The New England Patriots and Chicago Bears were just playing out the string late in lost seasons when the calendar flipped to December last year.
Now they find themselves at the top of the NFL standings after remarkable turnarounds.
It's been more than three decades since the two teams that earned the top playoff seeds in each conference had missed the postseason the previous year.
That last happened in 1992, when Pittsburgh topped the AFC and San Francisco
earned the No. 1 seed in the NFC after missing the 1991 playoffs despite a 10-win season. The only other times it occurred since seeding began in 1975 came in the nine-game strike season of 1982 with Washington and the Los Angeles Raiders, and in 1981 with San Francisco and Cincinnati.
Making this even more unusual is the fact that both the Bears and Patriots have rebounded under first-year coaches.
Ben Johnson has transformed a Chicago team already assured its first winning season since 2018. This is the latest in a season the Bears have been in the top spot in the NFC since 2006, when they last reached the Super Bowl.
Mike Vrabel has led a similar turnaround in New England after the team had dropped off in recent years under Bill Belichick and Jerod Mayo. The Patriots lost 26 games the previous two seasons — one shy of Carolina for most in the league — but now have the most wins in the NFL with 11.
Four teams have won the Super Bowl under a first-year coach, with Denver the last to do it in the 2015 season under Gary Kubiak. The others were Jon Gruden in 2002 with Tampa Bay, George Seifert in 1989 with San Francisco and Don McCafferty in 1970 with the Baltimore Colts.
Gruden and Kubiak had coached other teams, meaning Johnson will try to join McCafferty and Seifert as the only coaches to win a Super Bowl in their first year as an NFL head coach.
Both teams also have second-year quarterbacks, with Caleb Williams in Chicago and Drake Maye in New England. There have never been two QBs that inexperienced starting for the top playoff seeds.
With more and more teams being aggressive on fourth down, the success — or failure — of those plays has a large impact on who wins these days.
That was clearly evident in two games this past week, with Green Bay scoring touchdowns on a pair of fourth downs in a win at Detroit on Thanksgiving, and Carolina doing the same on Sunday in an upset victory over the Los Angeles Rams.
In all, there have been 74 offensive touchdowns scored on fourth-down plays so far this season, breaking the record for an entire season of 73 set in 2021.
There have already been more than twice as many fourth-down TDs this season as there were in the entire 2017 season (34). Philadelphia was one of the most aggressive teams that season and won the Super Bowl, contributing to a marked increase in fourth-down tries since then.
While the Rams were on the wrong end of those fourth downs against the Panthers, they are tied with Kansas City for the most fourth-down TDs this season with six. The Panthers, Lions and Jets all have five.
Denver has gotten off to a 10-2 start in a most unusual fashion.
The Broncos have trailed in all 12 games this season before rallying to win 10 of them. How unusual is that?
This is the 202nd time that a team trailed in each of the first 12 games of a season. Only eight teams besides the Broncos had a winning record after the 12th game, including the Cowboys at 6-5-1 this season.
Only one team before Denver won more than seven of the first 12 games after trailing in every one — the Houston Oilers opened 8-4 in 1978.
Of the seven teams to do it before this season, only three made the postseason, with the Oilers the only one to win even one playoff game. Houston won two playoff games that season before losing to Pittsburgh in the AFC title game.
Denver has won six games by three points or fewer — one shy of the most in any season — with the last four games being wins by three, three, three and one point. The only other team to win four straight games by three points or fewer was the 1986 New York Giants, who went on to win the Super Bowl.
For decades, the Raiders were one of the most successful franchises in the NFL with three Super Bowl championships, two more trips to the title game and 16 division titles in a 36-year span ending in 2002.
Since then, it's been almost nothing but losing. The Raiders were officially eliminated from playoff contention with a 31-14 loss to the Chargers on Sunday, marking the 23rd straight season that the team will fail to win either a playoff game or a division title. Only two other franchises have had longer streaks since the 1970 merger, with Detroit doing it 29 straight seasons from 1994-2022 and Buffalo for 24 straight from 1996-2019.
This season has been particularly bad for Las Vegas with a 2-10 record that includes five losses by at least 17 points.
The offense has been the biggest issue, with the team's current streak of four straight games allowing at least four sacks and rushing for fewer than 75 yards tied for the longest in the Super Bowl era with the 2016 Browns.
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