3. Oakland Raiders
The 2016 season was just cruel for Oakland. In Week 16, the Raiders led the AFC West, held the conference’s No. 2 seed and were only a game back (with the tiebreaker) from the Patriots for home field advantage.
Then Derek Carr got hurt. In two weeks time, Oakland went from a Super Bowl favorite to a Wild Card team that couldn’t even beat Brock Osweiler in the playoffs. In many ways, having hopes like that get completely crushed is even worse than just being a hopeless team.
Fortunately, crushed hopes and all, there’s some good news for the Raiders.
Carr will be back in 2017. He’ll team up again with (among others) Amari Cooper, Michael Crabtree, Latavius Murray, and one of the NFL’s top offensive lines. That group was good enough to anchor one of football’s top offenses in 2016.
, but Oakland certainly has some holes to plug on defense, namely in the secondary.
But by and large, the Raiders have one of the NFL’s most talented rosters and really are the AFC’s version of the Cowboys. With a young nucleus, this team should be a Super Bowl threat for 2017 and the rest of the foreseeable future.
For the first time since the days of Jon Gruden, things are clearly going the right way in Oakland.