Five least likely NFL teams to win the Super Bowl

2. Oakland Raiders

I’ll give them this—the Oakland Raiders appear to be on the right path, and I don’t mean down the 5 freeway to Los Angeles. While I’m not ready to stamp ‘approved’ on Derek Carr quite yet, he had a solid first season with almost no weapons. Now, the front office went out of their way to grab some extra help in the form of guys like Michael Crabtree and—more importantly—Amari Cooper.

They’ve also got Khalil Mack to build a defense around which, if you’re building a defense, is a pretty darn good place to start. Mack is one of the more exciting young players in the league.

So you have a franchise which has seemingly hit on three big picks at three important positions.

Unfortunately, while those are great foundation pieces, there are still a lot of question marks around the rest of the team. Set aside the fact that we don’t know if Carr will continue to progress, Cooper will live up to expectations or Mack can keep at his level of play—even if all three keep improving, the rest of the team may plateau.

And aside from the primary three we just talked about, there are too many positions that are thin on talent.

I do like Latavius Murray out of the backfield and think he can build on his rookie season but he hasn’t carried the full load yet and has struggled in the preseason. Charles Woodson is aging at cornerback, as is Justin Tuck at defensive end.

There are a lot of young players as depth behind the starting defense though, so again this is a team which appears to be building towards something, assuming everyone pans out.

At the end of the day, the Raiders have come a long way towards being a good team—they’ve just got too much road to go before that becomes a reality.

Next: 1. Chicago Bears