The regular season of the National Football League (NFL) ended last Sunday night when the Detroit Lions defeated the Minnesota Vikings, 31-9, to win both the National Football Conference (NFC) North division and the NFC’s top seed for the playoffs that begin today. 

Fourteen of the NFL’s 32 teams are in the playoffs — seven in the NFC and seven in the AFC (American Football Conference). Those 14 teams and their fan bases passionately dream of their team winning a few more games and hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, which goes to the winner of the Super Bowl — the single biggest sporting event of the year in American professional sports. 
The other 18 teams are already looking ahead to next year. Several head coaches and a larger number of offensive and defensive coordinators and position coaches already have been fired, with more to follow. Several general managers are in the hot seat, too, waiting to see if the axe will fall. The NFL compensates its executives and coaches handsomely, but they had better win, or else. Team owners seek to placate their fans by taking whatever steps are necessary to put a winning team on the field. That is true for every team; indeed, the competition in the NFL is fierce, unforgiving, and never-ending.
 The fans of the eliminated teams are already comparing mock drafts of players coming out of the college ranks who will be drafted by NFL teams in late April. Fans nationwide fervently hope that their team will identify and draft players who will take their teams to the next level — the level of getting into the playoffs and competing for a championship. Millions of those fans will also tune in to watch the playoffs, both because of their love for the sport itself and to dream of their favorite team participating in the playoffs in the future. 
Those 18 eliminated teams can be divided into roughly three groups: the chronically downtrodden, the borderline teams that some years squeak into the playoffs and other years fall short, and a longti...