Carolina Panthers reach Rochester Jeffersons-levels of awful after terrible start

The Carolina Panthers are bad. Very bad.

Most statistics that fans will see in the next few months will confirm a team that won two games last year has either flatlined or regressed in several key areas. Head coach Dave Canales and recently benched quarterback Bryce Young are flailing after a 26-3 thrashing at the hands of the Los Angeles Chargers.

Not only are the Panthers losing games, but the defeats have been even tougher to watch due to the fact they are so often non-competitive. When the fourth quarter comes around, the Carolina is almost always on the wrong end of a blowout.

Carolina Panthers' infamous fourth-quarter losing streak hits 20 games

The Panthers, dating back to last season, have been through 20 consecutive contests in which they didn't lead in the fourth quarter, excluding games where the team won with no time left on the clock. This ties them for the second-longest streak in NFL history with the infamously bad expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The only team who has been worse off than Carolina in this arena was the 1922-25 Rochester Jeffersons, one of the founding members of the NFL who didn't even make it a full decade due to how terrible they were. When the only team worse than you was so bad they shut the whole franchise down, things are looking grim.

Allow, if you will, a brief history of the Rochester Jeffersons. A founding member of the NFL due to the popularity of sandlot football in the area, fans reportedly demanded the "Jeffs" sign local players instead of top college talent. After beating local teams so badly that attendance declined due to the assurance of blowouts, they were unable to compete in the NFL.

Between 1922 and 1925, Rochester didn't win a single game and was being outdrawn by local semi-pro teams. Owner Leo Lyons forced them to become a traveling organization and eventually lost his house due to how much money he had invested in them. That is the only team who has it worse off than the Panthers.

When a team is that level of historically bad, everyone is to blame. Young may be the main culprit, but the defense is offering minimal resistance and Canales appears to be in over his skis as a head coach. The Panthers may not dig out of this hole for a few more years due to how much talent is needed to fix this issue.

The silver lining for the Panthers is that Tampa Bay went from these historic lows to the NFC Championship game just a few years later. While there may eventually be a rainbow after this torrential downpour, fans may need to brace for a year in which losing every single encounter is not something that can be discounted.