In a season filled by surprises and record breaking performances so far, we may witness another first in the National Football league. The NFL has never had a team go undefeated and another winless since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970.

Here’s a thought to ponder for NFL fans. What is more difficult to do – win 16 games or lose 16 games in the regular season.

We actually have a chance to witness both feats this year. Heading into week 8, both New England and Indianapolis have not lost while St. Louis and Miami have yet to crack the win column. 

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only team since the NFL merger to lose every game in a single season. The Bucs set that futility mark in 1976, their first year in the NFL. The Bucs went 0-14.

I’ll give the Bucs the benefit of the doubt for some reason. They were an expansion team with low expectation for their first season in the league. I still find it hard to believe that a team can be so bad that they cannot even win one game in a season.

The Bucs had a couple of chances to win a game that year but most of the time they were getting pounded into the ground. Pittsburgh beat them by 42. The New York Jets pummeled them by 34. Four opponents put 40 plus up on the board against the Bucs, and they were shutout five times.

In short, the Bucs were pathetic.

The sad thing about the Dolphins and Rams is that both team had high expectations for this year. The Rams were expected to contend for the NFC West title while the Dolphins were looking to improve on their 6-10 mark in 2006 and possible contend for a wild card spot.

The Rams, billed as the Greatest Show on Turf, have scored only 79 points through seven games. That averages to just a little over 11 points per game. It was not to long ago that the Rams were scoring 11 points a quarter.

Its hard to call the Rams a bad team. That might be giving them to much credit. They are simple awful at home and even worse on the road. In four road games this season they have been outscored 114-19, producing one touchdown in 16 quarters. 

The Dolphins pride themselves on defense. It wasn’t to long ago that the Phins had one of the best and most feared defenses in the league.

How times have changed in South Florida. In five of the Dolphins’ last six starts they have given up 30 or more points, including 41 to Cleveland and 49 to New England. I don’t expect to many NFL executives will be trying to steal the Phins defensive coordinator next year.

Back to my original question – which is harder? Going undefeated like the 1972 Dolphins or going winless like the 1976 Buccaneers.

I say that going undefeated is harder for two reasons. A lot of teams tend to rest players when they have secured home field advantage throughout the playoffs and the talent level drops off tremendously from the starters to the reserve players. Opposing teams also seem to get a little more jacked up for a game against an unbeaten team late in the season. They want to be the ones saying – we stopped the streak.

But that’s why going the opposite direction, why blowing 16 straight, is an achievement that deserves to be recognized. If it’s so hard to keep a team flying at 35,000 feet for 16 weeks — and we all agree it is — then it figures that sooner or later everyone is bound to fall into a win.

Teams tend to let up a little bit when they take on a winless opponent late in the year. They figure that the team has packed it in for year and all they have to do is show up for the win, and that doesn’t happen. There’s a lot of pride in the NFL and no team wants to be associated with the 1976 Bucs.

Remember, this is a league where the buzzword is parity, and parity is what we reached last season when 20 teams were 8-8 or better.

The Dolphins and the Rams are not the only bad teams in the NFL this year – they just are the only winless teams. There are probably upward to ten teams that have no shot at reaching the playoffs this year.

That is why making it 0-16 is worth talking about. It’s tough. It’s improbable. And it could happen.