You know what I'm talking about. The match where in an even matchup, your whole team plays horribly. Everyone scores a 4, 5 or 6 while everyone on the other team gets a 8 or 9. You can see these results coming from almost the beginning, and nothing you do in the team talk matters. Morale is not a factor, you can come in with a 6 game winless streak and everyone on 'very high' morale, and this can still happen.

My question is, is this something built into the game engine? Does it just decide one day that your team is going to play awful and there's nothing you can do? And is this a good thing?

It's true, sometimes teams have off days, but is it a good idea to code it into the engine?

Sorry, that should read '6 game lossless streak'.