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Once again this year the NFL is selling hope, hard, for slow-starting teams.

“Since realignment in 2002,” an item in a news release previewing Week 2 says, “116 of the 192 playoff teams (60.4%) began the year either 1-1 or 0-2, including eight [of 12 playoff] teams last season and six [of eight] division champions…”

The intended takeaway? As the item’s all-caps lead-in words state:

“NO NEED TO PANIC.”

Well, yes, there bloody well is if your record is 0-1 right now.

Because if you separate the teams over the past 10 years that started 0-2 from the 1-1s, you’ll find that nearly all 0-2 teams failed to reach the post-season.

A dive by Postmedia into NFL records from 2008-17 shows that only 7.5% of playoff teams (9-of-120) lost their first two games. And if you go back only nine seasons, not 10, the playoff likelihood for 0-2 teams drops to 5.6% (6-of-108).

This Sunday and Monday, 14 NFL teams that lost in Week 1 hope to avoid that 0-2 near-death hole. They are: