The NFL playoffs are a time for joy and sadness, for triumph and tragedy.
The league champion will be crowned in February while 31 other teams end their season (or already ended their season) in disappointment.
But which teams do the most to depress their fans?
A recent study sought to figure that out.
Look to the North
Online casino comparison company Pickswise analyzed several factors to determine which NFL team is the most depressing to support.
The “winners” were the Minnesota Vikings, who edged the Houston Texans for the title “most depressing NFL team to support.”
Minnesota has four Super Bowl appearances, but the last was 49 years ago, and the Vikings have never won the big game. They have the highest regular season winning percentage of the teams in the top 10, but that could not prevent them from this dubious distinction.
The Detroit Lions were No. 3, but they might have been No. 1 if not for a much higher score in average ticket searches (823,000) than the rest of the teams in the top 10. They had the most depression posts on Reddit along with having never made the Super Bowl and possessing the lowest playoff winning percentage of the teams in the top 10.
Here is the full top 10:
- Minnesota Vikings
- Houston Texans
- Detroit Lions
- Atlanta Falcons
- Arizona Cardinals
- Cincinnati Bengals
- Jacksonville Jaguars
- Cleveland Browns
- Buffalo Bills
- New York Jets
Could These Change Next Year?
As fate would have it, the Texans are the only team in the top eight most depressing still playing as of this writing.
They beat the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night to advance to the Divisional round of the playoffs.
RELATED: Here’s how to watch the NFL Divisional playoffs
The Buffalo Bills, who beat the Jaguars on Saturday, are the only other team in the top 10 still alive for Super Bowl LX.
Both of those teams could boost (or reduce, in this case) their depression score by getting to or especially winning the Super Bowl in February.
More Like ‘Woe-hio’?
Both of the NFL’s teams that currently call the state of Ohio home made the top eight, though they did so in different ways.
The Cincinnati Bengals ranked No. 6 most depressing despite making the Super Bowl four years ago and having three appearances in the big game (more than the others in the top 10 except Buffalo and Minnesota). They got to that point by averaging only 40,500 ticket searches in the state of Ohio and posting a playoffs winning percentage of just 39 (third-lowest in the league) while winning only 45% of their regular season games.
The Browns have never made a Super Bowl, but they have a regular season winning percentage of 50 and had nearly four times as many searches for tickets online. They also had fewer Reddit depression posts (29) than the Bengals (34).
This season, the Bengals and Browns split the Battle of Ohio and both were eliminated from playoff contention with weeks to go in the regular season.
How Did They Figure This Out?
Pickswise analyzed eight factors to come up with its depression score.
Those include Super Bowl wins, losses and appearances, number of years since making the Super Bowl, regular season winning percentage and playoffs winning percentage (all via pro-football-refrence.com).
The site also looked up average monthly Google searching for tickets in each NFL team’s home state. They sourced those from Google Ads Keyword Planner.
Number of Reddit posts in each team’s subreddit that included the keywords “depression’ and “heartbroken” in the last year was also a factor.
