There was a brief moment when the NFL’s southern contingent seemed poised to follow the lead of its college brethren.

The NFC South looked like it was on the verge of establishing an SEC-style beachhead in the NFL, a championship-runs-through-here bulwark of pass-happy, shutdown-D teams. Two of the last three MVPs had come from the South, two of the last three Super Bowls had featured teams from the South. At least three — and maybe four, if you were feeling very generous — of the NFL’s top 10 quarterbacks played in the South. The South put three teams into the playoffs last season, only the sixth time that’s happened since the NFL aligned into four even divisions in 2002 and the first time in the NFC since the East did it in 2007.

And then it all went straight to hell.

Here’s how three nightmare seasons unfolded, and what comes next, for the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The long Southern fall

The Saints, Panthers and Falcons all reached the 2017 playoffs after combining for 32 wins last season, and although none of them got any farther than the divisional round — shoutout to Stefon Diggs — there was every indication that they’d all be back and fighting not just for a divisional title, but a Super Bowl one. Add in a Buccaneers team with every indicator trending upward, and you had a division that, quite rightly, looked like the strongest in the league by a wide margin.

And the raves rolled in all summer long:

“This is the only division where all four teams are realistic threats for double-digit wins,” NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal wrote.

“The South is another strong candidate for the NFL’s toughest division,” FiveThirtyEight noted in a roundup of predictions that put the Saints and Falcons neck-and-neck, with the Panthers close behind.

“Whoever wins the NFC South — the toughest division in football — deserves the coach of the year trophy,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Jonathan Jones.

Hey, we pull the receipts because we love. Hell, we fell under the Southern sway ourselves. Yahoo Sports also ranked the NFC South as the finest division in football prior to the season. “Every division game should be compelling,” our Frank Schwab wrote, a sentence that was exactly correct except for the word “compelling.”

To put it kindly: we all made a huge mistake.

View photos The Saints owned the Falcons in 2018. And to add insult to injury, they could hold up Lombardi in Atlanta in February. (Getty Images) More

What went wrong?

So what went wrong? For the Saints, nothing. They’re the best team in football, an absolute machine on both sides of the ball and an odds-on Super Bowl favorite. They own the South so thoroughly that the other three teams would have to win every game for nearly half a season just to pull even with New Orleans.

Thus, adios from this article, Saints. You get a pass right into the postseason. But for those other three teams — oh, my friend, pull up a chair as we run through the many dimensions of failure.

Let’s see: there’s erratic offensive play (Panthers, Bucs), complete red-zone incompetence (Falcons, Bucs), gaping defensive flaws (Falcons, Panthers), general quarterback ineffectiveness (Panthers, Bucs), catastrophic injuries (Falcons, Panthers), questionable sideline decision-making (Falcons, Bucs, Panthers), and a healthy dose of off-field drama (Bucs, Panthers).

Plus, their failures have been cinematic. The Falcons, one of the more serious recent threats to play a Super Bowl in their home stadium, stumbled out of the gate and at one point lost four games on the last play. The Panthers are in the midst of a seven-game losing streak that stole not just their postseason hopes but also their souls. And the Buccaneers have played guess-the-starting-QB all season long, pinballing between Jameis Winston and Ryan Fitzpatrick, showcasing both while supporting neither.

Story continues