Los Angeles Chargers

The San Diego Chargers may be the greatest losers in NFL history

Published Nov. 15, 2016 1:57 p.m. ET

Chris Chase

Proving they should have been blowing money on Powerball tickets instead of Joey Bosa, the San Diego Chargers have spent the early part of the 2016 season defying mathematical probability and somehow accomplishing a feat that only happens once in 30 million tries. The Chargers are choking and blowing leads at a level previously unseen in NFL history.

It's been well-noted that the Chargers have blown fourth-quarter leads in three of their four losses this season and have twice given up fourth-quarter leads of 13 or more points while every other NFL team is 30-0 in that situation. But until the number junkies at The Wall Street Journal looked into it, we didn't realize just how special that really was.

Thanks to our friends at pro-football-reference.com, we can look at the win probability for the Chargers in each of their four losses this year. In Week 1, the Chargers were at 99.9 percent to win with 12:12 left against the Chiefs (27-10):

In Week 3, after an easy win over the Jags in Week 2, San Diego led again, this time 22-20 over the Colts past the two-minute mark. Their best odds to win that game were "only" 84.7 percent. They didn't.

Fast forward to Week 4, and the Chargers again had a comfortable advantage, leading the Saints 34-21 midway through the fourth quarter and up until and beyond the two-minute warning. Their best win-probability that day was also 99.9 percent, when the score was 34-21 with San Diego holding the ball at its own 13. Melvin Gordon would go on to fumble, and the win probability chart started plummeting like Samsung stock:

By that measure, Week 5 was barely a choke. With a 77.9 percent chance to win, San Diego ended up losing momentum again (on a Gordon fumble, again) and blew its third-quarter 17-9 lead against Oakland. (It's here where I call foul on the win probability system. It should fully be taking into account that it's figuring out the probability of the Chargers winning, which means an 80 percent chance for any other team should be like minus-30 percent given the applicable team.

So, overall, losing games in which a team had second-half win probabilities at various times of 99.9 percent, 84.7 percent, 99.9 percent and 77.9 percent should happen once in every 30 million scenarios, according to Seth Bienstock, who was asked by the Journal about these mathematical abominations. The best part though is that Bienstock says that in two-thirds of scenarios, the Chargers would be 5-0! FIVE! AND! OH!

Remember that next time you think a team's record is the end-all, be-all of its talent and worth. Football is a game of inches ... and Melvin Gordon fumbles.