Martin Truex Jr. Just Had the Saddest Playoffs Ever after engaging in..

Expectations in sports can be as fluid as they are fickle.

While some teams are simply happy to punch above their weight, knowing others have more resources, the top organizations are often in “championship or bust” mode. And once the playoffs arrive in sports that have them, things can change quickly.

It’s no different in NASCAR. Ryan Blaney, for instance, would probably have been overjoyed if you had visited him from several months in the future at Daytona International Speedway to reassure him that he’d make the Championship 4 for the first time — but now that he’s made it, you can bet he wants to win the title.

A NASCAR Cup Series championship was a realistic goal for Martin Truex Jr. and the No. 19 team when the season started. He’d won one before, after all, when he was still driving for Furniture Row Racing. It’s hard to argue against the idea that Joe Gibbs Racing is better funded and generally better equipped for any kind of championship pursuit.

Perhaps even more significantly, Truex did something this year that he also did en route to his 2017 series title: He won the regular season championship, a testament to his consistency over the course of 26 races. Except for a 24th-place result in the final regular season race at Daytona, Truex also entered the postseason with momentum, racking up six consecutive top-seven results (including his third win of 2023) between New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Watkins Glen International.

To say he and JGR should have been running for anything but a championship seems kind of ridiculous.

Of course, Truex won’t be running for anything but a fourth victory this weekend at Phoenix Raceway, and even that could be a stretch given what he and his team have done over the past nine weeks. “Debacle” isn’t too strong a description.

The Round of 16 would have sunk the No . 19 bunch immediately were it not for the points cushion that came with the regular season trophy and three wins. Truex started off with a not-so-great 18th at Darlington Raceway, which somehow turned out to be his best finish of the round.

Surely, there was reason to think things would turn around in the next three races, despite it not featuring tracks where Truex has traditionally been strong. His performance did improve … but only because there was no 36th-place washout like at Kansas Speedway.

Through six playoff races, Truex turned in an average finish of 21.3 with a best effort of 17th. Incredibly, he managed to underperform his career average at four of the sixth tracks. Truex managed to outdo his usual work at only two of his worst venues: Bristol Motor Speedway, where his 19th was better than his 20.7 average on concrete, and Talladega Superspeedway, where coming home 18th was better than his career average of 21.3.

Far from looking like a contender, Truex was instead Exhibit A for why NASCAR should consider changing its playoff rules to eliminate the playoff points that follow drivers from round to round.