MMQB Mail: Common denominator among five bad NFL teams

Seems to me we have nine bad teams in football right now. For all of you in Buffalo, Chicago and Seattle who want me to include your team in this grouping, sorry. You've show too many signs of life to make the Bottom Nine.

The worst teams fall into three categories. Separating the badness:

The Blow It Up And Start Over Division: Tampa Bay (0-7), St. Louis (0-7), Cleveland (1-6), Kansas City (1-6), Detroit (1-5).

It All Starts With The Quarterback Division: Oakland (2-5), Washington (2-5), Carolina (2-4).

They Never Should Have Drafted Vince Young Division: Tennessee (0-6).

The last four teams have quarterback problems that will keep them down until solved. JaMarcus Russell is a disaster; we don't need to see any more of him to know his pocket presence and awareness are horrible and his accuracy just as bad. Jason Campbell far too often looks for the easy checkdown than for the open throw downfield, and watching the first half of the Monday nighter, I'm convinced his pocket awareness, too, is severely flawed. In Carolina, John Fox has to be wondering if Jake Delhomme is Steve Sax. I know I am. In Tennessee, Jeff Fisher has to see if Vince Young has a chance; there is no sense playing Kerry Collins now. But I have little faith that Young will work there, and the Titans must not either, based on Fisher's unwillingness to play him significant minutes.

But the five teams in the Blow It Up Division have three things in common. If I'm the owner of any of them, I think it's foolish to think anything but stay the course and let's evaluate everything after the season. The only place among the five that I think has even a small chance of getting blown up in-season is Cleveland. But that shouldn't be judged until January.

The common denominators among the Bucs, Rams, Browns, Chiefs and Lions:

1. (Mostly) New front offices trying to change the culture. All but St. Louis have new general managers, and with the Rams, new coach Steve Spagnuolo and COO Kevin Demoff have joined willing agent-of-change GM Bill Devaney in changing everything about the organization. The Bucs had the fifth-oldest team in football last year; now they're the third-youngest. Eric Mangini and George Kokinis would change everything about the Browns (I think including the nickname) if they could; that's how far gone they think they found this organization. Scott Pioli was given a free hand to reconstruct the Chiefs in his vision from the ground, and he's in the 10th month of probably a three-year building job doing that. In Detroit, Martin Mayhew (even though he's a Matt Millen leftover) has already shown his smarts by getting first-, third- and fifth-round picks for perennial underachiever Roy Willams, and he's found a willing partner for change in new-thinking Jim Schwartz. I think Mayhew deserves to be judged on his own.

2. Coaches trying to establish newness takes a while. Ask the Chiefs about the four-and-a-half-hour practice days (two sessions) in training camp of Todd Haley compared to the much-softer hand of Herman Edwards. Haley will now be tested by this Larry Johnson Twitter criticism. At Tampa, Raheem Morris probably got his job a year too soon, but the Bucs were worried about losing him to another team in 2010. In Detroit, Schwartz changed the weight room to almost all free weights to build strength for a team he thought got pushed around too much. Romeo Crennel was the benevolent uncle in Cleveland, Mangini the marine uncle. (Not saying he's better, just saying he's totally different.) Steve Spagnuolo got to know everyone in the building in St. Louis and promoted team to the point where he took down all individual current photos of players in the building.