It's almost amusing that noone else in the media can show some common sense about long term strength of coaches and teams - actually it's a little pathetic.
In any given year, there can certainly be a team that all of a sudden jells, stays healthy, and gets a few breaks and can make it to the superbowl and even win it. OK. But usually noone predicts those teams anyway.
But year in and year out it seems kind of dense not to figure that the odds greatly favor that the usual suspects are the most likely to be there at the end. And those suspects are just simply the teams that have solid workmanlike teaching coaches, a high work ethic and real sense of team, reasonable drafting capability, and some common sense about free agency.
It's not hard to pick the current ones out:
NFC: Eagles, Seahawks, and Panthers
---- gets kind of thin after that - actually really thin
AFC: Patriots, Steelers, Broncos, (and Colts in a sense)
---- possibly getting to that level MAY be Bengals, Jaguars, and a much longer shot the Dolphins.
On the lighter side, that's three cats, two horses, two birds, and a 'fish' among those teams.
