Steep decline for ‘terrible’ NFC South

It didn’t get any better for the Panthers, who trailed by as many as 38 points before losing 45-21. Yet the Panthers (3-6-1) are in second place in the South behind the Saints (4-5) and ahead of the Falcons (3-6) and Buccaneers (1-8).

In January, the Panthers hosted a playoff game against the 49ers. The Saints won the Super Bowl during the 2009 season and a wild-card game last seqason. The Falcons were the NFC’s No. 1 playoff seed in 2010 and 2012. The Bucs were supposed to be rejuvenated under new coach Lovie Smith.

Now all of those teams keep losing, but remain in the division race because their peers lose, too. This has led to a weekly routine in which they field questions about taking some encouragement from that development.

“At some point you have to start winning games or none of that even matters,” Panthers safety Roman Harper told reporters after the loss to the Eagles. “Nobody wants help. Nobody wants a handicap or anything given to you.”

The Panthers certainly couldn’t count on contending for the South title just because they won it last season. In addition to the parity that drives the league, with roster attrition and injury luck determining so much, the history of the South has been one of teams taking turns finishing at the top.

No team has repeated as South champion in the 12 years since it was formed when the NFL switched to eight divisions in 2002. New Orleans owns four South championships, Carolina and Atlanta have three each and Tampa Bay has two, including the 2002 title under Gruden.

The difference now from those 12 seasons is that there is not even one obviously good team in the division. Before this season, no NFL team had led its division with a sub-.500 record as late as Week 8. The South could carry that dubious distinction to Week 11 if New Orleans loses to the Bengals on Sunday.

The South features three flawed teams vying to be the best of the worst division. The Bucs are trying to avoid finishing last for the fourth year in a row while simultaneously standing just three games out of first place.

“I’m glad we’re in the NFC South right now,” Smith told reporters after his team lost 27-17 to the Falcons on Sunday. “There’s still hope. We’ve been talking to our football team about maybe we’re running out of time to make a run, unless everybody loses.”

Scoring margin, a common measurement of team quality, shows that there’s not much of it in the NFC South.

New Orleans is plus-26 in scoring margin after nine games, worst among division leaders. Carolina is minus-83 after the pummeling from the Eagles. The Bucs’ minus-105 scoring margin is second-worst to the Jaguars, who at least have the excuse that they’ve played division leaders Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Cleveland.

The Falcons are 3-0 in the South with two victories against Tampa Bay and one against New Orleans. But outside of the division the Falcons are 0-6 by a combined score of 173-99. In any other year, the Falcons would be buried in the NFC South. But the division has fallen so far that improving to 3-6 increased their odds of winning it from 6.6 percent to 15.4, according to the advanced statistics site Football Outsiders.

“Atlanta’s got some holes on their team,” NBC analyst Tony Dungy said. “They’re not a great team. They’re in a terrible division, though. They can win the division.”