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# Tough road to the playoffs for football teams opening with two losses
- URL: https://www.nh-highschoolsports.com/tough-road-playoffs-football-teams-opening-two-losses/
- Published: 2017-09-13T14:30:35.000Z
- Updated: 2017-09-13T14:30:35.000Z
- Description: The high school football season in New Hampshire is just two weeks old, and many coaches will tell you, it's way too early to already be talking about the playoffs. But is it? In a regular season that is just eight or nine games long, there is little room for error. Every game is really like a playo
- Author: Joe Marchilena
- Tags: Fall Sports, Division I, Division II, Division III, football, NH High School Sports Insider, playoffs, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-18 04:44

The high school football season in New Hampshire is just two weeks old, and many coaches will tell you, it's way too early to already be talking about the playoffs.

But is it?

In a regular season that is just eight or nine games long, there is little room for error. Every game is really like a playoff game, and there are already some teams that were expected to be contenders who have fallen quite a bit behind.

That divide is greatest in Division I, where of the 20 teams, nine have opened up at 2-0 and nine have gone in the other direction at 0-2.

In Division II, there six teams at 2-0, six at 0-2, five at 1-1, and thanks to the unexpected bye week, two teams at 1-0 and two teams at 0-1\. The split is pretty even in the 16-team Division III, with five teams sitting at 2-0 and five at 0-2.

With seven weeks to go until the end of the regular season, the chances of any of those 0-2 teams bouncing back to make the playoffs are close to zero.

In the four previous seasons, since the NHIAA reduced the number of divisions in football from six to three, only four times has a team started out a season with two losses and gone on to make the playoffs. That's 96 total playoff teams over those four years, and just four of them - just 4 percent - went on to play in the postseason.

It's happened twice in D1, first in 2013, when Manchester Central started 0-2 and won its next seven games in a row to get into the postseason. The Little Green then lost in what was then referred to as the conference championship against Concord.

The following year, Bishop Guertin started 0-3 and made the postseason with a 4-5 record, making the Cardinals the only team to start with three losses and reach the playoffs. Bishop Guertin advanced to the semifinals that year before losing to Pinkerton.

There have also been two teams in D3 to start 0-2 and reach the playoffs. Mascoma Valley was the first to do it in 2014, finishing 4-4, while Somersworth did the same in 2016\. Both teams lost in the quarterfinals.

But even getting a win this week doesn't guarantee much. In the same four-year stretch, not including the four teams previously mentioned, there have been 12 teams that have opened a season 1-2 and gone on to make the playoffs.

In 2015, Nashua North and Bishop Guertin in D1, and Somersworth in D3, pulled off the feat, but most of those turnarounds took place in the first two years of the three-division format. For those seasons, the divisions were set up so that the top teams in every conference made the playoffs.

Only three teams - Kennett in 2013, Hollis Brookline in 2014 and the previously-mentioned Bishop Guertin team of 2014 - have started a year 1-3 and made the postseason.

There are a six games across all three divisions this week between 0-2 teams, so someone will be keeping their playoff hopes alive for at least one more week.

And what about the teams that have started the year 2-0? Opening the season with back-to-back wins doesn't always mean a trip to the playoffs, although every team that's started 2-0 in the last two years has advanced.

In 2014, Salem started out 2-0 and eventually finished 7-2, missing out on a last-second loss to Londonderry in the season finale. That was also the year that two 4-5 teams (Bishop Guertin and Alvirne) both made the playoffs in a different conference in D1.

Also in 2014 Lebanon (D2) and Winnisquam (D3) both started the year 3-0 and eventually missed the playoffs. Merrimack started 2-0 in both 2013 and 2014 and failed to qualify.

And in 2013, Bedford won its first six games of the season, only to miss out on the playoffs when it lost the final regular season game to Central - which started 0-2 - and ended up losing the tiebreaker to the Little Green.