Foles. But when you get around to Austin Davis and Case Keenum … well, yikes. The end of the Fisher era was the start of Jared Goff 1.0, as Goff was thrown into the proverbial fire with few productive targets and an offense that seemed to run counter to any sensible passing game. Goff’s rookie season of 2016 was thus one of the worst in NFL history. The 2017 hire of Sean McVay to run the team and the offense has been Goff’s saving grace and the one move that has lifted the organization back to Super Bowl prominence, if not Super Bowl victory.
22. Detroit Lions (72-84-1)
From 2010 through Week 14 of the 2019 season, only Drew Brees, Matt Ryan, Tom Brady and Philip Rivers had more pass attempts than Matthew Stafford’s 5,319. Stafford also ranks fifth in that time period in completions with 3,358, but he ranks 14th in completion percentage among quarterbacks with at least 2,000 attempts (63.1%) and 12th in passer rating (91.4). Stafford is blessed with tremendous athletic ability and one of the best arms in NFL history, but he’s also been saddled with weird offenses, disappearing running games, defenses that run hot and cold, and a gamut of coaches and offensive coordinators. Currently riding the pine with a back injury, Stafford may go down as the best quarterback of his era to never win a playoff game — his Lions have been to the postseason in 2011, 2014 and 2016, but they’ve lost in the wild-card round each time.
21. Chicago Bears (75-82)
Outside of Sid Luckman in the 1940s and Jim McMahon for a while in the 1980s, the Bears have had more trouble finding a franchise quarterback than any other NFL franchise. This continued through the 2010s, as Chicago cycled through six seasons of Jay Cutler’s up-and-down career, suffered through a 3-13 season in 2016 with Matt Barkley and Brian Hoyer at the helm, and are now in its third season of trying to figure out what Mitchell Trubisky is. As such, the Bears have three winning seasons and two playoff appearances in the decade, despite fielding defenses that generally have found a way to be above-average or great. For some teams, history repeats more often than for others.
20. Cincinnati Bengals (76-79-2)
When Marvin Lewis became the Bengals’ head coach in 2003, it was his job to drag the NFL’s most intellectually regressive franchise kicking and screaming into the modern era. This he did, and Lewis will never get enough credit for it. The Bengals had just six losing seasons in Lewis’ 16-year tenure, but that included his last three (Cincinnati went 19-28-1 from 2016 through 2018), and the Bengals never won a playoff game in Lewis’ tenure, though they had seven postseason appearances, including five straight from 2011 through 2015. Most coaches with more playoff seasons than losing seasons would be more esteemed, but that oh-fer in the playoffs is the kind of thing that will haunt you. It’s probably more Andy Dalton’s fault than Lewis’ — but legacies are what they are.
19. New York Giants (68-89)
The decade started out pretty all right for the G-Men — they went 10-6 and missed the postseason in 2010, but the 2011 season saw them upset the Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in five seasons. That marked the peak of the Tom Coughlin/Eli Manning era, when the Giants also had an impressive defense. After that? Well, it was a series of misses. The Giants missed the playoffs in each of Coughlin’s last four seasons as head coach, and it looked for a short moment that replacement Ben McAdoo was the answer with a 11-5 mark in his first season of 2016. But then the wheels came off, especially when McAdoo committed the unpardonable sin of benching Manning before ownership was ready for that move. Steve Spagnuolo finished out the 2017 season after McAdoo was fired, and Pat Shurmur hasn’t come close to the playoffs in two seasons as the team looks to get a grip on talent at several position groups.
18. Arizona Cardinals (73-82-2)
The Cardinals’ decade has been defined by quarterback whisperers and great or potentially great quarterbacks, with a serious one-year dip near the end. It started with Ken Whisenhunt and Kurt Warner, continued with Bruce Arians and Carson Palmer, fell off the proverbial cliff with Mike McCoy, Byron Leftwich and Josh Rosen in 2018, and returned to form with Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray in 2019 and beyond. The other constant has been, outside of the Arians era, a defense that has struggled to keep up. This season, the 3-9-1 Cardinals are experiencing this unfortunate phenomenon as much as any of the teams since 2010.
17. San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers (77-80)
The only team in NFL history to fire a head coach after a 14-2 regular season (Marty Schottenheimer in 2006), the Chargers headed into the 2010s under the drama of general manager A.J. Smith, who seemed to have an equivalent gift for finding talent and eventually offending and offloading it. Tom Telesco has been the team’s general manager since 2013, presiding over the move from San Diego to L.A., and while he’s made some good moves, the Chargers aren’t quite the molten combination of talent and drama it was in the Smith era. While the Norv Turner and Mike McCoy tenures produced the kind of mediocrity one would expect, the only thing that could keep the franchise from logging its third straight non-losing season under Anthony Lynn is Philip Rivers’ recent propensity for backbreaking fourth-quarter interceptions. The likelihood is that Rivers, who has been the team’s one constant for a decade and a half, will head off to different pastures as his contract runs out after this season.
