The answer is not neccesarily, as much as the doom and gloomers want to desperately believe it automatically does. Here's some research, back to 2008. For this exercise, I considered a blowout as more than a 2 TD loss. Interesting is that they have become less a predictor of season success the last 2 years. What does that mean for 2012? Who knows. 2008: Cleve, KC, Was Oak all suffered such losses, all were 5-11 or worse. 2009: Buff and Oak, were 5-11, and 6-10. 2010: Indy(10-6), SD(9-7), Cinn(4-12), Dallas(6-10), Pitt(12-4) 2011: Oak(8-8), SF(13-3), Atl(10-6), NE(13-3). No team that had such a loss had a losing record. And the Giants lost by 14, and won the Superbowl, against another such team, NE. Might be another stat that is highly overrated as an accurate Season predictor.