There may not have been a more head-scratching situation than what befell Carl Edwards in the 2009 Sprint Cup season.

Winner of nine races the season before -- and a heavy favorite to dethrone Jimmie Johnson -- Edwards struggled nearly from the first time his crew unloaded the No. 99 Ford at Daytona.

“

I believe, in my mind, that's the way I've been smarter. I wasn't in denial going out here and wrecking my car or making terrible choices because I wanted something that wasn't available.

”

- CARL EDWARDS

On the positive side, Edwards made the most of what little was offered him, scoring a total of seven top-five finishes and making the Chase for the Sprint Cup. And perhaps the steep drop in performance between 2008 and 2009 taught Edwards a lesson that may prove valuable in future seasons.

"The thing I'm proud of this season is that once we realized and I realized that we were not the same team, and we did not have the same performance as we did last season, we buckled down and got the best we could out of our finishes and we made the Chase, which, at that time, was a huge accomplishment," Edwards said.

"I believe, in my mind, that's the way I've been smarter. I wasn't in denial going out here and wrecking my car or making terrible choices because I wanted something that wasn't available -- I wanted a finish that wasn't gonna happen. I feel like I accepted the facts and did the best with them, and that's what I'm most proud of is putting ourselves in that position."

What seemed to doom Edwards was having to start from deep in the field, week after week. On 21 occasions, Edwards rolled off the grid 16th or worse, forcing him to play catch up just to battle to remain in Chase contention.

"You work so hard just to get to the next race and you have to be short-term thinking throughout the season," Edwards said. "The only time that you really get to step back and look at everything on the macro scale is at the end of the season, so that's probably why you see that.

"... If you have six or eight or 10 bad weeks, you're so far down in the points and everybody is so used to you running bad, even if you have a glimmer of hope, it just doesn't show up and you don't remember it, but it does seem that way."

Didn't get much better than this

Edwards attempted to block the second-place car of Brad Keselowski on the final lap of the Aaron's 449 at Talladega, only to get turned sideways and launched into the catchfence in a terrifying accident from which he was able to climb out uninjured and run across the finish line. "We had the most spectacular 24th-place finish in the history of the sport, which I thought that was pretty funny," Edwards said.

The disappointment still lingers

Edwards led only 164 laps the entire year, most of those coming in his runner-up finish to Tony Stewart at Pocono in June. He dominated much of that race, only to lose when the last handful of laps turned into a fuel-mileage gamble. In the second half of the season, Edwards led just six laps.