16. Houston Texans (80-77)
From 2010 through 2016, the Texans had great defense after great defense, led by J.J. Watt, who — when healthy — had a stretch of seasons in which he was as dominant a defensive lineman as we’ve seen in this era. Problem was, Houston’s primary quarterbacks were Matt Schaub, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Brian Hoyer and Brock Osweiler. The defense was good enough to get Houston into the postseason four times from 2011 through 2016, but the quarterbacks were never good enough to get the team over the hump. The quarterback problem was solved with the selection of Clemson’s Deshaun Watson with the 12th overall pick in the 2017 draft, but the defense started to regress at the same time Watson started to ascend. Head coach Bill O’Brien has done his best to mitigate the up-and-down nature of his team’s success curve, but a 50-43 regular-season record and a 1-3 mark in the postseason tell a story that likely will have an ending chapter soon if the Texans can’t manage more.
15. Carolina Panthers: (78-78-1)
The Panthers started the decade with a 2-14 season under John Fox in which Jimmy Clausen, Matt Moore and somebody named Brian St. Pierre were their quarterbacks. Things started to change for the better in 2011, when Carolina hired former Bears and Chargers defensive coordinator Ron Rivera to replace Fox, and the team selected Cam Newton with the No. 1 overall pick. Rivera, Newton, Steve Smith and a tough defense managed four playoff seasons and an appearance in Super Bowl 50, which they lost to a historic Denver defense. Over the past couple seasons, Newton has regressed as injuries have become a frequent narrative, and Rivera was fired following a 29-21 loss to the Redskins in Week 13 of this season.
14. Dallas Cowboys (84-73)
Jason Garrett has been Dallas’ head coach since Week 10 of the 2010 season, when he replaced Wade Phillips. In that time, the Cowboys put together the best offensive line in football for a time, assembled the New Triplets with Dak Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott and Amari Cooper, and had enough defensive personnel for success at the highest level, depending on the season. On its face, Garrett’s 83-66 regular-season record isn’t bad, and his 2-3 postseason mark is far from the worst. But unless the Cowboys win a Super Bowl under his watch (they’re currently 6-7 and trying to win the NFC East), Garrett’s tenure ultimately will be considered a failure by the one person whose opinion matters in these matters — owner Jerry Jones, whose team hasn’t won a Super Bowl since the 1995 season.
13. Minnesota Vikings (80-75-2)
The 2009 Vikings made it all the way to the NFC title game before losing a heartbreaker to the Saints in a game that changed overtime rules forever. But 2010 marked what was clearly the end of Favre’s career, and the team has been searching for a true franchise quarterback ever since. There was Christian Ponder, selected 12th overall in the 2011 draft. That did not work out — Ponder completed 59.8% of his passes and threw 38 touchdowns to 36 interceptions over four seasons. Matt Cassel was an unsuccessful veteran spackle job for the 2013 season. Teddy Bridgewater looked like he might become the guy in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, but a horrific knee injury in 2016 sadly ended that. Sam Bradford had a few “wow” moments, but his own injury history eventually caught up to him. Last season marked the team’s most declarative statement when it came to fixing the position, when ex-Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins was signed to a three-year, $84 million deal that was fully guaranteed. Cousins has been on a relative hot streak of late, but like every other Vikings quarterback this decade, there’s more to prove, and consistency has been an alarming issue.
12. Atlanta Falcons (86-71)
Known primarily for blowing a 28-3 lead to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI, the Falcons actually have enjoyed more success in this decade than in any other throughout a franchise history that dates to 1966. There have been dips in the road, of course — the end of the Mike Smith era wasn’t pretty, especially on defense — but the hire of former Seahawks defensive coordinator Dan Quinn in 2015 seemed to mark a turnaround. However, the Falcons followed up that Super Bowl-losing season with a 10-6 mark and a playoff exit in the divisional round at the hands of the eventual Super Bowl-champion Eagles, and they haven’t been close to the playoffs since. This season’s 4-9 record has a lot of people wondering if Quinn will be around in 2020.
