14. Chicago Bears
I don’t know how the Bears keep finding themselves so high on these rankings, but I have to chalk it up to an abundance of bad teams that continue to embarrass themselves while the Bears just quietly and almost accidentally win games.
Still, this ranking is more of a function of the fact that I think if you put the Bears on the field against a bad team then I think they will win because of a combination of sneaky coaching, a defense with a few stars and a QB who isn’t afraid to put his body on the line at this point.
They definitely don’t deserve to be a playoff team and luckily we are almost done watching Mitchell Trubisky miss wide open targets, but at the very least I don’t think they are a below average team.
13. Pittsburgh Steelers
The Steelers defense is the beginning and ending of that team. Sure, there is technically a human named Duck Hodges at quarterback, but this team only wins games because of the job that defense is doing taking the ball away and suffocating opposing offenses.
Pittsburgh is currently locked into the wildcard spot and with games against the Ravens and Bills left on the table it looks like they are going to need that lead if they want to keep their playoff hopes alive.
If they did lose those games, then it would be important to note that a 9-7 Titans team with a win over Houston in one of their matchups, might win a tiebreaker for that wildcard spot.