People have very short memories. While we were not on the same level of the Patriot's, Chiefs, Steelers, Packers, or Colts in terms of consistency, I feel like we have had very good and entertaining spurts of success. Many people agree that the NFL is built for teams to hover around .500%. Inherently, you are going to encounter years of build up and break down. Here are the Panthers since Fox, and Rivera.
The Bills are the rage right now, how long did they go without being in the playoffs? Let's take a look. (Spoiler, it goes all the way back to 1999)
The Chiefs from 1999 - 2012 made the playoffs 3 times only winning one playoff game during that time. The 49'ers have made the playoffs 7 times in 22 years. Long story short, consistency is much more rare than it seems.
I'm proud of our history. In fact, 2003-2009 and 2012-2017 were some really fun years, even when we didn't make the playoffs. If we have had 12 of 28 successful years where we were either in the playoffs or right there in the mix, I'll take those odds. Heck if you add in 95-97 and 99 we were right at or well above .500% again. 57% of the time we are in the mix. Rhule was a stain on our history, even worse than Siefert, but we will come back. Heck the best thing for our franchise was the Clausen year and the last Siefert year. Shoot we even pulled off a 7-9 record during the Vinny/St. Pierre/Wildcat season.
Be a fan and show some faith. The Panther way works. Better than the Lion, Jaguar, Jet, way.
#keeppounding 4 life!!!!!!