11. Indianapolis Colts (81-76)
Joe Montana to Steve Young. Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers. It doesn’t happen often that a franchise is able to transition from one all-time quarterback to another, but the Colts had the chance to do it in this decade. The 2010 season was Peyton Manning’s last with the Colts as a functional quarterback before a neck injury ended his tenure in Indianapolis. A 2-14 campaign followed, and Indianapolis was set with the first overall pick in 2012. They used it to select Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, and for a while, it looked as if Luck would be another savior. The Colts finished 11-5 and made the playoffs in each of Luck’s first three seasons, with two AFC South titles. But the atrophy of the overall team, due primarily to questionable decisions made by general manager Ryan Grigson, took the team out of the playoff picture in each of the next three seasons. Luck missed the entire 2017 season with shoulder issues, and though he mounted an impressive comeback campaign in 2018, injuries had taken their toll, and he retired on Aug. 24, 2019. This put backup Jacoby Brissett in the spotlight, and though Brissett has played decently, this team might be selecting another quarterback early in the 2020 draft.
10. San Francisco 49ers (78-78-1)
After the Steve Mariucci era ended in 2002, the 49ers went through four different head coaches (Dennis Erickson, Mike Nolan, Mike Singletary, Jim Tomsula) and didn’t have a winning season from 2003 through 2010. That success curve turned drastically when the team hired former Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh in 2011. San Francisco went 13-3 and reached the NFC Championship Game in Harbaugh’s first season with Alex Smith as a finally successful quarterback. In 2012, Colin Kaepernick replaced an injured Smith halfway through the season, and a highly-effective pistol option passing offense designed by offensive coordinator Greg Roman (which looks a lot like the offense Roman has designed in Baltimore for Lamar Jackson) helped the 49ers to within a play or two of a win in Super Bowl XLVII. The 2013 season marked another conference championship appearance, but things got a bit dicier after that. Harbaugh started wearing on people’s nerves, and he was replaced in 2015 by Tomsula, which was one of the weirder coaching moves of the millennium. Chip Kelly followed with no more success, and it’s only recently under Kyle Shanahan that the franchise has reached the potential heights of the Harbaugh era.
9. Philadelphia Eagles (84-73)
If you want to know how long a decade can seem, consider that the Eagles in 2010 had Andy Reid as their head coach and Michael Vick as their quarterback. This was the renewed Vick, trained in the art of quarterbacking as he never had been in Atlanta. That Eagles team lost in the wild-card round and missed the playoffs in each of the next two seasons, which led to Reid’s ouster. Chip Kelly followed with a big bang to start but an uneven finish, and the combination of Doug Pederson and Carson Wentz came along in 2016. Of course, it was Nick Foles who took the Eagles to their lone Super Bowl win at the end of the 2017 season. These days, Philly is dealing with an inconsistent defense and trying to find enough receivers to put on the field for every game. At 6-7, they have a good shot at winning the NFC East.
8. Denver Broncos (87-70)
After a Hall of Fame career as the Broncos’ quarterback from 1983 through 1998, John Elway made his way to the franchise’s front office in 2011 as the director of player personnel — a position that eventually morphed into the wordier and more comprehensive executive VP of football operations/general manager title. In that time, Elway has made a large number of quarterback decisions — and exactly one of those has worked out in the team’s favor. Signing Peyton Manning in 2012 gave Denver the league’s most prolific offense for a time, and Elway’s draft acumen helped build a defense that dominated the Panthers in Super Bowl 50. But the quarterback decisions after Manning’s retirement — from Paxton Lynch to Trevor Siemian to Brock Osweiler to Case Keenum to Joe Flacco to Brandon Allen — have been the obvious Achilles heel that has kept Denver out of the postseason ever since. Drew Lock, a 2019 second-round draft pick out of Missouri, might be the answer Elway’s been looking for based on a small sample size, and Elway had better hope so.
7. Kansas City Chiefs (93-64)
The Chiefs clinched their fourth consecutive AFC West title with their 23-16 Week 14 win over the Patriots, and that win brought Andy Reid’s record in Kansas City to 74-35 in the regular season over the past seven years. The 2-5 postseason record is a bit harder to swallow, especially with the knowledge that Reid’s team was agonizingly close to beating New England in last season’s AFC Championship Game and perhaps giving Reid his first Super Bowl title. But it’s still Reid that took over a 2-14 mess after the 2012 season, and he’s never had a losing season in Kansas City with Alex Smith and Patrick Mahomes as his main quarterbacks. This season, while Mahomes has been limited by injuries and hasn’t shown his 2018 MVP form, the defense is stronger — which could get Reid where he ultimately wants to go if Mahomes can get back on track.
