These things actually happened Sunday, in order, to the Seattle Seahawks, New England Patriots and Detroit Lions. These teams desperately seeking a playoff berth were beaten by Denver, Philadelphia and Chicago -- teams with a collective record of 12-28 coming in.

Seattle, once a lock for the AFC West, has lost four consecutive games and plunged to 8-6. The Seahawks need to win their last two games, including Sunday's huge meeting against division-leading Kansas City.

"There's no coincidences," Seattle quarterback Jon Kitna said Monday. "I don't believe in luck. You create you own luck, your own opportunities. Right now, we haven't created enough for ourselves."

The Patriots, once 6-2, have lost five of six. Their playoff bid is over and so, quite probably, is the head-coaching career of Pete Carroll.

"Our performance leaves a taste in your mouth that you're not going to get rid of for a long time," Carroll said after the Patriots were humiliated in a 24-9 loss to the Eagles. "I'm just about as sick as you can be. That's a disgrace, that's what that is."

The Lions, once 6-2 and in command of the NFC Central, have lost four of six. They need to beat Denver on Christmas Day and Minnesota on the road in the regular-season finale to assure themselves of a playoff berth.

"I'm baffled," Detroit cornerback Robert Bailey said. "Just totally baffled. For us to have been in the position we were in and for us to be in the position we're in now, is baffling."

He's not the only one. How on earth does this happen?

On any given Sunday, the tiresome cliché goes. With no apologies to Oliver Stone and Al Pacino, this cliché, like most, is true. It is the nature of today's NFL to be wild and crazy. Sure, the restrictive salary cap robs teams of depth. Of course, there are going to be injuries. And, yes, the ball takes some bizarre bounces.

But at this critical stage of the season, how does a team that starts so well go so far south so quickly? With four preseason games and 16 regular-season contests, it's a long and grinding road. Players are physically and mentally questionable, as it says on the injury report.

On any given Sunday ...

Granted the Oakland Raiders were 6-7 and hungry for a win against the 9-4 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but how do you explain 45-0, the worst Tampa Bay loss in franchise history? The Bucs have one of the best defenses in the league, but somehow Napoleon Kaufman and Tyrone Wheatley ran a total of 27 times for 233 yards.

The Seahawks might be the most disappointing flame-out. Under new coach Mike Holmgren they were 8-2 and considered among the league's elite teams. How many times did the Green Bay Packers lose four straight games under Holmgren? Your final answer? Zero. In each of his first three seasons in Green Bay, 1992-94, Holmgren's Packers lost three straight games but never four.

The giddy Nov. 1 defeat of Green Bay on Monday Night Football and the Nov. 21 win at Kansas City turned out to be a mirages; the Seahawks have fallen to Tampa Bay, Oakland, San Diego and Denver.

Seattle faces Kansas City in the franchise's biggest game in a decade, insecure in the knowledge that they are piloted by a still-young quarterback in Kitna and employ a defense that can do very little to stop a stout running attack.

The mistakes on which the Seahawks capitalized through the first 10 games have been their own over the last month: Turnovers. Penalties. Bad decisions. Poor tackling. Are the Seahawks victims of bad karma?

"I think there's that sort of feeling when you get into one of these things," Holmgren said Monday. "But that's an emotion and a feeling we have to fight. I don't believe in jinxes.

"The game is usually decided by the way you play the game. A recovered fumble for a touchdown, a dropped pass or a missed tackle or whatever ... it doesn't make it any easier."

The Lions have struggled, perhaps coincidentally since quarterback Charlie Batch broke his right thumb. Gus Frerotte filled in decently for six weeks but struggled in the last two games, losses at Tampa Bay and Chicago. Batch, who relieved Frerotte and scored the Lions' only touchdown against Chicago, will start against the Broncos.

His thumb is still broken and swollen, but the Lions have no choice.

"I thought this team was beyond the point where we needed to worry about whether or not we'd show up for games," Lions receiver Johnnie Morton said. "We played like a 5-8 team that's concerned with only finishing up the season. It was all ours for the taking, and now we're giving it back."

At least the Lions can -- and should -- still make the playoffs.

The Patriots, who have gone 1-5 since a bye week and 0-4 against their AFC East rivals, are catching up on their Christmas cards this week. Injuries have played a big role in the Patriots' swoons the last two years. But Carroll has a hand in this, too. His team was 4-1 last year, then finished 5-6. In his first season following Bill Parcells, there was a 5-1 start and a 5-5 finish.

The Patriots, according to receiver Troy Brown, played like front-runners. "God forbid we played somebody trying to get into the playoffs," Brown said, "because we would have lost by 40 points."

It was a tough week for front-runners. The Jacksonville Jaguars pushed their league-best record to 13-1 with a sloppy 24-14 victory over the expansion Browns. Some of the Jaguars players threw things around in the locker room afterward.

It was that kind of week.

It has been that kind of season.

Greg Garber is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.