NFL: A peek into the future

Half of the teams that went into this weekend's "Final 8" did not make the playoffs a year ago, including the Eagles and Saints, who played last night with the winner advancing to the NFC final, and the AFC's top two seeds -- San Diego and Baltimore.

In all, of the 12 teams that made this year's postseason, seven of them did not make it to last year's playoffs.

"That's the way this league is," said a veteran assistant coach. "Every year is so much different than the one before. It used to be you made the playoffs one year, ad vanced the next year and worked your way to the Super Bowl.

"Now, teams come out of nowhere. You could very easily have two teams in the Super Bowl this year that weren't even in the playoffs last year."

With that in mind, let's take a quick look at some of the teams that failed to make it this year, but might be a good bet to still be playing at this time next year.