Last Word on Sports has been covering the most-hated teams across the major professional sports recently. With thousands of votes being cast, you can read here to see who are the NHL’s most-hated teams and check back as we move through other sports.
Looking across the landscape of the NFL, determining the most-hated team in American Football is not quite as clear. The NFL is built on rivalries amongst its teams, like the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears, the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers. You have fan bases in select cities that have a unique disdain for certain teams that may not be shared nationally. However, some teams have transcended that hate from rival fan bases and are despised by a disproportionate amount of the fans of the game.
Last Word on Sports will present their case for several teams who we feel might be the most-hated, and you the reader will have the opportunity at the end to cast your vote for one of the teams listed or, if you disagree, you can write in a vote in the comments for another that did not make our list.
Remember we’ll be tallying up all of our team sports at the end of it all, and give you the results.
New England Patriots
A lot of teams are hated but the Patriots may give fans more reasons to hate than any other in the league. For one, winning is a big factor. The New England Patriots won three Super Bowls in four years from 2002-2005. And despite the fact they haven’t won a championship in the better part of a decade, the team has remained dominant year in year out and has two more appearances in the big game since, with both ending in an upset loss to the New York Giants.
The Patriots have one of the most polarizing figures in sports as their head coach. Bill Belichick does business as he wants to. He doesn’t cater to the media, the fans, or anyone who surrounds the game. His press conferences are consistently absent of any emotion or passion and he treats the media like a child approaches having to do a household chore.
They resigned Aaron Hernandez to a five-year, $40 million contract extension and less than a year later he’s indicted for the murder of Odin Lloyd. That didn’t help.
Remember when the Patriots went 16-0 in the regular season? That was the same year the infamous spy-gate scandal broke when the Patriots were caught filming the New York Jets in week two of their season. Almost a decade later, players still reference it, just two weeks ago Houston Texans, Antonio Smith, attributing their half-time adjustments to something nefarious.
Oh, and they have Tom Brady.
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins also have an undefeated season on their resume going 14-0 in 1972. Dolphins fans are quick to remind others of 1972 while defending a generation of incompetence. The team itself has a party every year when the last undefeated NFL team falls.
Since 2004, Miami has a combined record of 63-90 and seven losing seasons in their last nine. They managed a 9-7 season in 2005 and an 11-5 record to win the division in 2008, the year Tom Brady missed the season due to injury.
This season started promising for the Dolphins with a 3-0 start. Since, they’ve gone 4-6 with a four game losing streak in the middle. They’ve also been surrounded by scandal with center Mike Pouncey photographed wearing a “Free Hernandez” hat and the whole Jonathan Martin/Richie Incognito fiasco. As news rolled out surrounding that event, more than the conflict between those two teammates was the exposing of a culture within the team of veterans bankrolling excessive spending and luxurious vacations from the bank accounts of rookies.
Baltimore Ravens
Much of the hate of the Ravens does come from some of their rival fan bases, no one bigger than the Pittsburgh Steelers. But with social media being bigger than ever and the Ravens only less than a season removed from the Super Bowl, you cannot overlook the national hate that is levied towards Baltimore.
Winning contributes to this tremendously. With Super Bowl wins in 2000 and 2012, nine playoff appearances since 2000; the team is on par with the New England Patriots for dominance over a generation. However, unlike the Patriots, the Ravens do not share in the respect. Trent Dilfer led the team to a win in 2000 and is widely considered the worst quarterback to have ever led his team to a Super Bowl win. Joe Flacco, despite leading his team to the playoffs year after year, does not command the respect that the upper echelon quarterbacks do, even with plenty of ESPN loyalists to Flacco claiming that he is elite.
And there is the whole Ray Lewis murder/obstruction of justice thing that stuck with him through the remainder of his career. Leading up to the latest Super Bowl, it seemed that every second tweet sent about the Ravens and their Super Bowl aspirations came back to Ray Lewis and the alledged murder. It harkened back to the Ravens first Super Bowl win. Less than a year after alleged incident that had Lewis standing in front of a jury of his peers reading a verdict, he was standing on the field as Super Bowl champion and MVP of the game. It was a little bit of salt in the wound for his critics.
Dallas Cowboys
America’s team! That just might be enough to vote for the ‘boys.
Much like the Miami Dolphins, here we have a franchise operating with a generation of incompetence and still riding the coat tails of success of previous rosters. The Cowboys have won championships more recently than the Dolphins, but the manner in which the Cowboys have lost over the years is incompetence personified.
Leon Lett, Tony Romo and Leon Lett again.
The meddlesome nature of their owner, general manager and all things football, Jerry Jones, doesn’t help their image. The Dallas Cowboys, much like the New York Yankees of baseball, is one of the teams that people just love to hate. Their recent incompetence just makes it easier.
Throughout the 90’s when the team was doing some winning, they were surrounded by controversy with leaders of the team like Michael Irvin being plagued with cocaine possession charges and rape allegations, the latter ultimately proven to be false.
Washington Redskins
Their team name is viewed by many as a racial slur. Need I say more?
Oh wait, recently they trotted out onto the field four members of the Navajo Code Talkers Association in honor of Native American Heritage month and Service month. They also draped them in Redskins apparel for the ceremony. It was awkward, to say the least.
This team might not be the most-hated today, but the way things are trending, they could be in the near future.
Pittsburgh Steelers
Winning breeds hate, we know that, and no team has more Championships than the six earned by the Steelers. Along the way they have made many enemies around the league including Ravens, Cowboys, Seahawks, and Patriots fans.
Add to this a perception (true or not we can debate another time) that the NFL league office favours the Rooney family, and some questionable calls in that Super Bowl victory over Seattle are pointed to as part of the evidence, and you get some hate around the league.
Lastly put a QB on the field who has been accused of inappropriate and even criminal sexual behaviour at times, and the hate continues to flow. Whether Roethlisberger was exonerated or not, similar to Ray Lewis, the actual verdicts does not actually matter, the perception that he was involved in these shady incidents is enough to foster the hate.
So have your say, who is the NFL’s most hated team? If your most-hated is one of the other teams not mentioned, write it in the comments.
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