updated 7:45 p.m. ET Nov. 13, 2006

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Roush Racing was at the top of NASCAR a year ago, the most celebrated team for winning 15 races and putting all five of its cars in the Chase for the championship.

This season has been nothing short of disappointment.

Only two Roush cars made the Chase this year, and only Matt Kenseth had a realistic chance to win the Nextel Cup. But his team fell apart the moment the postseason began, and he’s practically conceded the title to Jimmie Johnson as the series heads into Miami for the season finale.

And after a flurry of companywide personnel changes, Kenseth pronounced the powerful Roush organization in “somewhat of a mess.”

So what went wrong so quickly for the team that didn’t everything right last year? Too many things to count. When it’s all added up, though, Roush Racing became a victim of its own success.

“The trick bag that you get into in this business that will teach you very quickly is, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” Roush said. “We were clearly disadvantaged last year from having such a great year ... and we really didn’t change much over the winter.”

That initial complacency led Roush to make the first of many changes just seven races into the season, when newcomer Jamie McMurray couldn’t get up to speed with the rest of the program. So Roush ousted veteran crew chief Jimmy Fennig, who had won a championship just two years earlier.

Then he replaced him with Bob Osborne, who had engineered a dream season the year before by leading Carl Edwards to a third-place finish in their inaugural Cup campaign.

Only that didn’t help, either.

Not only did McMurray not improve, but Edwards’ team suffered and he failed to race his way back into the Chase.

“I didn’t think it could get worse, and it did,” McMurray said.

Chase for the Cup final standings Driver Points Behind 1. Jimmie Johnson 6,723 -- 2. Jeff Gordon 6,646 77 3. Clint Bowyer 6,377 346 4. Matt Kenseth 6,298 425 5. Kyle Busch 6,293 430 6. Tony Stewart 6,242 481 7. Kurt Busch 6,231 492 7. Jeff Burton 6,231 492 9. Carl Edwards 6,222 501 10. Kevin Harvick 6,199 524 11. Martin Truex Jr. 6,164 559 12. Denny Hamlin 6,143 580 Standings final as of Nov. 18

Much worse, in fact.

Greg Biffle, last season’s runner-up in the Chase standings, also failed to make the Chase. Edwards and Mark Martin haven’t won a race all year, and no Roush team has been to Victory Lane since Kenseth’s last trip at Bristol in August.

“I don’t know what the heck is going on at Roush Racing,” Kenseth said. “Right now, it seems in somewhat of a mess. We’ll see what happens. As a group, Roush Racing hasn’t been nearly as strong as it was last year.”

So Roush is again trying new things, assigning Biffle a new crew chief and reuniting Edwards with Osborne (it apparently clicked, they finished fifth Sunday in their first race back together).

Roush also started a tryout process to find someone to lead McMurray’s team, and he’s bringing Fennig back to the Cup garage to work with 20-year-old David Ragan next season.

So will it help? Roush certainly hopes so, and figures the shake-up can only improve team unity after communication seemingly broke down this year.

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“A year ago all five of our teams were carrying any idea that they had, everything they had seen on somebody else’s car, every curiosity they had, they carried it into a forum where it could be analyzed by the entire group and they were absolutely unselfish to that,” Roush said. “This year, as things went bad, things were a little chilly in meetings.

“We hope to get through this with keeping everybody on staff, just shuffling around to try to find chemistry interactions that will be effective and timely for what we need.”

Chances are Roush will figure it out because recent NASCAR history has shown that more than ever, the sport is cyclical.

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