NFL playoffs: How your team can make it

At the beginning of each season, hope is running through the veins of every National Football League fan. It doesn’t matter whether you root for the Green Bay Packers or Tennessee Titans, or whether you are a pessimist or optimist. Ultimately, your head is telling you one thing, but that beating organ inside your chest is telling quite a different story.

No solid quarterback on the roster? Eh, the defense will pick up the slack. Can’t stop the pass? No big deal, the opposing receivers in our division stink anyway. It’s not that we want to lie to ourselves, but sometimes we have to for self preservation. So headed into the 2015 campaign, the internal engines start up again. Training camp is only a few short weeks away, and every team has something legitimate to be excited about.

Of course, only one team and its fans are going to be happy when the confetti is being shot out of cannons in Santa Clara, Calif., come February. Still, that doesn’t mean there won’t be Cinderella stories and teams who stun us on the journey to the Super Bowl. Unlike the NBA, the NFL does give us some genuine upsets. It’s always unpredictable, and it is always a high-wire drama playing out in front of millions of folks.

So how can your team make the playoffs? For some, the answers are simple and direct. For others, well, it takes a little bit more finesse. Let’s get down to business and break it down one step at a time.

Next: New England Patriots