6. New Orleans Saints (97-60)
Sean Payton and Drew Brees have been one of the most remarkable head coach/quarterback duos in NFL history, and the Saints would have been even more remarkable in the 2010s if they’d been able to put a half-decent defense on the field when Brees was dealing dimes like nobody else. From 2014 through 2016, Brees led the NFL in pass attempts (1,959), completions (1,355) and passing yards (15,030), and only Aaron Rodgers had more touchdown passes than Brees’ 102. But the Saints went 7-9 in each of those three seasons because their defenses ranked 28th, 32nd and 31st in points allowed. Now, although Brees doesn’t have quite the same zip on his passes, the defense has become formidable enough to make the Saints contenders for the Super Bowl since 2017, heartbreaking playoff losses aside.
5. Baltimore Ravens (95-62)
Bookended between a 2012 postseason in which Joe Flacco threw 11 touchdown passes without an interception and was named the Most Valuable Player in Baltimore’s Super Bowl XLVII win over the 49ers and Lamar Jackson’s current dominance that could lead to a similar Super Bowl win were several average seasons from Flacco and a defensive regression in which the Ravens missed the playoffs from 2015 through 2017. Flacco’s injuries and ineffectiveness led to Jackson’s ascent as a rookie 2018, and now Baltimore stands as the AFC’s top seed with an offense that looks very much like the 49ers unit the Ravens beat in that Super Bowl. The constant has been head coach John Harbaugh, who’s compiled a 115-74 regular-season record and a 10-6 postseason mark since he replaced Brian Billick in 2008.
4. Green Bay Packers (99-56-2)
The real question about the Packers in the 2010s is not whether they were successful — with a Super Bowl win at the end of the 2010 season, seven straight postseason campaigns from 2010 through 2016 and the fourth-best record of the decade, Green Bay’s success is undisputed. The schism, though, is how much better the franchise might have been if head coach and offensive play-designer Mike McCarthy hadn’t wasted some of the best seasons by Aaron Rodgers — perhaps the most physically gifted passer in NFL history — at the altar of a regressive playbook that gave Rodgers too much responsibility and not enough help. To imagine Rodgers with a coach such as Bill Belichick, Kyle Shanahan or Sean Payton is to imagine an alternate history of the 2010s in which Rodgers is the guy no defense can beat.
3. Pittsburgh Steelers (102-54-1)
With Pittsburgh’s win over the Cardinals in Week 14, the Steelers moved to 8-5 this season and guaranteed that head coach Mike Tomlin would keep his 13-year streak without a losing season intact. Tomlin has one Super Bowl win and two appearances to his credit, but perhaps his most impressive coaching job has been in 2019, when Ben Roethlisberger was lost to an elbow injury early in the season, and the team has had to alternate between Mason Rudolph and Devlin “Duck” Hodges. The only real deviation from success came with consecutive 8-8 seasons in 2012 and 2013, but that was part of a necessary rebuild that has kept the team in good stead for the most part. It’s hilarious that some Steelers fans want Tomlin replaced; he’s put himself on a Hall of Fame career path, and he’s never rested on his laurels.
2. Seattle Seahawks (99-57-1)
When Pete Carroll replaced Jim L. Mora as Seattle’s head coach in 2010, few people were excited about the move. Carroll failed as head coach of the Jets and Patriots in the 1990s, and although he was tremendously successful at USC through the first decade of the millennium, there was reason to think of Carroll as another coach whose ceiling was the NCAA. But Carroll had taken the time to audit his mistakes, and he wasn’t about to make them again. So Carroll, general manager John Schneider and an amazing scouting staff put together the best defense of the 2000s (argue if you like, but Seattle led the NFL in scoring defense each year from 2012 through 2015), and got the draft steal of the decade with the No. 75 overall selection of Russell Wilson in the 2012 draft. The Seahawks won Super Bowl XLVIII at the end of the 2013 season and were one horrific play call from a repeat the next season. Most of Carroll’s rosters have flipped, but there’s one thing he brought from his college days — a rare ability to replace talent with talent.
1. New England Patriots (123-34-0)
Who else would be at the top of this list? There have been scandals to be sure (and there’s another one as we speak), but no other NFL team has been nearly as successful as Bill Belichick’s Patriots through the 2010s. A sampling:
- A streak of seasons with at least 10 wins that goes back to 2003
- Five Super Bowl appearances since 2011, with three wins
- An offense that has ranked higher than 10th in the league in scoring every year since 2005 — and in the top three seven times since 2010
- A defense that has ranked first in points allowed twice (2016, 2019)
New England’s offense has been a problem this season, but it says a lot about Belichick and Tom Brady that the rest of the league is on tenterhooks, waiting for them to figure it out as they always seem to do. The most remarkable run of success in NFL history also has defined the NFL’s most recent decade.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
