Photo: Bryan Bennett (Getty Images)
It’s fall and you know what that means. In some parts of the country, the leaves are beginning to change color before slowly falling to the ground only to be ignored until the last possible moment and then begrudgingly raked into piles. The weather is getting cooler, and a light jacket or sweatshirt is a necessity on most evenings. The days are growing uncomfortably shorter. Lastly, football is back. The NFL and college football seasons began a few weeks ago.
To celebrate the return of football (specifically the NFL), we decided that the time was right to finally get something off of our proverbial chests. There are a lot of NFL team names that are either terrible or literally make no sense. Below, you’ll find eight team names and mascots that leave us scratching our heads from September until well after Super Bowl weekend.
Ranked! Worst NFL Team Names
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8) Houston Texans
Where do we start with this one? Talk about not even trying. This is the equivalent of calling a team from Cleveland the Ohio-ers. It’s like they didn’t even try to come up with an actual team name.
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7) Los Angeles Chargers
This is one of the most confusing team names of all time. They’re logo is a lightning bolt yet the actual name has nothing to do with electricity. Apparently, the name is a referring to fans yelling “charge” at USC games.
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6) New York Jets
There is honestly no reason the New York Jets should have this odd moniker. According to legend, the team got the name because the stadium was near LaGuardia Airport, and it rhymed with Mets. That’s it.
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5) Baltimore Ravens
Quote the raven, never name your team after a surly, macabre poet. This team was named to pay homage to Edgar Allen Poe. It might be the least intimidating team never ever created.
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4) Green Bay Packers
People aren’t going to be happy that we added the Packers to this list. But you have to be honest when you think of the naming of this team. They’re named after a meat packing company called Indian Packing because the company agreed to pay for the team’s jerseys in 1919.
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3) Cleveland Browns
The Cleveland Browns are extremely confusing. They’re main color is orange and, while they have brown in their uniforms, the team isn’t named for the color. In fact, the team is named for their first head coach Paul Brown.
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2) Miami Dolphins
We said the Ravens was the least intimidating mascot in sports, but we’re wrong. For whatever reason, Miami thought the friendly, cheerful, loveable dolphin would be the best mascot to instill fear in the hearts of opponents.
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1) Buffalo Bills
There are a lot of confusing team names on this list, but none is even remotely as head scratching as the Buffalo Bills. For some reason, the name is a pluralization of the famed frontiersman Buffalo Bill. To add to the confusion, there’s no reference or imaging of a cowboy anywhere. Instead, the logo is a Buffalo because of the name of the city.
