NFL Teams Ready to Step into Playoff Contention

NFL Teams Ready to Step into Playoff Contention By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer Jul 10, 2015 Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports This is the time of year NFL fans and media alike start throwing around a meaningless phrase: "Playoff team." Did the XYZs add enough talent to become a playoff team? The ABCs couldn't possibly finish under .500—they're a playoff team!The reality is if a team made the playoffs in 2014, it has little bearing on whether they'll do so in 2015. Several teams that qualified for the postseason last year have spent this spring adding talent yet will be left out in the cold come winter.Every year since 1996, at least five teams missed the playoffs after making it the year before. The competitive balance of the NFL, and the high degree of randomness in its outcomes, means no team can take its place for granted.The beautiful flipside of this harsh reality is that there's always hope. If at least five winning teams are going to lose out, five losing teams will get an invitation to the ball.A longstanding principle of sports analytics is Pythagorean wins—the notion of how many games a team should have won based on their points scored and points allowed. As Doug Drinen of Sports-Reference.com explained, these expected-win values are a much stronger predictor of success the following year than actual wins.In other words, teams that probably should have won more games than they did in 2014 will probably do much better in 2015.We have perused losing records, favorable expected-wins differentials and a lot of other statistics to conclude the following teams could be in the mix for a playoff spot in 2015.Tampa Bay BuccaneersKim Klement-USA TODAY Sports 2014 Record: 2-142014 Expected Wins: 4.5Differential: plus-2.5 (No. 1)Let the laughter ring out around the football Internet: The Buccaneers? In the playoffs? The idea of a team going from a 2-14 season, which saw them pick No. 1 overall in the draft, making the playoffs the very next year is laughably insane—except the Indianapolis Colts did just that a few years ago.Jameis Winston is not Andrew Luck, and Luck's first Colts squad had a whole bunch of things fall into place for them. Yet like the Buccaneers in 2014, the 2010 Colts weren't quite as bad as their record suggested. In fact, the Buccaneers had a massive 2.5-win gap between their scoring performance and their on-field record.With a fantastic receiving corps, a revamped offensive line and a nucleus of difference-makers on defense, Winston only needs to make the Bucs four or five wins better—and have Lady Luck favour them a bit—for them to contend for the title in the NFL's weakest division.St. Louis Rams 2014 Record: 6-102014 Expected Wins: 7.2Differential: plus-1.2 (No. 4)To put it kindly, the Rams did not follow conventional wisdom this offseason. They went big on running back and the offensive line in the draft and flipped perennially injured, but obviously talented, quarterback Sam Bradford for the unimpressive Nick Foles.They also play in the stacked NFC West, where excellent squads struggle to pile up wins, let alone mediocre ones.Yet the 6-10 Rams actually overperformed their results last season and their massively bolstered run game should make a big difference to a team that struggled to move the chains and score points. Moreover, the "stacked" NFC West might not be anywhere near as competitive in 2015; the San Francisco 49ers have undergone the most dramatic offseason implosion in recent memory, and the Arizona Cardinals (according to expected wins) played way over their skis.It's still tough to see how the Rams make a serious run at the back-to-back conference champions, the Seattle Seahawks, but all the makings of a wild-card contender are there.Minnesota VikingsJim Mone/Associated Press 2014 Record: 7-92014 Expected Wins: 7.5Differential: plus-0.5 (No. 15)Do we need to go over the Vikings' outstanding young corps of difference-makers ready to make a big jump? Do we need to cover rookie quarterback Teddy Bridgewater's excellent, doubter-silencing debut? Do we need to review the magic first-time head coach Mike Zimmer worked with pass-rusher Everson Griffen and rookie linebacker Anthony Barr?Probably.Between the Green Bay Packers' continued dominance, the Detroit Lions' resurgence and the Chicago Bears' spectacular implosion, the Vikings were a distant fourth in terms of media attention last year. Well, on-field media attention, anyway.Now, with the return of superstar tailback Adrian Peterson to the playing field, the firestorm of negative off-field attention has died down. Quickly review all that stuff about the Vikings being a young team on the rise and add the 2012 NFL MVP into the equation.Peterson, assuming he's anywhere near his usual, All-Pro form, makes this team so much better in so many ways it's hard to enumerate. The Lions are primed for a fall back to earth; besides losing Ndamukong Suh, the Lions outplayed their expected wins by the second-most of any NFL team. Unless the Bears take a massive leap forward in 2015, the Vikings could—maybe should—challenge the Packers for NFC North supremacyNew York Giants  2014 Record: 6-102014 Expected Wins: Differential: plus-1.5 (No. 2 overall)It's Odell Beckham Jr.'s world, and we're all just living in it. Calling him a "rookie phenom" doesn't do his mind-blowing performance justice. He truly was a phenomenon in 2014, and his play dramatically recast what quarterback Eli Manning and the New York Giants offense were capable of.The Giants didn't have a wonderful offseason, and the shocking fireworks injury to Jason Pierre-Paul doesn't help that perception. Yet per expected wins, they were as unlucky as the division-winning Dallas Cowboys were lucky in 2014.If rookies such as left tackle Ereck Flowers and safety Landon Collins step in and play well, the Giants should be able to keep pace with the Cowboys deep into the year—and depending on how well the Chip Kelly experiment works out in Philadelphia, they could catch up with the Eagles too.With a full offseason in coordinator Ben McAdoo's offense, and the tantalizing return of Victor Cruz, the Giants offense should put the team right back in the thick of the wild-card race.To capitalize, though, they'll need their run of bad luck to come to a very quick end.New York JetsJulio Cortez/Associated Press 2014 Record: 4-122014 Expected Wins: 4.9Differential: plus-0.9  No. 8There were times last season when the Jets were all but unwatchable. The 31-0 loss at the San Diego Chargers was a miserable game of un-football, a sloppy, non-competitive capitulation. The Monday Night Football mollywhopping they suffered at the hands of the Buffalo Bills—the Bills!—gave the football-watching world the last it ever needed to see of Rex Ryan's Jets.Yet the Jets also gave multiple playoff teams, including the Patriots, Packers and Lions, all they could handle, and quarterback Geno Smith showed flashes of growth and professional play. If the only thing that changed was the skipper and the offense, Smith's growth and a mild regression to the expected-wins mean would give the Jets realistic hope of a seven-win season.Instead, the Jets had the most spectacular, transformative offseason of any NFL team.Bringing All-Everything cornerback Darrelle Revis back from the Patriots was a massive coup. Backing him up, Antonio Cromartie, Buster Skrine and would-be Revis replacement Dee Milliner give the Jets the best cornerback group—maybe the best secondary—in football.The already-stout defensive line will be monstrous thanks to the addition of No. 6 overall pick Leonard Williams, even with Sheldon Richardson's four-game suspension. With new head coach Todd Bowles at the helm, it's hard not to see the Jets as a top-five unit.With Brandon Marshall finally giving Smith a top-tier receiver, as well as the reinforcements in the running game, the bar for the Jets isn't just set at contending for the playoffs but making a noise in them.link