I'm curious to see if there's any early indications in the previous season to suggest a jump, so wanted to compare the first half of the season to the second half (defining the back half as the last 6 games, regardless of whether it's an 11 game, 12 game, or 13 game season)

• 1995: started 2-3, ended 5-1
• 2000: started 2-4, ended 4-2
• 2005: started 3-3, ended 3-3
• 2010: started 2-5, ended 5-1
• 2019: started 3-4, ended 4-2

Haven't looked at opponent quality to see if that's the reason for it, so this is just a first look, but it does seem to (at first glance) show some improvement as the season goes on.  

I want to also (as a bit of a control) consider bad seasons that didn't result in great next seasons

• 2017: 4-9 record, improved to 7-6 the next year 
  • started 1-6, finished 3-3
• 2002: 5-7 record, dropped to 4-8 the next year
  • started 3-3, finished 2-4
• 2003: 4-8 record, improved to 5-6 the next year
  • started 3-3, finished 1-5
• 2004: 5-6 record, improved to 6-6 the next year 
  • started 2-3, finished 3-3

That seems to indicate that the end to the previous season is a pretty good harbinger of whether we can expect improvement and also how much.  It'll be interesting to see if this season can be an exception, based on how difficult our schedule was to end last year and also how decimated and work down we were by that point