5 non-playoff teams that can make Bengals-like leap to Super Bowl 57

If Russell Wilson wants to carry this team on his back, then go right ahead, man

Russell Wilson is the greatest stick of deodorant the Seattle Seahawks have ever seen. He does a marvelous job covering up the stinky draft picks and other horrible front office decisions this team has sneakily made for years. So was last season’s disaster the anomaly or more of what is to come in the Pacific Northwest? In short, if Wilson is healthy, the Seahawks are playoff viable.

Seattle might play in the toughest division in football, but the San Francisco 49ers are a massive regression candidate, the Arizona Cardinals are too inconsistent and maybe there is a Super Bowl hangover for the Los Angeles Rams? Los Angeles should still be good, but maybe it is the ‘Hawks who are the second best team in the division. If that is the case, Seattle can make it to Glendale.

A healthy Wilson should make the Seahawks at least four wins better than they were a year ago.

Better quarterback play could offset having a first-time head coach in Denver

To say the 2022 Denver Broncos will be the 2021 Bengals is a bit of a stretch, but they might be this year’s version of the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They do play in the brutal AFC West, but if they can get competent quarterback, presumably through a blockbuster trade with an NFC-contending team, it may not really matter that Nathaniel Hackett is only a first-time head coach.

Denver has great defensive personnel. The Broncos have promising players at skill positions. What has done them in has been two-fold: Bad head-coaching hires and tumultuous quarterback play. Denver cannot be trusted to draft a quarterback, so let’s not go there. But if they have to give up the farm to get somebody who is better than Teddy Bridgewater or Drew Lock, then just do it!

Hackett may have coached a guy who could be on the move this NFL offseason for all we know…